"When many think of Irish emigration, they think of potato blight and the Great Famine of the 1840s, which caused so many to flee Ireland for the U.S. But the real history of the Irish diaspora is much longer, more complicated, and more global. Starting in the 17th century, Irish clerics, mercenaries, and merchants began to fan out across America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, setting in motion a pattern of migration that would play an essential...

Ireland is suffering from a crisis of authority. Catholic Church scandals, political corruption, and economic collapse have shaken the Irish people's faith in their institutions and thrown the nation's struggle for independence into question. While Declan Kiberd explores how political failures and economic globalization have eroded Irish sovereignty, he also sees a way out of this crisis. After Ireland surveys thirty works by modern writers that speak...

A lively, street-level history of turn-of-the-century urban life explores the Americanizing influence of the Irish on successive waves of migrants to the American city. Historian James R. Barrett chronicles how a new urban American identity was forged in the interactions between immigrants in the streets, saloons, churches, and workplaces of the American city. For good or ill, Barrett contends, this process of Americanization was shaped largely by...