Between 1600 and 1929, perhaps seven million men and women left Ireland and crossed the Atlantic. Ireland and Irish America is concerned with Catholics and Protestants, rural and urban dwellers, men and women on both sides of that vast ocean. Drawing on over thirty years of research, in sources as disparate as emigrants' letters and demographic data, it recovers the experiences and opinions of emigrants as varied as the Rev. James McGregor, who in 1718 led the first major settlement of Presbyterians from Ulster to the New World, Mary Rush, a desperate refugee from the Great Famine in County Sligo, and Tom Brick, an Irish-speaking Kerryman on the American prairie in the early 1900s. Above all, Ireland and Irish America offers a trenchant analysis of mass migration's causes, its consequences, and its popular and political interpretations. In the process, it challenges the conventional 'two traditions' (Protestant versus Catholic) paradigm of Irish and Irish diasporan history, and it illuminates the hegemonic forces and relationships that governed the Irish and Irish-American worlds created and linked by transatlantic capitalism.

Follows the Irish from their first arrival in the American colonies through the bleak days of the potato famine, the decades of ethnic prejudice and nativist discrimination, the rise of Irish political power, and on to the historic moment when John F. Kennedy was elected to the highest office in the land.

The Irish struck out across America's frontiers, built its railroads, fought on both sides of the civil war, captured its major historic moments in print, paint and bronze, led many of its religious denominations, policed its streets, set up its banks, educated its masses, entertained America on its stages and screens and in its sporting arenas, and made ground-breaking contributions in science and engineering. This collection documents fifty Irish people who made an indelible mark on American society, politics and culture. People like the pirate Anne Bonney and Gertrude Brice Kelly, one of New York City's first surgeons, feature alongside more familiar names such as Maureen O'Hara, Maeve Brennan, Rex Ingram and the architect of the White House James Hoban.About the Dictionary of Irish Biography: The Dictionary of Irish Biography, a research project of the Royal Irish Academy, is the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical dictionary yet published for Ireland. It comprises over 10,000 lives, which describe and assess the careers of subjects in all fields of endeavour, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, music and the arts, the sciences, medicine, entertainment and sport.

Discusses the reasons Irish people left their homeland to come to America, the experiences immigrants had in the new country, and the contributions this cultural group made to American society. Includes sidebars and activities.

In his first work of nonfiction, bestselling novelist James Webb tells the epic story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose lives and worldview were dictated by resistance, conflict, and struggle, and who, in turn, profoundly influenced the social, political, and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through the present day. More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the full journey of this remarkable cultural group, and the profound, but unrecognized, role it has played in the shaping of America. Written with the storytelling verve that has earned his works such acclaim as “captivating . . . unforgettable” (the Wall Street Journal on Lost Soliders), Scots-Irishman James Webb, Vietnam combat veteran and former Naval Secretary, traces the history of his people, beginning nearly two thousand years ago at Hadrian’s Wall, when the nation of Scotland was formed north of the Wall through armed conflict in contrast to England’s formation to the south through commerce and trade. Webb recounts the Scots’ odyssey—their clashes with the English in Scotland and then in Ulster, their retreat from one war-ravaged land to another. Through engrossing chronicles of the challenges the Scots-Irish faced, Webb vividly portrays how they developed the qualities that helped settle the American frontier and define the American character. Born Fighting shows that the Scots-Irish were 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston; they were the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain; and they have given America numerous great military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Audie Murphy, and George S. Patton, as well as most of the soldiers of the Confederacy (only 5 percent of whom owned slaves, and who fought against what they viewed as an invading army). It illustrates how the Scots-Irish redefined American politics, creating the populist movement and giving the country a dozen presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. And it explores how the Scots-Irish culture of isolation, hard luck, stubbornness, and mistrust of the nation’s elite formed and still dominates blue-collar America, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country music. Both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary America, Born Fighting reintroduces America to its most powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group—one too often ignored or taken for granted.

"3 story paths, 43 choices, 15 endings"--Cover.

Describes the achievements of Irish Americans in a variety of fields.