America's 40 million Irish-and all those in search of role models-will enjoy John Bartimole's collection of inspiring and amazing stories and profiles of 150 war heroes, doctors, scientists, educators, artists, athletes, businessmen and leaders featured in this tribute to great Irish-Americans. They include John F. Kennedy, Lucille Ball, Rosie O'Donnell, Babe Ruth, John Wayne, Henry Ford, Jimmy Breslin, and many more. There are very few books on Irish heroes. The competitive titles listed above have to do with myths and folklore, and the other is a story of average citizens that contributed to the civilization of Ireland and it's culture.

Few writers on the Irish in America have looked beyond the nineteenth-century ethnic enclaves of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago, or have asked how the notion of an Irish-American ethnic identity in contemporary America can be reconciled with five, six, or seven generations of intermarriage and assimilation over the last century and a half. This study, based on interviews with 500 people of Irish ancestry in Albany, New York, aims to discover in what senses and in what degrees the present-day descendants of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants possess distinctive social practices and ways of seeing the world, and raises questions about the social conditions in which ideas of Irishness have been created and re-created.

Jerrold Casway coined the phrase "The Emerald Age of Baseball" to describe the 1890s, when so many Irish names dominated teams' rosters. But one can easily agree--and expand--that the period from the mid-1830s well into the first decade of the 20th century and assign the term to American sports in general. This book covers the Irish sportsman from the arrival of James "Deaf" Burke in 1836 through to Jack B. Kelly's rejection by Henley regatta and his subsequent gold medal at the 1920 Olympics. It avoids recounting the various victories and defeats of the Irish sportsman, seeking instead to deal with the complex interaction that he had with alcohol, gambling and Sunday leisure: pleasures that were banned in most of America at some time or other between 1836 and 1920. This book also covers the Irish sportsman's close relations with politicians, his role in labor relations, his violent lifestyle--and by contrast--his participation in bringing respectability to sport. It also deals with native Irish sports in America, the part played by the Irish in "Team USA's" initial international sporting ventures, and in the making and breaking of amateurism within sport.

This comprehensive collection of folk hero tales builds on the success of the first edition by providing readers with expanded contextual information on story characters from the Americas to Zanzibar. Despite the tremendous differences between cultures and ethnicities across the world, all of them have folk heroes and heroines—real and imagined—that have been represented in tales, legends, songs, and verse. These stories persist through time and space, over generations, even through migrations to new countries and languages. This encyclopedia is a one-stop source for broad coverage of the world's folk hero tales. Geared toward high school and early college readers, the book opens with an overview of folk heroes and heroines that provides invaluable context and then presents a chronology. The book is divided into two main sections: the first provides entries on the major types and themes; the second addresses specific folk tale characters organized by continent with folk hero entries organized alphabetically. Each entry provides cross references as well as a list of further readings. Continent sections include a bibliography for additional research. The book concludes with an alphabetical list of heroes and an index of hero types.

Offering a wealth of information about church membership and ethnic and geographical makeup, the book explores how Catholic views on issues such as human life, abortion, poverty, and American culture have profoundly affected political and moral discourse in the United States. A chronology, glossary, profiles of prominent American Catholics, annotated bibliography, and a list of electronic resources are also included.

This comprehensive study of the Scots-Irish in America has created a much greater awareness of the accomplishments and the durability of the hardy settlers and their families who moved to the New World during the 18th century and created a civilisation out of a wilderness.

This tribute collection reflects the wide range and diversity of James Gibbs’s academic interests. The focus is on Africa, but comparative studies of other literatures also receive attention. Fiction, drama, and poetry by writers from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ireland, England, Germany, India, and the Caribbean are surveyed alongside significant missionaries, scientists, performers, and scholars. The writers discussed include Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kobina Sekyi, Raphael Armattoe, J.E. Casely Hayford, Michael Dei-Anang, Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Armah, John Kolosa Kargbo, Dele Charley, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Jonathan Sajiwandani, Samuel E. Krune Mqhayi, A.S. Mopeli–Paulus, Kelwyn Sole, Anna Seghers, Raja Rao, and Arundhati Roy. Other essays treat the black presence in Ireland, anonymous rap artists in Chicago, the Jamaican missionary Joseph Jackson Fuller in the Cameroons, the African-American actor Ira Aldridge in Sweden, the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman in South Africa, and the literary scholar and editor Eldred Durosimi Jones in Sierra Leone. Interviews with the Afro-German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael and the Irish-Nigerian dramatist Gabriel Gbadamosi are also included. Also offered are poems by Jack Mapanje and Kofi Anyidoho, short stories by Charles R. Larson and Robert Fraser, plays by Femi Osofisan and Martin Banham, and an account of a dramatic reading of a script written and co-performed by James Gibbs. Contributors: Anne Adams, Sola Adeyemi, Kofi Anyidoho, Awo Mana Asiedu, Martin Banham, Eckhard Breitinger, Gordon Collier, James Currey, Geoffrey V. Davis, Chris Dunton, Robert Fraser, Raoul J. Granqvist, Gareth Griffiths, C.L. Innes, Charles R. Larson, Bernth Lindfors, Leif Lorentzon, Jack Mapanje, Christine Matzke, Mpalive–Hangson Msiska, Femi Osofisan, Eustace Palmer, Jane Plastow, Lynn Taylor, and Pia Thielmann. Geoffrey V. Davis co-edits the series Cross/Cultures and the African studies journal Matatu. Recent publications include Narrating Nomadism and African Literatures: Post¬colonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources (both co-ed. 2013). Bernth Lindfors, founding editor of the journal Research in African Literatures, is writing a bio¬graphy of Ira Aldridge (two volumes have so far appeared: The Early Years, 1807–1833 and The Vagabond Years, 1833–1852, both 2011).

'Women of the Frontier' tells the stories of more than 50 women who were part of the making of America from the 1700s through the early 1900s.