Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family's Past

Rating:
Summary: Insight to Irish genealogy
Review: In tracing the "representative" story of his mother's life, the author provides an insight into the motivation and experience of the Irish immigrant. There is also an interesting lesson on the difference between memory and history. Both of these items are of particular interest to the genealogist.

Rating:
Summary: An uninteresting history of the writers mother
Review: The writing is adequate, but this story is not very interesting to anyone other than the writer, and his family.The character, the writer's mother, left Ireland at age 16, a 4th grade drop out, who matures, in her new-found home town of Chicago, goes to work at a variety of jobs, and eventually meets and marries her husband during the years of WWII. I was hoping that this would be a "Michner" like story, integrating the lives of the "characters" with real historical events taking place in a real time line. I did NOT enjoy this story, nor did I find it very interesting...a "ho hum" kind of tale!

Rating:
Summary: A first rate work by an engaged historian looking at his fam
Review: Too often the well written and engaging memoir is disengaged from the careful checking of facts and ordering relationships that is the mark of the historian. Richard White tells the story of his Mother's family in Ireland and Chicago, draws on the family stories that he was told, and then relates them to the historical facts and records. The result is a book that is better than it would have been had he relied on a single methodology, and the story is more engrossing than it would be otherwise. While other reviewers would have critisized this methodology, I find that his ability to show where and why discrepancies arise between memory and fact is extraordinarily illuminating.

Rating:
Summary: A first rate work by an engaged historian looking at his fam
Review: Too often the well written and engaging memoir is disengaged from the careful checking of facts and ordering relationships that is the mark of the historian. Richard White tells the story of his Mother's family in Ireland and Chicago, draws on the family stories that he was told, and then relates them to the historical facts and records. The result is a book that is better than it would have been had he relied on a single methodology, and the story is more engrossing than it would be otherwise. While other reviewers would have critisized this methodology, I find that his ability to show where and why discrepancies arise between memory and fact is extraordinarily illuminating.