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Sto caricando le informazioni... Paddy's Lament, Ireland 1846-1847: Prelude to Hatreddi Thomas Gallagher
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Reads like "How the Irish Saved Civilization" but more ponderous and repatitious. How many times can you read a description of wretched hovels and spindly bodies before you say "enough"! ( ) This book about Ireland's Potato Famine started out well, pulling no punches, striking hard at the British reaction to the famine and its horrendous effects on the poor of Ireland. The often shocking details left this reader with mouth agape, astounded once again at man's inhumanity to man. It started to get a bit repetitious (and I mean exact phrasing repeated), but kept moving fairly well. I became engaged with the cause of the Irish and began to despise what the British did. That was the first section. In the second section, the book begins to sag like a tired boxer in the fifth round. The author resorts to using one of those "composite" stories, mixing in fact and fiction, to tell of the trip to America and, in the final section of the book, the sometimes dreadful conditions faced by the Irish once they got to the United States. Unfortunately, Gallagher lets his emotions overcome his sense, the facts, and his writing skills. Any reader who is familiar with the immigrant story, whether through books, history lectures, or family stories, will know that once the Irish got here, they faced no more hardships than thousands of other ethnic groups. This is really too bad. What started out as a strong tale of the many wrongs done during the famine turned into a whiney, one-sided mess of self-pity. A shame, because there is plenty of material to write about in this awful situation, and I think Gallagher missed the mark badly. Not recommended unless you read only the first section. Great read -- although the author mixes what is obviously factual -- much of it footnoted from primary sources -- along side passages of semi-fictional "composite" accounts -- in a way that seems jarring to me. However, he covers a lot of ground here: agricultural, political, medical, social, to explain the background of one of the major genocides in Europe prior to World War II. You can't read this book and not come away with a clear understanding of the undying hatred of the Irish toward the English. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
This eloquent, searing, and haunting account of the great famine will shock and move the reader, evoke compassion and furry, and add substance to Ireland's bitter, undying hatred for England. Ireland was, and is, too close to England. Queen Elizabeth, in the 16th century, sent military expeditions to subdue the dissident Catholic, fiercely independent clans across the Irish Sea. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, with pitiless fervor, raised an army to conquer Ireland and, in the name of God and the Commonwealth, appropriate the land, subjugate the resisters, and tax them. The restoration of the British monarch did nothing to relieve the Irish. By the mid-19th century, Ireland was a country of 8 million, mainly peasants, living as tenants on small plots, working for absentee landlords, and never far from the edge of economic and physical disaster. The peasants worked the large cattle farms and grain fields to produce an annual abundance- solely for export- while they themselves were forced to subsist on a single, sometimes abundant, and moderately nutritious crop: potatoes. Then nature, with one cruel slash, set the scene for tragedy. In the summer of 1846, an unknown, uncontrollable disease swiftly turned Ireland's pivotal potato crop into foul slime. The contamination spread with almost incredible speed across the land. The peasant and his family now found their precarious, meager existence- their very lives- in hazard. They turned to their British governors for relief. What they received was starvation, eviction, deeper poverty, and rampant sickness. Their plight is portrayed in staggering, terrible detail. A quarter of the population died miserably in less than two years. Those who could manage steerage fare to escape to America endured almost as grim an ordeal on British ships. One quarter of the emigrants died at sea. The final death toll reached 2 million. The history of three nations was changed and a hatred was born, a hatred that cuts across the years and tears the daily fabric of life in England and Ireland now and into the foreseeable future. Meticulously researched in the United States, England, and Ireland, this book emerges as a moving testament to the victims and an indictment against England at a most shameful hour. -- Publishers description. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)941.5081History and Geography Europe British Isles IrelandClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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