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The Irish Americans: A History (2008)

by Jay P. Dolan(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

159691419X (ISBN13: 9781596914193)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Bloomsbury Press

review 1: The author candidly offers an admission that earlier scholarship about Irish Americans has usually omitted any history of the Ulster Scots, a group no less Irish than the Catholic Irish. The first third of the book offers serious commentary about this group. But I do fault the author for abandoning mentioning them in the later chapters of the book that pertain to all the Irish in the more recent centuries. Readers are left with the impression that descendants of the Protestant Irish all ceased to participate in religious, cultural, or political life after 1840. I cringe every time someone repeats the canard about JFK being the first Irish president in the US. There were more than a few US presidents descended from Ulster Scots, and I'm scratching my head at why the bo... moreok really focused on the Kennedy administration as some kind of turning point. The Catholic perspective of this book attempts to be fair in many instances but occasionally lapses to the more biased perspective. If you merely want to learn about the communities of Catholic Irish Americans from New York City to San Francisco, this is an excellent book. This book is overwhelmingly Catholic and urban in its scope.
review 2: In some ways this is like reading a text book. It deals with politics and the unions . Not only does the author write about the Irish but also the waves of immigrants,. Poles', , Jews Russians, Chinese etc. that came after them. Unlike Emma Lazarus's famous words, none of them were received with compassion. All had to claw their way in this New World, with laws enacted against them and distain and violence heaped on them. less

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