Short Synopsis
In this sweeping history, Ireland's best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide.

Full Synopsis
During a Biblical seven years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Ireland experienced the worst disaster a nation could suffer. Fully a quarter of its citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated in what came to be known as Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger. Waves of hungry peasants fled across the Atlantic to the United States, with so many dying en route that it was said, "you could walk dry shod to America on their bodies."

In this sweeping history, Ireland's best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide. In what the Boston Globe calls "his greatest achievement," Coogan shows how the British government hid behind the smoke screen of laissez faire economics, the invocation of Divine Providence, and a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, allowing more than a million people to die agonizing deaths and driving a further million into emigration.

Unflinching in depicting the evidence, Coogan presents a vivid and horrifying picture of a catastrophe that shook the nineteenth century and finally calls to account those responsible.

“Many intriguing points [are] made in this book . . . Coogan's pages spark and sputter with a deep, lingering, well-cherished rage.” ---Peter Behrens, The Washington Post

“To many, Mr. Coogan . . . [is the] voice of modern Irish history . . . makes a compelling case for why we should revisit our current understanding of [the famine].” ---The Economist

“Coogan's insistent examining of the moral dimensions of that nation's policies, and how they fueled the horrors on the ground, represents his greatest contribution to the voluminous scholarship on the Irish famine, and is this book's greatest strength.” ---The Boston Globe

“Coogan makes no bones about accusing the government of the day of "a genocidal intent" . . . His writing on Ireland's past is intelligent and accessible to a large readership.” ---BBC History Magazine