An admirable and welcome book. Lightly mixing personal and family experience with an idiosyncratic social history of Irish immigration, Mathieu's first book draws on her travels to Ireland and her interviews with the Irish in rural Roscrea and environs and in New York City to survey the landscape of emigration in Ireland and in the U.S. Mathieu's title blends autobiographical ... Read moreintrospection with cultural analysis. . . . A personal, intriguing journey. Joan Mathieu has tracked the Irish 'Zulus'-emigrants and immigrants-through monasteries, pubs, taxicabs, and living rooms, from Roscrea, Ireland, to the Bronx, New York. In the end, what she has produced is not so much a map of the Irish diaspora as a geography of the Irish spirit. It is a surprising, moving, and truly outstanding book. A well-drawn portrait of a people in flux. Recommended. Show Less