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The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Mining the Irish West
Ep. 76
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The Irish are best known for migrating to American cities along the east coast, notably Boston and New York. Dr. Alan Noonan joins the show to explain how the Irish also moved to the American West, and settled among mining communities in places like Butte and Virginia City. Noonan's narrative is rich with stories about race, class, religion, and imagined communities, making his book a must read for scholars of industrialization and migration.
Essential Reading:
Alan J. M. Noonan, Mining Irish-American Lives: Western Communities from 1849 to 1920 (2022).
Recommended Reading:
Michael MacGowan, The Hard Road to Klondike (2003).
Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988).
Janet Floyd, Claims and Speculation: Mining and Writing in the Gilded Age (2012).
Elliot J. Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (2015).
David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1920 (1989).
Liping Zhu, A Chinaman's Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (2000).
J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America (1998).
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