I am an Australian born to two Northern Irish parents who is wanting to further understand The Troubles. Can anyone recommend any books or resources that comprehensively explain history of The Troubles that focuses on the entire conflict. (not a biography)
Hope the mods are chill cause this is gonna be short since it's just reccomendations,
Making sense of the Troubles, by David McKittrick and David McVea. Probably the best place to start, covers the background of the conflict and right up til around 2007 (If you get the most recent revision) and includes a good chronology of events and graphs at the end.
The Troubles, by Tim Pat Coogan. Slightly longer book that covers much of the same ground as the above book. Not as easy a read as the above book imo.
Both of these books are a good place to start, with the Jack Holland and Henry McDonald books; INLA: Deadly Divisions, UVF and UDA each being extremely good but only cover until around 1998, although there are revised versions that are hard to find.
As a start I would recommend against reading any books written by former combatants as they tend to naturally have political bias and are best used to supplement what you can learn from more neutral sources.
Both 'Making sense of the Troubles' and 'The troubles' are available on amazon as well as INLA:Deadly Divisions (revised) and UVF (revised as UVF: Endgame) but UDA is not.