Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora [Hardcover]

Tim Pat Coogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2001

The population of Ireland is five million, but 70 million call themselves Irish. Here is their story in all its richness and complexity. Tim Pat Coogan traveled around the world where green is indeed worn to talk to the people who weaved the tale of "a dream born in a herdsman's shed and the secret scriptures of the poor." Along with American presidents, best-selling authors and Riverdancers, Ireland gave the world a caring tradition borne by missionaries and teachers who spread a message of hope and the panorama of their life abroad comes alive in this magisterial work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coogan, biographer of Michael Collins and Eamon DeValera, again tackles a boisterous, unruly Irish subject the diaspora. Irish emigration first began, Coogan tells us, in the 12th century, when the Normans invaded Ireland. Cromwell's terrorist campaign in the 17th century drove many Irish to France and Spain, while Cromwell deported many more to the West Indies and Virginia. Emigration took a more sinister turn with the advent of the famine in the 1840s. Coogan estimates that "a million died and probably as many as two-and-a-half million people left Ireland in the decade 1845-1855." He also estimates that another five million emigrated between the end of the famine and 1961. Where did they all go? Everywhere: Europe, U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. Coogan breaks down by chapter the geographical travels, and includes some very colorful tales. For example, Mexico still embraces the memory of the wild San Patricios (St. Patrick) Brigade soldiers who deserted the American army during the Mexican War to fight on the side of their fellow Catholics. The first Irish came to Canada looking for cod fish, but many Canadians still remember the invasion of the quixotic Fenians, whose aim was to "liberate" Canada from British rule after the American Civil War. Chile still celebrates its Liberator, one Bernardo O'Higgins, and Australia remembers its Irish Robin Hood, Ned Kelly. The U.S. chapter is filled with stories of Tammany and the Kennedys, and there is an extremely interesting section on Bill Clinton and how he brokered the Good Friday Agreement. Rich in characterization and detail not to mention the Coogan wit this is an invaluable reference volume that belongs on the bookshelf of every Celtophile.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Irish journalist Coogan, who has written several books on Irish history and culture (e.g., The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins), here details the story of the Irish Diaspora, or emigration, which began with the Irish Potato Famine and the subsequent emigrations of the 1840s. Coogan writes easily, giving an often fascinating survey of the many places the Irish emigrated to, not only the United States but destinations like Argentina that will be less familiar to Americans. He relates the story of Irish emigration to these places, sketches the lives of various Irish figures there, and surveys today's Irish Diaspora descendants. Other titles like Thomas Keneally's The Great Shame (LJ 8/99) cover the Irish Diaspora but to a lesser geographic extent. Coogan does tend to overromanticize, at one point profiling an Irish harpist and singer who happens also to physically striking and a brilliant Gaelic football player. More significant, though, is his failure to address the question why these far-flung emigrants cling so to their Irish Catholic heritage. Nevertheless, this broad-ranging narrative history should be a popular title in many public and academic libraries. Charlie Cowling, SUNY at Brockport Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 768 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (September 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312239904
• ISBN-13: 978-0312239909
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.2 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,504,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile, but not Coogan's Best Work, December 11, 2001

By 

Henry P. McNally (Manasquan, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (Hardcover)

Coogan's books are always written in a style that makes for easy reading; this is no exception. If written for his own newspaper, however, Coogan (the editor) might have wondered at some of the errors. The sections on the less known of Irish diaspora settlements were excellent. Coogan's personal contacts and varied and numerous acquaintances enliven all of his work and are evident throughout this book. Any lover of things Irish will enjoy the read.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wherever There's Green(backs) To Be Made, April 26, 2002

By 

Volkswagen Blues "cead1" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (Hardcover)

Tim Pat Coogan is one of the most widely read living Irish historians. His books on the IRA and the Troubles are standards, and his critical biography of de Valera has probably forever changed the way Ireland's largest-looming political figure will be seen. Unfortunately, "Wherever Green Is Worn" does not match Coogan's best work. It is sprawling and lacks focus, and this cannot entirely be his fault; despite the book's merits, I can't help but feel that it is ultimately just another rushed attempt by his publishers to cash in on the popularity of Irish culture.

