This is a work filled with passion and violence, with humanity and inhumanity. It is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles told as never before; it is not concerned with the political bickering but with the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict.<BR>The authors - three of them Belfast-born and the fourth an American - are award-winning journalists. Over a seven-year period they examined every single death which was directly caused by the troubles. Their research has seen them interview witnesses, scour published material and draw on a huge range of investigative sources to produce a work of epic proportions. Never before has conflict anywhere in the world been subjected to such meticulous scrutiny.<BR>Lost Lives traces the origins of the conflict from the firing of the first shots, through the carnage of the 1970s and 1980s to the republican and loyalist ceasefires and beyond. All the casualties are here: the RUC officer, the young soldier, the IRA volunteer, the loyalist parliamentary, the Catholic mother, the Protestant worker, the new-born baby. Each account is impossible to ignore.<BR>As a reference book, Lost Lives is indispensable; as a landscape of history painted in fine detail, it is unique. For anyone interested in Northern Ireland - or in the human cost of conflict anywhere - this is destined to be the defining work.