One of the better interpretations of this turbulant era in the coal belt. Kevin Kenny explores the complicated society relationships and both factual and circumstantial evidence that led to the the conviction of some of the ringleaders. Unlike the 1970 movie "The Molly MacGuires," this book assures the reader that series of violent events over a number of years was no simple story to tell. The subsequent convictions of some of the coal miner leaders was hotly contested in its day. Add this book to your collection if you are a student of 1800's Pennsylvania or the treatment of Irish immigrant miners during the period of the Molly MacGuires.

Kenny digs into the broader social and historical forces that operated in the Irish coal miners and the community in which they found themselves. The events under review are themselves shocking. Like the 9/11 attacks, they seem almost incomprehensible because of their violence and the drama surrounding the events. The Molly Maguries were more than simple killers -- the women's clothing, for example, is a clue that something beyond a simple murder. Kenny gives his explanation of WHY events unfolded as they did.
Kenny has a scholarly point to make and academic readers will be rewarded with Kenny's solid analysis. This is a serious work on a serious subject. It is well worth a bit of intellectual effort. It also makes a fine addition to the reading list of an upper level undergraduate or graduate history course. However, the general reader with an interest in Irish-American history, labor history, and/or European immigrant history will also find this book interesting and informative.

His explanation of the beginning of the union and the people it involved was very clear.There were a lot of details on the exploitation of mineworkers of that era. This is a one the best on the subject.

This book needed a better editor. Professor Kenny is allowed to repeat himself constantly. In his introduction he apologizes in advance for the number of statistics that he will present in the book. He then proceeds to provide a moderate number of statistics three or four times, sometimes in subsequent paragraphs. This is merely mildly irritating.

A more irritating habit of the author's is to provide a selection of analyses of a particular historical or cultural question and then provide a very lame summary or feint at providing his own analysis without writing anything of substance. For example, he brings up the question of "Why do the Irish have such an alcohol problem?", sketches out various other scholars' theories about this cultural phenomenon, "straightens out" some misunderstandings (e.g., they don't drink more, they drink differently (!?)) and you finish the section having no idea why alcholism is prevalent in Irish culture.

Professor Kenny is fine at reporting the facts (especially if you need to be told more than once). I finished this book knowing a great deal more about the "what" and the "where" of Irish Americana, but very little more about the "why". Aside from these basic complaints I would say that this is a book worth reading. Kenny arranges his book chronologically, beginning in the 18th century, well before the Famine diaspora. He makes an explicit effort to explain the relationship between largely "Scotch-Irish" immigrants from Ulster of the 18th and earliest 19th century and later largely Catholic immigrants from Munster and Connacht. The Ulster people had been in Ireland less than 200 years before they uprooted themselves and moved on; their identification with Ireland was considerably weaker than that of emigrants from Munster and Connacht. The appellation "Scotch-Irish" was invented in the US by the Ulster people in order to distinguish themselves from the famine Irish, who were altogether more destitute, culturally distinct (different folkways), not to mention Catholic.

There is a great deal of information in this book. It is simply not all that well presented or analyzed. It is understandable that it be sold as a textbook; the analysis can perhaps take place in the classroom after the reading. As I read this book out of curiosity and not as a reading assignment, it is now up to me to find more critical books to supplement the basic knowledge that this book provides.