The Irish Americans is one of those books that although written for the general reader is detailed enough and sufficiently referenced to be useful to those seeking more depth. I think over the years I have read quite a bit of Irish history and the history of Irish Americans because of my interest in Irish-American genealogy to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subjects. Yet I was not bored at all and found the book very interesting and informative.
My family came from Ireland to New York. So I was particularly interested in the discussion of New York Irish. There was much I had read before but here is was put in the context of the larger Irish American experience. That is, I was more interested in the discussion of Irish American politics and so forth in New York but reading about the similarities and differences in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities was valuable in putting it all in perspective.
Dr. Dolan is a scholar in the fields of Irish Americans and American Catholicism. He is a Professor Emeritus of History at Notre Dame. This book clearly benefits from his years of scholarship on immigration and ethnic studies (including 18 years teaching Irish American history).
This is a complicated story and Jay P. Dolan tells it well. The big Irish migration came with The Famine in Ireland and after. Most of these were Catholic and so the author’s background studying American Catholicism is extremely helpful in explaining how these immigrants fit into American society. The authors does not ignore non-Catholics or those who came before the great influx but discusses similarities and differences and the uneasy relationships among various groups. In a few generations the Irish have moved from one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder to move upward considerably.
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