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Paradise Alley

By
TOM DEIGNAN,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 4:18 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:53 PM

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Whoever knew that the Civil War Draft Riots would become hip! In 2002, Martin Scorsese unveiled his long-awaited film "The Gangs of New York." Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz play lowlifes in Civil War-era New York, who are eventually swept up into the devastating riots of July 1863, which left over 100 people dead. Before that, though, there was novelist Kevin Baker's hefty novel "Paradise Alley." Not unlike Peter Quinn's masterpiece "The Banished Children of Eve," Baker's book presents a broad portrait of New Yorkers, Irish, black, native-born Protestant, struggling to get by, then swept up in the violence. (Touched off by President Lincoln's call for a military draft, mostly-Irish laborers resisted, later venting anger at blacks and even Irish police officers. In his acknowledgments, Baker calls the riots "probably the worst civic disturbance in the history of the United States".) Baker has clearly done his research, and even includes a five-page glossary of 19th-century terms, many of them derived from Gaelic. Baker, ultimately, gives the Draft Riots the kind of attention they deserve. ($26.95 / 688 pages / HarperCollins)

See more: irish, ireland, irish central, entertainment, books, culture, fiction

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