Irish America

Irish America

1986

Yankee Doodle Irish

By Bob Callahan

July/August 1986

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This is a song about George M. Cohan. CO-HAN, not Coen. And yet, when I was growing up in a factory town in Connecticut, I always thought he must have been this older Jewish guy. Jimmy Cagney called him "the greatest song and dance man of all time." "George M. Cohan," Cagney said, "is the real leader of our clan.” This is also a song about the history we have let slip through … [Read more...] about Yankee Doodle Irish

The Exile

By Pete Hamill

October 1986

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A Story of Ireland Whenever Michael Walsh thought he was finished at last with Ireland, all of it would come flooding back, like a sudden wave on a glassy sea. He had tried to rid himself of that sad green country with cheap whiskey in too many bad bars in a city that was not his own. And now, on this perfect spring day in his eleventh year of New York exile, he could feel … [Read more...] about The Exile