The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America

by Lawrence J. McCaffrey

When Lawrence J. McCaffrey's The Irish Diaspora in America was published in 1976, it won rave reviews and quickly became the standard college and university text on the Irish-American experience. Named the "best short history of the Irish in America" by Andrew M. Greeley in a New York Times review, McCaffrey's work traced the experience of Irish-American Catholics from their beginnings as detested, unskilled pioneers of the urban ghetto to their rise as an essentially affluent, powerful, middle-class suburban community.

Blending his work and the contributions of other scholars, McCaffrey here adds fresh interpretations to the history of Irish American Catholics. He focuses on a number of topics, including the significance of Catholicism as the core of Irish ethnicity and the source of nativist attacks on their presence in the United States; the impact of Irish America on the course of Irish nationalism; the psychological struggle to reconcile Irish loyalties to an authoritarian religion and a liberal-democratic politics; and, more recently, the fading of the Catholic dimension of Irish identity.

253 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997