God's Frontiersmen


Book Description

The Ulster Scots came to the north of Ireland in the 17th century and today constitute the dominant strain among Ulster Protestants. They brought with them their Calvanist beliefs, a stern work ethic and a fiercely independent spirit. Religious discrimination led thousands of them to cross the Atlantic, where many became famous names in American history, including Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, the Gettys and Mellons.




The American Presence in Ulster


Book Description

Alex Voorman, a cerebral thirty-year-old archaeologist, is married to the woman of his dreams -- a beautiful, ambitious botanist named Isabel. When Isabel is killed by a reckless driver, Alex reluctantly consents to donate her heart. Janet Corcoran, a young, headstrong mother of two and an art teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago, is sick with heart disease. She is on the waiting list for a transplant, but her chances are slim. She watches the Weather Channel, secretly praying for foul weather and car accidents. The day Isabel dies, Janet gets her wish. Flash forward a year. Janet sends Alex a letter. She'd like to learn something about the woman who saved her life. But Alex isn't interested in talking to the recipient of his dead wife's heart. Since Isabel's accident, he's still grief-stricken. Meanwhile, a local blues musician named Jasper, the man responsible for Isabel's death, attempts to atone for his misdeed. Irreplaceable is the story of what happens after the transplant -- not only to Alex but within the concentric circles of family that spiral outward from him and from Janet. Stephen Lovely takes us vividly inside the lives of these characters to reveal their true intentions -- however misguided -- and gives us a stunning debut novel of loss and love.




Lincoln's Springfield Neighborhood


Book Description

When an emotional Abraham Lincoln took leave of his Springfield neighbors, never to return, his moving tribute to the town and its people reflected their profound influence on the newly elected president. His old neighborhood still stands today as a National Historic Site. The story of the life Lincoln and his family built there returns to us through the careful work of authors Bonnie E. Paull and Richard E. Hart. Journey back in time and meet this diverse but harmonious community as it participated in the business of everyday living while gradually playing a larger role on the national stage.




Conquests and Cultures


Book Description

This book is the culmination of 15 years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice, as well as on other travels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and around the Pacific rim. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations. Focusing on four major cultural areas(that of the British, the Africans (including the African diaspora), the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere -- Conquests and Cultures reveals patterns that encompass not only these peoples but others and help explain the role of cultural evolution in economic, social, and political development.




The Ship of Dreams


Book Description

This original and “meticulously researched retelling of history’s most infamous voyage” (Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author) uses the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to examine the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift modernity brought to the Western world. “While there are many Titanic books, this is one readers will consider a favorite” (Voyage). In April 1912, six notable people were among those privileged to experience the height of luxury—first class passage on “the ship of dreams,” the RMS Titanic: Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; son of the British Empire Tommy Andrews; American captain of industry John Thayer and his son Jack; Jewish-American immigrant Ida Straus; and American model and movie star Dorothy Gibson. Within a week of setting sail, they were all caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic’s sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic’s voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era. Writing in his signature elegant prose and using previously unpublished sources, deck plans, journal entries, and surviving artifacts, Gareth Russell peers through the portholes of these first-class travelers to immerse us in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history. Through their intertwining lives, he examines social, technological, political, and economic forces such as the nuances of the British class system, the explosion of competition in the shipping trade, the birth of the movie industry, the Irish Home Rule Crisis, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience while also recounting their intimate stories of bravery, tragedy, and selflessness. Lavishly illustrated with color and black and white photographs, this is “a beautiful requiem” (The Wall Street Journal) in which “readers get the story of this particular floating Tower of Babel in riveting detail, and with all the wider context they could want” (Christian Science Monitor).




A History of Settlement in Ireland


Book Description

A History of Settlement in Ireland provides a stimulating and thought-provoking overview of the settlement history of Ireland from prehistory to the present day. Particular attention is paid to the issues of settlement change and distribution within the contexts of: * environment * demography * culture. The collection goes further by setting the agenda for future research in this rapidly expanding area of academic interest. This volume will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the archaeology, history and social geography of Ireland.




The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 3, 1730–1880


Book Description

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.




Of Irish Descent


Book Description

What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of “native” and “settler” and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics? Of Irish Descent addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas about ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new applications of genetic research, Nash traces the place of ancestry in interconnected geographies of identity—familial, ethnic, national, and diasporic. Underlying these different practices and narratives are potent and profoundly political questions about who counts as Irish and to whom Ireland belongs. Examining tensions between ideas of plurality and commonality, difference and connection that run through the culture and science of ancestral origins, Of Irish Descent is an original and timely exploration of new configurations of nation and diaspora as communities of shared descent.




In Search of Ulster-Scots Land


Book Description

Social and religious historians have conducted much research on Scottish colonial migrations to Ulster; however, there remains historical debate as to whether the Irish Sea in the seventeenth century was an intervening obstacle or a transportation artery. Vann presents a geographical perspective on the topic, showing that most population flows involving southwest Scotland during the first half of the seventeenth century were directed across the Irish Sea via centuries-old sea routes that had allowed for the formation of evolving cultural areas. As political or religious motivational factors presented themselves in the last half of that century, Vann holds, the established social and familial links stretched along those sea routes facilitated chain migration that led to the birth of a Protestant Ulster-Scots community. Vann also shows how this community constituted itself along religious and institutional rubrics of dissent from the Church of England, Church of Scotland, and Church of Ireland.




Ulster to America


Book Description

In Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830, editor Warren R. Hofstra has gathered contributions from pioneering scholars who are rewriting the history of the Scots-Irish. In addition to presenting fresh information based on thorough and detailed research, they offer cutting-edge interpretations that help explain the Scots-Irish experience in the United States. In place of implacable Scots-Irish individualism, the writers stress the urge to build communities among Ulster immigrants. In place of rootlessness and isolation, the authors point to the trans-Atlantic continuity of Scots-Irish settlement and the presence of Germans and Anglo-Americans in so-called Scots-Irish areas. In a variety of ways, the book asserts, the Scots-Irish actually modified or abandoned some of their own cultural traits as a result of interacting with people of other backgrounds and in response to many of the main themes defining American history. While the Scots-Irish myth has proved useful over time to various groups with their own agendas—including modern-day conservatives and fundamentalist Christians—this book, by clearing away long-standing but erroneous ideas about the Scots-Irish, represents a major advance in our understanding of these immigrants. It also places Scots-Irish migration within the broader context of the historiographical construct of the Atlantic world. Organized in chronological and migratory order, this volume includes contributions on specific U.S. centers for Ulster immigrants: New Castle, Delaware; Donegal Springs, Pennsylvania; Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Opequon, Virginia; the Virginia frontier; the Carolina backcountry; southwestern Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Ulster to America is essential reading for scholars and students of American history, immigration history, local history, and the colonial era, as well as all those who seek a fuller understanding of the Scots-Irish immigrant story.