Black '47 and Beyond

Winner of the 2000 James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize for Best Book on Irish History or Social Studies One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1999 One of the book's great strengths is the attempt to place the Irish experience in the contexts of famines in other parts of the world and to compare it to other historical famines, an approach that enriches Irish and general famine studies alike... Black '47 and Beyond is a substantial and often pioneering contribution to the ever-burgeoning field of Irish Famine studies. --Times Literary Supplement One of the most challenging, original, and readable accounts of the subject to have appeared in the last decade. It contains a fund of ideas and information for both experts and those with only the most general knowledge of the famine... Highly recommended. --Choice At a stroke, Cormac Grda's Black '47 and Beyond ... establishes itself as the definitive work on the famine. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a better study... [It] is staggering in its thoroughness. --Kevin Driscoll, The Washington Times Rigor and meticulousness may be found in Black '47 and Beyond. Grda holds up to scrutiny each vexed aspect of the Famine and their previous interpretations. The book is both dense and revelatory... The tragedy of the Irish Famine was ultimately the result of a population explosion, of economic backwardness aggravated by political repression, of ideological block-headedness and complacency. It changed Irish society, but its effects reached well beyond that, to Britain's colonies and to the United States. --Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe A most impressive, even brilliant, work... --Paul Bew, The Spectator Rigor and meticulousness may be found in Black '47 and Beyond. Grda ... holds up to scrutiny each vexed aspect of the Famine and their previous interpretations. The book is both dense and revelatory. --Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe Cormac Grda, Ireland's most distinguished, prolific and wide-ranging economic historian, offers us a choice selection of six chapters... The great value of the book lies in pushing the boundary of Irish famine studies beyond their accustomed limits and by including suggestive comparative references to famines in other times and places. By concentrating on a few topics, Grda can share with the reader the wealth of his broad scholarship and technical mastery. --Barbara Solow, The Times Higher Education Supplement