Review: An American look at Irish history

"There are two kinds of people on St. Patrick's Day: Those who are Irish, and those who wish they were." As an Irish-American, I have always been proud to count myself as part of that first group. Growing up, however, I did not know much of the history of the Irish and the Irish-Americans. When I was younger, I learned pieces of the story and heard details about my own ancestors' lives.  I then acquired further chunks of Irish history in my studies of the ancient and medieval time periods. However, like most Irish-Americans, I have never encountered the full, overarching narrative, such as the one Juilene Osborne-McKnight presents in "The Story We Carry in Our Bones: Irish History for Americans."

As Osborne-McKnight explains in the afterword, the book is meant to "fly like a space capsule high above the long sweep of Irish and Irish-American history," so she could write the "big-picture book" she had been unable to find. And the author succeeds in that attempt, giving her fellow Irish-Americans an understanding of their past. She offers an explanation for the pride they have in their ancestors—a pride that has often been "a little vague" for most of them. Her book is written for both Irish-Americans and anyone else interested in the story. Osborne-McKnight paints the panorama of Irish and Irish-American history in broad strokes: Ireland's ancient and mythological roots, the medieval Irish Christians, the invasions and starvation the Irish endured or escaped from, and the suffering they underwent to become American.