THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN: THE IRISH REVOLUTIONARY WHO BECAME AN AMERICAN HERO

Book ID/图书代码： 02740015B82440

English Summary/英文概要： Summary of THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN

From the tiny island nation that produced the poetry of Yeats and folk music played with a lamb’s bladder comes the story of an Irishman who shaped history on three continents – Thomas Francis Meagher. Through his life, we see the entire experience of the Irish in America: from famine and revolution at home, to fame and a measure of belonging in New York and the American West. With its improbable twists, turns and breaks, Meagher’s story is like a Victor Hugo novel.

His life overlaps the great tragedies and triumphs of mid-19th century Ireland, England, Australia and the United States. But much of this history is unknown to all but a few scholars. Through him, we see a heart-stopping uprising – pitchforks against an empire; a famine that would kill more than a million people and force another million to leave the country; the open-aired penal colony in Australia; the first great surge of immigration to the United States by a downtrodden minority; the rough assimilation in America in the days that Martin Scorsese portrayed in “Gangs of New York;” the unbelievable carnage of the Civil War, and the far frontier of Montana, where Meagher finds himself governor in a lawless territory.

We meet Queen Victoria and Abraham Lincoln, General William Tecumseh Sherman and Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux, Sam Houston from Texas and Horace Greeley from New York. We see Dublin in its own Irish Spring, when a half-dozen young men stirred the country to rise up. This at a time when British warships were just offshore, ready to reduce the city to rubble. We see what starvation does to a people – the slow death of body and spirit, teeth stained green from eating dandelions, barefooted scarecrows roaming a land of death. We explore policies that brought Ireland to the brink, a colony forced to export meat and grain even though one-in-eight people would die of hunger-related illness. We are in the trenches of the American Civil War, the slaughter of brother against brother. And we thrill at the promise of beautiful, rugged Montana, where Meagher hoped his fellow immigrants could start fresh, away from the tenements of the East Coast. And it is where Meagher got his own fresh start with the love of his life after the Civil War all but broke him.

At the core of all this history is a single man who lived a flamboyant, mercurial and consequential life, and packed considerable drama into his 43 years. What carries the reader through the story, the narrative drive, are the extraordinary risks he took with his own life in order to find a home. The single motivating desire of this outsider was to bring dignity to the Irish, those thrown to the wind, and those left at home. In the end, it is a classic American story -- rebirth in the far frontier of the Rocky Mountain West.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 托马斯•弗朗西斯•米格尔来自孕育了诗人叶芝和传统民谣的小岛国爱尔兰，影响了三大洲的历史进程。通过他的一生，我们能够见到爱尔兰人在美国的全部经历：从国内的饥荒和革命到在纽约和美国西部获得的声望和归属感。米格尔的经历回旋曲折，就像是一部雨果的小说。

他的命运与19世纪中期爱尔兰、英国、澳大利亚和美国的重大悲剧和胜利息息相关。但除了少数学者，大多数人并不熟悉他的经历。其实，我们可以通过他见证那一整段历史——农民奋起对抗整个帝国；一场导致100多万人丧生，数百万人逃亡的饥荒；澳大利亚的刑事殖民地；备受欺凌的少数民族第一次美国大迁徙；马丁斯科塞斯在《纽约黑帮》里描绘的融入美国社会的艰难岁月；内战中令人难以置信的大屠杀……(LYR)

Awards/获奖情况：The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero by Timothy Egan is a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Pick for spring!

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/68984-spring-2016-announcements-history-what-s-past-is-prologue.html

"Egan follows the blazingly interesting biography of a man not so much forgotten as insufficiently remembered—the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction winner, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher (2012), about photographer Edward S. Curtis—with that of another, orator-soldier Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–67). The son of a wealthy Irish merchant, Meagher became the courageous public spokesman of the revolutionary, though nonmilitary, Young Ireland movement during the Great Hunger. For that he was first condemned to be drawn and quartered, then reprieved and transported, as were several of his confreres, to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), Britain’s last penal colony. He escaped and reached San Francisco, where he fired up his fellow Irish immigrants for eventual return to and liberation of their homeland. He also embraced citizenship in his nation of refuge, speaking out against slavery and for the Union and organizing the Irish Brigade, which he led through many ghastly battles of the Civil War. After Appomattox, Meagher hoped to establish a ’New Ireland’ in the West and became ’acting’ governor of Montana Territory, a position that proved a death trap. Meagher lived life full-tilt, with old-fashioned honor as well as courage and dash, so inspiring Egan that the prose flashes and flares and sometimes strains grammar to accommodate the astonishing figure that he was." -- Booklist, starred review

Timothy Egan’s new book THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN is continuing it ascent up the NYT Best Sellers list! Now at #4!
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html

About the Author/作者介绍： TIMOTHY EGAN曾经获得普利策奖的记者，著有7本书，包括《追影子的人之短暂夜晚（Short Nights of the Shawdow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis）》、《最糟糕的艰难岁月》（曾获得“国家图书奖”并被提名为“纽约时报编辑选择奖”）等。他目前还是《纽约时报》的在线评论专栏作家，拥有自己的专题“Opinionator”。他是西部美国人的第三代后裔，现在居住在西雅图。http://timothyeganbooks.com/books-2/

Format:

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：Rights sold: Chinese

原文第一章内容：暂无

手稿：暂无

大纲：暂无