FICTION For almost five decades now, legendary newspaperman Jimmy Breslin has dispensed wisdom, wit and justice with his hard-hitting columns. But Breslin has also published a dozen books now, and his novels have inspired a generation of Irish American writers. His 1973 novel World Without End, Amen chronicled the civil rights movements in both America and Northern Ireland, … [Read more...] about Book Reviews
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
NON-FICTION A larger-than-life Irish American politician finally gets the treatment he deserves – praise and criticism, that is – in Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, by Boston Globe writer John A. Farrell. The key aspect of this book's title is the second part. Not only is O'Neill's life, growing up working-class in heavily Irish Boston, fascinating, but the … [Read more...] about Book Reviews
Book Reviews
NON-FICTION Two new books could be grouped under the Lg "The Irish: Then and Now." First there's Irish America Coming into Clover: The Evolution of a Culture by Maureen Dezell. A Boston Globe staff writer, Dezell takes a rather irreverent look at Irish America in the year 2000. Some may be rubbed the wrong way by her not-too-veiled efforts to expose what may be … [Read more...] about Book Reviews
Book Reviews: The McCourt Family Chronicles
MEMOIR Malachy McCourt's new memoir Singing My Him Song picks up where his best-seller A Monk Swimming left off. As the old saying goes, you'll laugh and you'll cry, right along with Malachy, as we follow the actor/raconteur from Hollywood to Broadway, as he boozes, befriends famous men, and bucks the system. In his latest book, there's plenty of partying with … [Read more...] about Book Reviews: The McCourt Family Chronicles
Book Reviews: The Latest Irish Books
NON-FICTION The Irish cop is no stereotype. As authors Thomas Reppetto and James Lardner show, in their informative new history NYPD: A City and Its Police, the Irish have played an integral role on New York City's police force since its creation in 1844. By the mid- 1880s, the authors write, one survey "found that out of approximately three thousand police officers of … [Read more...] about Book Reviews: The Latest Irish Books