Uses vintage photographs to present a visual history of Chicago's Irish heritage, from the great waves of migration to the present day.

Examines the history, religion, politics, and literature of one of the city's most influential ethnic groups.

From dancing at Hanleys House of Happiness to raising pints at Kellys Pub on St. Patricks Day, the history of the Irish community in Chicago is told through stories of its gathering places. Families are drawn to the pub after Sunday church, in the midst of sporting events, following funerals, and during weddings. In good times and bad, the pub has been a source of comfort, instruction, and joya constant in a changing world. Based on interviews with tavern owners, musicians, bartenders, and scholars, Chicagos Historic Irish Pubs explores the way the Irish pub defines its block, its neighborhood, and its city.

The first statewide history of the Irish in the Prairie State Today over a million people in Illinois claim Irish ancestry and celebrate their love for Ireland. In this concise narrative history, authors Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell bring together both familiar and unheralded stories of the Irish in Illinois, highlighting the critical roles these immigrants and their descendants played in the settlement and the making of the Prairie State. Short biographies and twenty-eight photographs vividly illustrate the significance and diversity of Irish contributions to Illinois. Billings and Farrell remind us of the countless ways Irish men and women have shaped the history and culture of the state. They fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and two world wars; built the state’s infrastructure and worked in its factories; taught Illinois children and served the poor. Irish political leaders helped to draw up the state’s first constitution, served in city, county, and state offices, and created a machine that dominated twentieth-century politics in Chicago and the state. This lively history adds to our understanding of the history of the Irish in the state over the past two hundred fifty years. Illinoisans and Midwesterners celebrating their connections to Ireland will treasure this rich and important account of the state’s history.

A comprehensive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago encompasses more than 1,400 entries on such topics as neighborhoods, ethnic groups, cultural institutions, and business history, and furnishes interpretive essays on the literary images of Chicago, the built environment, and the city's sports culture.

For Irish Americans as well as for Chicago's other ethnic groups, the local parish once formed the nucleus of daily life. Focusing on the parish of St. Sabina's in the southwest Chicago neighborhood of Auburn-Gresham, Eileen McMahon takes a penetrating look at the response of Catholic ethnics to life in twentieth-century America. She reveals the role the parish church played in achieving a cohesive and vital ethnic neighborhood and shows how ethno-religious distinctions gave way to racial differences as a central point of identity and conflict. For most of this century the parish served as an important mechanism for helping Irish Catholics cope with a dominant Protestant-American culture. Anti-Catholicism in the society at large contributed to dependency on parishes and to a desire for separateness from the American mainstream. As much as Catholics may have wanted to insulate themselves in their parish communities, however, Chicago demographics and the fluid nature of the larger society made this ultimately impossible. Despite efforts at integration attempted by St. Sabina's liberal clergy, white parishioners viewed black migration into their neighborhood as a threat to their way of life and resisted it even as they relocated to the suburbs. The transition from white to black neighborhoods and parishes is a major theme of twentieth-century urban history. The experience of St. Sabina's, which changed from a predominantly Irish parish to a vibrant African-American Catholic community, provides insights into this social trend and suggests how the interplay between faith and ethnicity contributes to a resistance to change.

"Francis O'Neill was Chicago's larger-than-life police chief, starting in 1901- and he was an Irish immigrant with an intense interest in his home country's music. In documenting and publishing his understanding of Irish musical folkways, O'Neill became the foremost shaper of what "Irish music" meant. He favored specific rural forms and styles, and as Michael O'Malley shows, he was the "beat cop" -actively using his police powers and skills to acquire knowledge about Irish music and to enforce a nostalgic vision of it"--