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

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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

Irish-Catholic immigrant heritage has always been central to the Kennedy family experience—beginning with Patrick Kennedy’s 1848 arrival in Brahmin Boston, continuing with Joseph Kennedy’s Vatican ties and Jackie’s revelations of sorrow, to Kennedy-confidante Father McSorley 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 sense of family, religion, and Irish Catholic roots influenced their public and private decisions. In addition, their collective history continues to be crucial to understanding their many remarkable triumphs and deepest tragedies.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0465043186
  
• ISBN-13: 9780465043187
• Format: Paperback, 676pp
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Pub. Date: October 2004
• Sales Rank: 157,076

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents