On the eve of the American Civil War, 1.6 million Irish-born people were living in the United States. The majority had emigrated to the major industrialised cities of the North; New York alone was home to more than 200,000 Irish, one in four of the total population. As a result, thousands of Irish emigrants fought for the Union between 1861 and 1865. The research for this book has its origins in the widows and dependent pension records of that conflict, which often included not only letters and private correspondence between family members, but unparalleled accounts of their lives in both Ireland and America. The treasure trove of material made available comes, however, at a cost. In every instance, the file only exists due to the death of a soldier or sailor. From that as its starting point, coloured by sadness, the author has crafted the stories of thirty-five Irish families whose lives were emblematic of the nature of the Irish nineteenth-century emigrant experience.

On the eve of the American Civil War 1.6 million Irish-born people were living in the United States. The majority had emigrated to the major industrialized cities of the North; New York alone was home to more than 200,000 Irish, one in four of the total population. The research for this book has its origins in the pension records of the Civil War, which included birth and baptismal certs, medical records, and letters and private correspondence between family members. The treasure trove of material made available by the widows and dependent files comes, however, at a cost. In every instance, the file only exists due to the death of a soldier or sailor. From that as its starting point, colored by sadness, the author has crafted the stories of 35 Irish families whose lives were emblematic of the nature of the Irish emigrant experience. -- Publisher description

On Saturday night 22 April 1916, a tense meeting in Dublin went on into the small hours to decide whether or not the Easter Rising would go ahead. Present at that meeting were Pádraig Pearse, Tomás MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett and Seán MacDiarmada. The fifth man present at the all-night session, Diarmuid Lynch, was the only one still alive a month later. It is difficult to understand how Lynch, a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, has been forgotten so completely. Lynch was at the heart of plans for the Rising and was aide-de-camp to James Connolly in the GPO. Initially sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to ten years penal servitude because he was an American citizen. However, he was released on 16 June 1917. Immediately following his release, Lynch became active again, and along with Michael Collins and Thomas Ashe, participated in the reorganisation of the IRB. After the 1917 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Lynch, like Collins, held three senior posts: in the IRB, Sinn Féin and in the Irish Volunteers. He was again arrested and deported to America in 1918. Lynch was elected, although still in the US, as a TD for the constituency of Cork South-East in the 1918 elections. In America he was working frenetically as the national secretary of the FOIF (Friends of Irish Freedom) organisation, but later sharp differences arose between De Valera and the FOIF about how funds raised in America should be spent. Lynch did not take part in the Civil War, but made several unsuccessful attempts to stop it.

In the early nineteenth century, thousands of volunteers left Ireland behind to join the fight for South American independence. Lured by the promise of adventure, fortune, and the opportunity to take a stand against colonialism, they braved the treacherous Atlantic crossing to join the ranks of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, and became instrumental in helping oust the Spanish from Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Today, the names of streets, towns, schools, and football teams on the continent bear witness to their influence. But it was not just during wars of independence that the Irish helped transform Spanish America. Irish soldiers, engineers, and politicians, who had fled Ireland to escape religious and political persecution in their homeland, were responsible for changing the face of the Spanish colonies in the Americas during the eighteenth century. They included a chief minister of Spain, Richard Wall; a chief inspector of the Spanish Army, Alexander O'Reilly; and the viceroy of Peru, Ambrose O'Higgins. Whether telling the stories of armed revolutionaries like Bernardo O'Higgins and James Rooke or retracing the steps of trailblazing women like Eliza Lynch and Camila O'Gorman, Paisanos revisits a forgotten chapter of Irish history and, in so doing, reanimates the hopes, ambitions, ideals, and romanticism that helped fashion the New World and sowed the seeds of Ireland's revolutions to follow.

Just under 200,000 Irishmen took part in the American Civil War, making it one of the most significant conflicts in Irish history. Hundreds of thousands more were affected away from the battlefield, both in the US and in Ireland itself. The Irish contribution, however, is often only viewed through the lens of famous units such as the Irish Brigade, but the real story is much more complex and fascinating. From the Tipperary man who was the first man to die in the war, to the Corkman who was the last General mortally wounded in action; from the flag bearer who saved his regimental colours at the cost of his arms, to the Roscommon man who led the hunt for Abraham Lincoln's assassin, what emerges in this book is a catalogue of gallantry, sacrifice and bravery.

""The Irish Buddhist tells the story of a poor Irishman who worked his way across America as a migrant worker, became one of the very first Western Buddhist monks, and traveled the length and breadth of Asia, from Burma and present-day Thailand to China and Japan, and from India and Sri Lanka to Singapore and Australia. Defying racial boundaries, he scandalized the colonial establishment of the 1900s. As a Buddhist monk, he energetically challenged the values and power of the British empire. U Dhammaloka was a radical celebrity who rallied Buddhists across Asia, set up schools, and argued down Christian missionaries - often using western atheist arguments. He was tried for sedition, tracked by police and intelligence services, and died at least twice. His early years and final days are shrouded in mystery despite his adept use of mass media. His story illuminates the forgotten margins and interstices of imperial power, the complexities of class, ethnicity and religious belonging in colonial Asia, and the fluidity of identity in the high Victorian period. Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism's remaking as a world religion has been told "from above," highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers and ecclesiastical hierarchies. By contrast, Dhammaloka's adventures "from below" highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. They offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements, all developing different visions of Buddhist and post-imperial modernities. ""--

When the Continental Congress decided to declare independence from the British empire in 1776, ten percent of the population of their fledgling country were from Ireland. By 1790, close to 500,000 Irish citizens had immigrated to America. They were was very active in the American Revolution, both on the battlefields and off, and yet their stories are not well known. The important contributions of the Irish on military, political, and economic levels have been long overlooked and ignored by generations of historians. However, new evidence has revealed that Washington’s Continental Army consisted of a far larger percentage of Irish soldiers than previously thought—between 40 and 50 percent—who fought during some of the most important battles of the American Revolution. Romanticized versions of this historical period tend to focus on the upper class figures that had the biggest roles in America’s struggle for liberty. But these adaptations neglect the impact of European and Irish ideals as well as citizens on the formation of the revolution. Irish contributors such as John Barry, the colonies’ foremost naval officer; Henry Knox, an artillery officer and future Secretary of War; Richard Montgomery, America’s first war hero and martyr; and Charles Thomson, a radical organizer and Secretary to the Continental Congress were all instrumental in carrying out the vision for a free country. Without their timely and disproportionate assistance, America almost certainly would have lost the desperate fight for its existence. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.