Becoming Irish American

“Subtly provocative. . . . [Meagher] traces the making and remaking of Irish America through several iterations and shows the impact of religion on each.”—Terry Golway, Wall Street Journal “Meagher crafts a narrative at once cogent but acutely sensitive to the permutations of Irishness across time and space. His eagle-eyed attention to regional variations . . . is one of the most illuminating aspects of the book.”—Patrick McGrath, Australasian Journal of American Studies Named IrishCentral Book of the Month, March 2024 “While some old stereotypes linger, once familiar shades of green are fading and blending on the contemporary palette. The definitive history of the Irish in America is always being remade and rewritten.”—Mark Holan, Irish Catholic “A sweeping work of American history that tells the story of the transformative encounter between America and the Irish, and how that encounter altered them both. Meagher shows that the America that elected John F. Kennedy can be seen as the culmination of a process which began in the seventeenth century, marked by the influx of women and men from Ireland who staked out their place in a society that did not always want them.”—Hasia Diner, coauthor of Immigration: An American History “Americans with Irish roots have played essential roles in the long drama of American history. Timothy Meagher fills his vivid narrative with rich insights about their religion, politics, work, and culture—and keeps one eye fixed on what was happening in the Ould Sod. This is the best book on the Irish-American past that has ever been written.”—Michael Kazin, author of What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party “In this sweeping historical narrative, Tim Meagher shows that Irish immigrants in America neither replicated old world traits nor conformed to a pattern of inevitable assimilation but, instead, created something distinctively and dynamically new.”—Kevin Kenny, New York University