Irish-American Books

The tool for guiding the reader through early life in Nova Scotia. Vivid descriptions of characters, climate, topography, and tribulations. If you are researching the voyage of the "Ship Hector", you must obtain this book. Genealogists dream, if working in 1700-1900's Nova Scotia. Well written, easily read, complete. The research displayed and the history revealed priceless. Bibliography provides additional tools, not easily located.

I bought this book for genealogy purposes. It was easy reading and is an excellent source of understanding the Scottish immigration to Canada (including areas in Scotland settling in areas in Canada). It includes why immigration began, purchasing tickets, life aboard the ships and how life was for the immigrants. It has pointed me in directions of where to look for ancestors. Even if I did not have Scottish ancestors, I would of enjoyed this book for the historical knowledge.

Stephen Jonas' work is an exciting discovery for me. I had read the work of many of his Boston colleagues and post-modern poetry more generally, but I have rarely come across poems with so much jazzy beauty in their sound. Jonas' _Exercises for Ear_ which are reproduced here are exceptional and showcase his obsession with the rhythm and sound of his verse. His life story is also fascinating; racially ambiguous, gay, and always prickly politically, he is still enigmatic today. Later in life Jonas seems to have become increasingly mentally ill and espoused bizarre political beliefs, but in all of this he remains uncategorizable, his own person unassimilated to anyone's stereotype of the gay black poet. His rage at the conventional world and its hypocrisy sings, but does not scream, as so much poetry did and continues to in the age of Slam.

I've recently discovered this poet. This collection brings together short, quick poems that provide volumes of contemplation!

This inexpensive book contains endless value... so much for so little!
Enjoy.

This is one of the most powerful books ever wrtten about 19th Century Ireland. It is at once a scholarly dissertation as every page provides all of the various sources Gerard P. Moran used in his research but it's much more than that.

This book is gripping and difficult to put down as the narrative places you right in the midst of the misery and pain endured by the Irish before, during and after the Great Famine. While the subject is not strictly about the Great Famine, it incorporate the ongoing famine and crushing poverty of the times and tells the story better than many other books of this kind that I have read.

Professor Moran quotes from various letters and documents liberally throughout and and even when he paraphrases or reports on the events, it all blends into a compelling story with only a handful of people who had the interests of the Irish paupers and cottiers at heart.

All of the important characters of the period, British, Irish and Canadian and more are all here, but so are the names of many of the numerous wretches subjected to the horrors of the times.

Whether you agree with the process of Assisted Emigration or not, this book will leave you thinking and shaking your head at the inability of so many people to do what is right and humane.

The only negative note is the silly cartoon on the cover which does not appear to fit the enormous story inside.

This book is very interesting reading for people who like Brittish Royalty. Very shocking things, like Charles II and his many mistresses. Overall a very good book, though there are a few mistakes in it.

John Jones has previously written on Keats (and Embarrassment) on Wordsworth (The Egotistical Sublime) and on Dostoyevsky (Dostoyevsky). He is probably one of the two or three best critics writing in English at present. At one stage of his career he worked in naval intelligence, at another in the law: traces of both disciplines lurk in his approach. He specialises in a kind of poetic-cum-forensic close-reading of text which stays with you long after you have closed the book. All of his books fall into the category of: "If you only read one book on X, read this."

Shakespeare is big game for Jones, the biggest. Most critics give up when they get to Shakespeare. Borges famously suggested Shakespeare in some crucial sense lacked identity. "I am not what I am," as he makes Iago say. It was the Argentinian's explanation for the mystery of how one person could create so many characters. As they used to say about Clapton, Shakespeare was God.

Jones doesn't cop out so easily. He tracks Shakespeare by his spoor, so to speak. The highlight of the book is the chapter where he looks at "Hand D" - a crowd scene in the fragmentary manuscript play "The Boke of Thomas More", echoes the convincing argument that it is by Shakespeare and persuades the reader that it is in many senses deeply revelatory of who Shakespeare was, or at least, how he worked (hence the title). The passage about "watery parsnips" is a gem. It's the most useful work about Shakespeare to be published in many years.

The price is prohibitive, I know, but get your library to order it!

This book is perfect for anyone interested in their Irish roots, it is a definitive look at the Irish in Charleston.

The author of "Tales from the Irish Club" weaves a well-worn blanket of gritty, touching, disturbing, and enchanting tales set against the urban backdrop of Pittsburgh. It made me want to hoist a pint in memory of the very real characters this book evokes.

Susan Blanshard inhabits the sensual universe as comfortably and elegantly as if it were a second skin. Her writing is alive with life and possibilities of surfaces and what lies beneath them.
Sheetstone: Memoir for a Lover, is written as poetic prose in an epic form of sensual journal. These literary notes are creative preface for her novel written a year later titled "Sleeping with the Artist".