The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings: A Five-Generation History of the Ultimate Irish-Catholic Family by Thomas Maier

From Barnes & Noble

Every American of Irish extraction can identify with the 1848 arrival of peasant farmer Patrick Kennedy from County Wexford, Ireland, into the forbidding Brahmin world of Boston, Massachusetts. Though typical in many ways of Great Hunger emigrants, this Kennedy line distinguished itself in unprecedented ways. Over five generations, the feisty clan established itself as a political dynasty that reshaped the image of the Irish in America and the Irish in the world. Thomas Maier's The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings situates this much-mythologized family as the ultimate Irish-Catholic brood, a family with its feet firmly planted in both the Old Sod and the new politics. Refreshingly original.

From the Publisher

For 150 years, the story of the Kennedy family has been inextricably linked to their heritage as Irish-Catholic immigrants—from Patrick Kennedy’s 1848 arrival in Brahmin Boston from Country Wexford Ireland, to Joseph Kennedy’s Vatican ties and Jackie’s thoughts on faith and sorrow, to Kennedy-confidante Father McSorley’s religious counsel following the assassination of JFK. Through groundbreaking interviews with Senator Edward Kennedy and other Kennedy family and friends, acclaimed journalist Thomas Maier casts the Kennedy saga in an entirely new light, showing how their Irish catholic heritage influenced their public and private decisions. Released to coincide with a documentary adapted from the book, this edition features a new preface, in which Maier explores the dynamics of the three brothers, Ted Kennedy’s legacy, and the 2008 presidential elections that have been touched in so many ways by the Kennedy family.

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Table of Contents