FYI -- Per recent review, Jay P. DOLAN has written a very readable and informative overview of Irish-Americans from early times to the present. This interesting-sounding book begins with a short part on the "forgotten era" of 1700-1840, which emphasizes that early immigrants tended to be Protestant and that early Catholic immigrants were committed to more of an Irish national identity than a sectarian religious one. It was the specific immigrants in the 19th century who led to the common linkage of being Irish with being sectarian Catholics; indeed, the term "Scotch-Irish" was created to refer to Irish Protestants. Moreover, "to most Americans being Irish and Catholic was a liability," which generated discrimination. The heart of the book is the next two parts, "The Famine Generation and Beyond, 1840-1920" and "Becoming American, 1920-1960." Dolan vividly describes what the Irish call An Gorta Mor (the great hunger), caused by the failure of the potato crop in the 1840s. A typical adult male ate 12-14 pounds of the tubers per day, while women and older children consumed up to 11 pounds. More than a million people died in the five years between 1845-50 of hunger and associated diseases, this in a country of only eight million. During roughly the same period, between 1849-1854, about 250,000 people in 50,000 families were evicted from their homes by landlords. In eleven years, from 1845-1855, more people left Ireland (2.1 million) than in the prior 250 years. Almost 20 percent of Ireland's living population, 1.5 million people, came to the United States, with enduring consequences for both countries. Both Part Two and Part Three focus especially on three institutions that were central to the Irish experience in the succeeding century. One, not surprisingly, is the Catholic Church. As Dolan notes, until well after World War II, Irish Catholics tended to organize their lives around local parishes and the powerful co-ethnic priests who provided leadership. A second is politics. A significant part of American political history throughout this period is the rise of Irish-Catholic "bosses" in many great American cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, not to mention the failed political presidential campaign of Al SMITH in 1928 and then the triumph of John F. KENNEDY in 1960. The third is labor unions. Many major leaders of American labor were Irish-Catholic. In the early 20th century, more than 50 of the total of 110 unions in the American Federation of Labor had Irish-Catholic presidents. A short final section, "Irish and American, 1960-2000" rather hurriedly takes his story into the present, though an important part of that story is the profound changes-in some cases outright collapse-that have taken place in the institutions that had formerly been dominated by the Irish. Indeed, immigration from Ireland has long since basically ended, not only because of changes in American immigration law, but also because of the prosperity of that country that has begun drawing emigrants from the United States! Per review, Dolan tells a fascinating story with verve and economy in "The Irish Americans" (Bloomsbury/USA 2008) -- a history of the Irish in America from the 18th century to today, by a leading scholar of the immigrant experience.