IRLL 30118 - Storied Landscapes IRL to CHI (Mulligan)

The O'Shaughnessy brothers were the children of an impoverished Irish immigrant and his Irish-American wife. An Irish-American Odyssey is the tale of this first-generation immigrant family's struggle to assimilate into American society. The O'Shaughnessy family's story is a remarkable story of success in American life.

A history which explores the Americanizing influence of the Irish on successive waves of migrants to the American city. James R. Barrett chronicles how a new urban American identity was forged in the streets, saloons, churches, and workplaces of the American city. This process of "Americanization from the bottom up" was deeply shaped by the Irish. Barrett makes the original case that the culture absorbed by newcomers upon reaching American shores had a distinctly Hibernian cast.

Essays on diverse aspects of the Irish-American community during the postwar years. Essays consider both social and political history, such as ethnic anti-communism and American responses to Partition, and significant representations of Irish life in popular culture, such as The Last Hurrah (1956) or The Quiet Man (1952). The study shows that the Irish-American community was lively and, in many ways, dissimilar from 'mainstream' American life in this period.