I haven't looked at these in about 15 years, but according to memory...
"Self-Aid Makes it Worse", is, as the title suggests, a criticism of the whole Self-Aid thing in 1986. There are interesting quotes by the U2 guys about it. Would be interesting to go back and read this again now that Ireland is the European economic tiger...
"U2 Pressgangbang" was all about how "big" U2 are now (being 1987). Quite a good article.
Actually, all 4 of those essays were rather good. Were they all from Hot Press?
I thought Dunphy's book was actually pretty good. It was full of holes, minor errors, and some false information (for example, he has Bono coming to school in 1976 as a full-dressed punk rocker... before anybody in Ireland had heard of punk), but I thought it captured the spirit of the young U2 fairly well. It was an enjoyable read. I think Edge's criticism of it was that he had "oversimplified" everything, but that was back when U2 took themselves just a wee bit too seriously...