Beat the rise! Delivery fees are going up soon. INFO
Jonathan Alderfer is a widely published author and field guide illustrator. He is co-author, with Jon L. Dunn, of National Geographic Birding Essentials, co-editor of National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 5th edition, and editor of National Geographic Complete Birds of North America. He is also chief consultant for the National Geographic Birding program. Jon L. Dunn is an expert on the identification and distribution of North American birds. Dunn is a co-author of National Geographic Birding Essentials. He served as chief consultant for four previous editions of National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, and as editor of the fifth.
In the 19th century Ireland lost half of its population. Some starved during the famine of the 1840s, others fled to the US and Canada; still others were transported as convicts to Australia - Van Diemen's Land - often on the slightest of charges. Irish history in the greatest age of the British empire is a saga and a tragedy of epic proportions. For Keneally it contains an element of family history: he is descended from one John Keneally, a Fenian from County Cork sentenced to hte New World in the 1860s. This book tells the tale of the thousands of men like Keneally, and Hugh Larkin the poor young 'Ribbonman' with whose the tale it begins, whose desperate circumstances compelled them to the desperate circumstances which condemned them to the hulks. The author combines the novelists literary grace with detailed research into still under utilised sources in conveying both the misery of the Irish condition and the hostility of land which awaited them on the other side of the world. He also tells the remarkable stories of those convicts who were able to escape to America or occasionally to return home again. Some even went on to enjoy prominent careers such as Thomas Meagher who would become governor of Montana. In sum, this a moving and compelling account of the forces shaping the Irish diaspora which remains such a powerful force in the politics of today. (Kirkus UK)
