Plentiful Country

The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York

By: Tyler Anbinder

Narrated by: David McCusker

From the award-winning author of Five Points and City of Dreams, a breathtaking new history of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the Great Potato Famine, showing how their strivings in and beyond New York exemplify the astonishing tenacity and improbable triumph of Irish America.
In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called “Famine Irish” were the forebears of four U.S. presidents (including Joe Biden) yet when they arrived in America they were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But when we let the Famine Irish narrate their own stories, they paint a far different picture.

In this magisterial work of storytelling and scholarship, acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. Drawing on newly available records and a ten-year research initiative, Anbinder reclaims the narratives of the refugees who settled in New York City and helped reshape the entire nation. Plentiful Country is a tour de force—a book that rescues the Famine immigrants from the margins of history and restores them to their rightful place at the center of the American story.

Critic reviews

“Anbinder details the human horrors of the potato famine in unadorned prose that only adds to its emotional impact… [and] weaves together individual immigrants’ stories with more general history to make this a remarkably perceptive and engaging portrait of American immigration history.”—Booklist

“[An] eye-opening account… Readers will be engrossed.”—Publishers Weekly

"Plentiful Country is a masterpiece of research and writing. Tyler Anbinder has outdone himself by weaving the lives of individual immigrants into a sweeping history of the Irish in New York. From their struggles in Ireland before the famine to the crammed-full ships that carried them over, from their lives as servants, laborers, and artisans to their fanatical savings, ingenious enterprises, and movements across the United States, this book vividly captures the rich history of a complex people."—T.J. Stiles, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The First Tycoon and Custer's Trials

“On a recent visit to Ireland, I saw one of the docks where, it was said, desperate, starving women once held up their children, beseeching strangers to take them to a new life in America. In Tyler Anbinder’s moving, expertly told narrative, I learned what happened to that generation of immigrants and their descendants. This is a hugely important and too little-known part of the American story.”—Adam Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author of Spain in Our Hearts and American Midnight

“Plentiful Country celebrates the survivors of Ireland's Great Famine, who are so often cast as dazed immigrants unprepared and unsuited for life in New York and America. Drawing on a decade of research, Tyler Anbinder presents them instead as women and men with agency: adept learners who, by both seizing and creating opportunities for themselves, remade their new country. They speak for themselves in this book, in word and deed.”—Hasia Diner, New York University, and author of Erin’s Daughters in America

Well researched.

Contained information that I was unaware of. Not the standard downtrodden immigrants or notorious tales of Irish New York. I highly recommend allowing this authors book.

Changing Perceptions on Immigrants

I have never read a book quite like this. The author brings to life the Irish famine immigrants of New York through bank records. It sounds impossibly boring, but it was fascinating and very well organized. And the stories bring about an important shift of the perception of the "poor and destitute." I am amazed at how hard most worked and how much they saved. I wish we had a record of all the immigrant groups so we could see how important they are to our country.

Interesting and informative. Recommend.

This book contains a great detail of detail about the Irish Potato Famine and the circumstances of the people who lived through it, in a way that many history books do not share. Anbinder is able to not only tell the larger story of the famine and politics in the region, but also paint a picture of the lives of Irish farmers down to the details of their huts, He follows a number of these immigrants through their emigration to the United States and tells personal stories which show just how much perseverance and drive those Irish immigrants to the U.S. had. Much research went in to this book, and Anbinder is a fantastic writer as well. I learned a lot.
I also enjoyed the narrarator -- pleasant voice, and good reading. Highly recommend this book if you are interested in these topics.

This book could have been 50 Pages long

Well researched but I felt that I could have gotten all the contented needed in a couple of chapters rather than an entire book. Would have been a great long form magazine article or research paper.