Cannon Mac Reed grew up in County Cork and studied ancient and medieval history at University College Cork before spending years reading everything the ancient sources had to say about the people they tried hardest to ignore. His particular obsession is the gap between what the Graeco-Roman historical tradition recorded and what actually happened - the distance between the view from the top of the social order and the experience of the people at its foundations. The Island of Chains is his first book-length attempt to close that gap for one of antiquity's most remarkable and most neglected stories. He lives in west Cork, where the Atlantic weather keeps him indoors and the reading piles keep him honest.