This, the last 'Top 100' for this millennium, shows that at the turn of the century the Irish in America have reached heights of success surely unimagined by those impoverished immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to seek a new life in the last century Was it even conceivable that a group of people who were told they `need not apply' would today be the ones doing the hiring? … [Read more...] about The First Word: The Best and The Brightest 1999
First Word
The First Word: Living Up to The Nobel Prize
Ireland is no stranger to the Nobel Prize. Indeed the prize awarded each year in memory of Alfred Nobel (the inventor of dynamite) has gone to citizens of the island a total of seven times. W.B. Yeats (1923), G.B. Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969) and Seamus Heaney (1995) all won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But good writers aside, the Nobel Committee has also focused on … [Read more...] about The First Word: Living Up to The Nobel Prize
United in Grief
At 3:10 p.m. on Saturday, August 22nd, the dream of a united Ireland was finally realized. Protestant, Catholic and Church of Ireland bells rang in all parts of the island signifying a striking moment of unity. Was this a dream realized or a nightmare lived? The bells tolled out not in celebration, but in mourning, and all over the island of Ireland, people stopped whatever … [Read more...] about United in Grief
The First Word: The World At Her Feet
Sometimes a story comes along that captivates even the most cynical of us journalists -- a notoriously hard-to-impress bunch at the best of times. Such a story is this issue's cover feature on Aimee Mullins, the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and American mother, who is fast becoming one of the nation's most inspirational stories. At the age of one, Aimee had to have … [Read more...] about The First Word: The World At Her Feet
The Best and the Brightest 1998
This has been quite a year (we measure time from March to March) for the Irish in America. As our annual Top 100 list shows, the Irish, as the song goes, are "top of the heap, king of the hill," and not just in New York, New York, but everywhere. But of all the great Irish American success stories there is none to rival Frank McCourt's tale of triumph. As we go to press, his … [Read more...] about The Best and the Brightest 1998