Description

From the award-winning author of Five Points and City of Dreams, a superb revisionist history of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the Great Potato Famine, using their riveting and deeply personal stories in and beyond New York exemplify the astonishing tenacity and improbable triumph of Irish America (Wall Street Journal).

In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Irelands potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and childrenand drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called Famine Irish were the forebears of four U.S. presidents (including Joe Biden) yet when they arrived in America they were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But when we let the Famine Irish narrate their own stories, they paint a far different picture.

In this magisterial work of storytelling and scholarship, acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generations individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. Drawing on newly available records and a ten-year research initiative, Anbinder reclaims the narratives of the refugees who settled in New York City and helped reshape the entire nation. Plentiful Country is a tour de forcea book that rescues the Famine immigrants from the margins of history and restores them to their rightful place at the center of the American story.

Author: Tyler Anbinder
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 03/12/2024
Pages: 512
Weight: 1.61lbs
Size: 9.37h x 6.27w x 1.55d
ISBN: 9780316564809
Language: English