| Book Review  By
Tom Deignan
Karenna Gore Schiff (Al Gore’s daughter) has just written a book
called Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America. One of
the women profiled is Irish immigrant labor advocate Mother Jones, who
for decades fought for children, miners and others.
“At the turn of the last century, for both unionists and industrialists,
coal mining was a central battleground,” writes Gore Schiff. “As
the fuel that drove so many new industries, coal was an immensely profitable
business. It was controlled by a small group of powerful men, none more
powerful than John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil.”
This, of course, made Rockefeller and his fellow titans of the Gilded
Age, enemies in the eyes of Mother Jones.
In Lighting the Way, Gore Schiff does an admirable job of outlining
Jones’ fierce personality, as well as her accomplishments on behalf
of miners and child laborers. “Mother Jones’ march of the
mill children put the issue of child labor on the public’s radar
screen and forced consumers to confront the suffering of the children
who produced the goods they bought,” Gore Schiff writes in her Introduction.
Indeed, Jones’ well-publicized 1903 march of underage mill workers
from Philadelphia to New York certainly seemed to achieve her aim. “I
am going to show Wall Street the flesh and blood from which it squeezes
its wealth,” Jones said.
It was a series of personal tragedies that drew Jones into the labor battles
of the 19th and 20th centuries, during which she often declared, “Pray
for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” Jones’ grandfather
was hanged by the British as a traitor, and her father was forced to flee
Ireland for defying British rule.
Later, after she became a Memphis schoolteacher, she lost her husband
and four children to a yellow fever epidemic.
 She also lost
her Chicago dressmaking business in the great fire of 1871, after which
she became enraged at the gap between rich and poor.
Jones died in 1930, but Gore Schiff does a fine of explaining why she
remains relevant today. ($25.95 / 528 pages /Miramax Books)
Given the Hollywood movie as well as Tim Pat Coogan’s respected
biography, it would seem that readers would not need another bio of Michael
Collins much less a 500-page one.
But Peter Hart’s Mick: The Real Michael Collins claims to offer
a new perspective on the life of the Irish rebel leader. Hart is the Canada
Research Chair of Irish Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland
as well as the author of The I.R.A. and Its Enemies.
Hart offers insight into previously unknown sources, and is the first
author to take a close look at Collins’ life before he became a
famous revolutionary. By the time he was assassinated at the age
of 31, Collins had participated in the
Easter Rising of 1916, formed the Irish Republican Army, outwitted British
spies, pioneered guerilla warfare, negotiated with the British, and paid
the price with his life.
Some readers may be turned off by Hart’s revisionist take on Collins.
He argues that Collins was more of a politician than a soldier, whose
legacy as an Irish liberator is far from clear. This may anger fans of
what Hart sees as a kind of Collins mythology, but Hart makes a game argument,
even if it is not one that certain readers will choose to buy. ($27.95
/ 480 pages / Viking)
The Civil War Draft Riots have gone from one of the most under-studied
events to a potentially over-studied one.
A new book by Barnet Schecter, The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight
to Reconstruct America, doesn’t exactly shed new light on the riots,
at least for those who know the key events already: In July of 1863, Irish
and other laborers angry at the prospect of being drafted to fight in
the U.S. Civil War took out their rage on New York’s African Americans
as well as the city’s elite.
In recent years, Peter Quinn and Kevin Baker have written brilliant historical
novels about the riots, while historians have pored over the events as
well, culminating in the full-blown Hollywood treatment Martin Scorsese
gave the riots in Gangs of New York. Schecter, author of The Battle for
New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution, is at his
best when he uses the riots as a way to explore broader national events
of the Civil War era. ($28 / 448 pages / Walker)
In Finding My Irish, Sharon Shea Bossard uses a simple letter mailed
from Valentia Island, County Kerry, in 1949 to explore intimate family
connections in America and Ireland. This book chronicles the author’s
touching, at times surprising, search for her family roots through Irish
towns such as Cahersiveen, Ballinskelligs, Valentia, and Boyle. What emerges
is not merely one family’s never-ending quest to link the past with
the present, but also an illuminating portrait of old Ireland. ($19.95
/ 305 pages / findingmyirish.com)
South Bronx native Geraldine O’Connell Cusack leaves the turf of
her past as well as her present she is a teacher in Dublin’s inner
city in a new book, Winds the Road North. This is the story of her family
seeking to make a normal life in a new culture, specifically northern
Tanzania. Cusack explores the allure of both familiar and unfamiliar cultures.
This is an intimate, penetrating look that takes seriously the oft-heard
phrase the “global village.” ($15.99 / 231 pages / Author
House)
Nick Laird makes up one half of the hippest, best-looking literary duo
on either side of the Atlantic. The Northern Ireland author is married
to Zadie Smith, the twenty-something wunderkind whose smash debut White
Teeth a few years back made her a star,
Now, Laird’s latest novel Utterly Monkey is available in the U.S.
The book revolves around Danny Williams, a lawyer who is successful but
also monumentally busy and ultimately unhappy. He left the various troubles
of his native town in Northern Ireland for England, but these days only
substance abuse in several forms seems to make him happy.
Then, Geordie on the run from a Loyalist militia arrives in Danny’s
life, and for all the problems that ensue, Danny is at last forced to
reconcile his past and his present.
Funnier than it should be, Utterly Monkey is occasionally annoying —
really, why is Danny so unhappy, what with all his money and status? —
but Laird writes with undeniable energy. ($13.95 / 344 pages / Harper
Perennial)
Andrew Greeley Catholic priest, sociologist, prodigious writer on many
things Irish is back with another Nuala Anne McGrail mystery, Irish Crystal.
This time around, Nuala’s husband Dermot has a dream of impending
doom, and Greeley sets about throwing something into the mix for every
reader. Homeland Security agents may want to deport Nuala. There’s
also a prosperous, yet perhaps devious clan of Irish-American aristocrats,
car-bombings on the Chicago riverfront, and even a detour into Irish history
and the era of Robert Emmet and the uprisings of the 1790s and 1800s.
Greeley is not exactly a subtle writer, but devoted fans will not be disappointed
by Irish Crystal. ($24.95 / 301 pages / Forge)
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