The American Irish : A History (Studies in Modern History)

Rating:
Summary: reporting the facts
Review: This book needed a better editor. Professor Kenny is allowed to repeat himself constantly. In his introduction he apologizes in advance for the number of statistics that he will present in the book. He then proceeds to provide a moderate number of statistics three or four times, sometimes in subsequent paragraphs. This is merely mildly irritating.

A more irritating habit of the author's is to provide a selection of analyses of a particular historical or cultural question and then provide a very lame summary or feint at providing his own analysis without writing anything of substance. For example, he brings up the question of "Why do the Irish have such an alcohol problem?", sketches out various other scholars' theories about this cultural phenomenon, "straightens out" some misunderstandings (e.g., they don't drink more, they drink differently (!?)) and you finish the section having no idea why alcholism is prevalent in Irish culture.

Professor Kenny is fine at reporting the facts (especially if you need to be told more than once). I finished this book knowing a great deal more about the "what" and the "where" of Irish Americana, but very little more about the "why". Aside from these basic complaints I would say that this is a book worth reading. Kenny arranges his book chronologically, beginning in the 18th century, well before the Famine diaspora. He makes an explicit effort to explain the relationship between largely "Scotch-Irish" immigrants from Ulster of the 18th and earliest 19th century and later largely Catholic immigrants from Munster and Connacht. The Ulster people had been in Ireland less than 200 years before they uprooted themselves and moved on; their identification with Ireland was considerably weaker than that of emigrants from Munster and Connacht. The appellation "Scotch-Irish" was invented in the US by the Ulster people in order to distinguish themselves from the famine Irish, who were altogether more destitute, culturally distinct (different folkways), not to mention Catholic.

There is a great deal of information in this book. It is simply not all that well presented or analyzed. It is understandable that it be sold as a textbook; the analysis can perhaps take place in the classroom after the reading. As I read this book out of curiosity and not as a reading assignment, it is now up to me to find more critical books to supplement the basic knowledge that this book provides.