The chief and indisputable strength of "Wherever Green Is Worn" is its ground-breaking sweep. Nobody has attempted this universal an examination of the Irish diaspora, and this becomes both an unassailable strength of Coogan's work and a dangerous pitfall, as I'll explain later. Suffice it to say, for now, that this book is a useful first word on the topic and will hopefully provoke more thorough and concentrated historiographies to fill in gaps and tell the story with more critical focus.

And now, to pickier stuff, because it's crucially symptomatic of the overall way in which Coogan's newest contribution has suffered from the inattentiveness of his publishers at St. Martin's, who really owed their author a better editor than he got.
1) First, there are numerous typos and grammatical errors in the book, with the greatest concentration in the initial pages.
2) Slightly more embarrassing is the misspelling of gratuitous foreign phrases, like the italicized French "trahison des clercs," which Coogan spells two different ways in the course of the book; if you have to throw high-falutin' French phrases around, you really want to get them right.
3) Then, there are errors in the Irish (and I find this more troubling because, as a language working to reassert itself, Irish does not need to be misused in major publications like this one) when in an endnote Coogan inexplicably renders the Irish for "kiss my arse" ("póg mo thóin") as "pogue mo tuin." (I pointed this out in amazement to a friend from Co. Kildare, and his response was, "Of course Coogan doesn't know Irish, he's a Dub!")
4) The discursive tangents are another thing a good editor could have attenuated. Do we need to know that the author's luggage was once lost in Boston, unless there's a point to the story or, at the very least, a punchline? Do such digressions explain why "Wherever Green Is Worn" is swollen out to almost 800 pages?
5) Finally, the page references are dodgy, as if the editors didn't track the changes in pagination through the successive drafts of the book. We are told, on page 386, that Coogan will discuss the nineteenth-century Fenian incursions into British Canadian territory on pages 408-410, but that's not the case. The discussion comes on 390, and Coogan's maps of his own book are useless, most likely thanks to careless editing that failed to account for numbering shifts during production.

This is not even to mention the occasionally chauvinistic posture that peeks out in discussions of women in "Wherever Green Is Worn." "Caroline Marland may have the looks of a top model, but she is Managing Director of Guardian News Ltd," Coogan writes on 129, and I wish this were the only time such a remark were let through (it happens several times in the book). No matter how unnecessary it is, no matter how irrelevant to the topic at hand, we are never spared the observation of an attractive woman.

These are fairly petty criticisms. However, what all of this indicates to me is that nobody took very much time preparing or proofing the manuscript of "Wherever Green Is Worn," and this shows through, painfully. Coogan admits in the introduction that he was compelled by his publishers to write no less than three other books (the better ones on Collins, de Valera, and the Troubles) while researching "Wherever Green Is Worn," and this goes a long way toward explaining why the book feels disjunctive and lacks any cohesion; in fact, many of its most powerful moments are precisely those in which Coogan is able to draw from his more sustained research into de Valera and the Troubles, recontextualized to foreground their impact on the diasporic Irish. As it is, individual episodes are instructive and entertaining, anecdotal though they often are. It's just the bigger picture that feels blurry.

And, ultimately, the question that organizes this book is left disappointingly unanswered: Who are the "Irish diaspora" mentioned in the title? Those who, born in Ireland, later emigrated? Those who were born abroad to Irish parents? Those who, so-called "plastic Paddies" like myself, have an Irish passport but were born and raised outside of Ireland? One of the problems in this book is that EVERYBODY'S IRISH. Because Irishness becomes in "Wherever Green Is Worn" (which turns out to be, well, everywhere) far too broad a concept, it loses any real value as a category. A tighter definition of the driving motif behind Coogan's study would have lent this book much more focus and power.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating look at Irish throughout the world, November 19, 2002

By 

Paul J. Ditz (Shelby, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (Hardcover)

Coogan takes on possibly his most adventurous project, as he traces the path of Irish immigrants throughout the world. As always, Tim Pat is thorough and his journalistic syle is very readable. The information contained in "Wherever Green is Worn" is fascinating. Anyone who picks up this book, no matter how much you know about the history of Ireland, will learn something new.