BORN into a typical all-American and socially conservative family of Irish Catholic origin, it’s fair to say that Helena Sheehan’s eventual immersion in left politics would probably have come as much of a shock to her as it did to her immediate family.

After a short time in a convent and a period spent teaching in a deprived inner-city Detroit neighbourhood, Sheehan was increasingly drawn towards what was to become a lifelong commitment to the study of philosophy, combined with political engagement.

More of a sympathetic observer during the movement for civil rights, she became an enthusiastic if somewhat anarchistic participant in the radical counter-cultures of the late 1960s that emerged largely, but by no means solely, out of opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Moving to Ireland in an act of romantic adventurism, Sheehan’s politics began to take a more Marxist orientation and she joined the Official IRA and became involved in Sinn Fein The Workers’ Party.

By the 1980s, she had shifted allegiances to the Communist Party of Ireland, with her writing as an academic being very much influenced by time spent in discussion with Marxists throughout the socialist world.

At its best, her book is an honest, insightful and no-holds-barred account that successfully explores the spirit of the times. Sheehan weaves together the personal with the political and knows how to tell a good story.

From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the US, Ireland and the socialist bloc were all characterised by immense conflict and change and the debate about their nature very much continues to inform what communist politics are today. It’s immensely refreshing that Sheehan continues to celebrate and defend the legacy of the socialist project, albeit from a left-Eurocommunist perspective.

Some of Navigating the Zeitgeist could have done with a little editing — her somewhat lengthy description of 1960s counterculture is overly sentimental and adds little to the book’s overall trajectory.

By her own admission, Sheehan enjoys a good gossip, but many readers will  take issue with  some of the comments she makes about key individuals, particularly those involved in the world of Irish communism.

That aside, this is fine political autobiography and Sheehan is to be congratulated for penning a work that is so original, engaging and cliche-free.

Navigating the Zeitgeist: A Story of the Cold War, the New Left, Irish Republicanism and International Communism is published by Monthly Review Press, £19.70.