Famine To Freedom

In this book, George McGovern lays out a workable and affordable five-point program to end world hunger. And in the midst of this heated debate one compelling moral issue is clear--every major religion and ethical formulation commands its adherents to feed the hungry. We feed the hungry because it is right. McGoven contends that it will also be economically beneficial to all.

Between 1845 and 1853, over one million Irish immigrants arrived in the United States. Escaping the potato famine in Ireland, they arrived in America to find themselves embroiled not only in a fight for survival against prejudice and violence, but in a conflict between the Northern and Southern states that would come to a head in 1861 with the start of the American Civil War.A thought provoking and insightful examination of the Irish role in the formation of America in the mid-eighteenth century and beyond, J.J. Collins' debut is as fascinating as it is heartbreaking, graphically depicting the struggle of one of the most oppressed immigrant groups in American history. During the Civil War, the Irish conscripts and volunteers served mostly for the union, acquitting themselves with honor and bravery while representing states such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. Over the course of the war, Irish American soldiers would rise to the heights of military rank, serve as the decisive factor in a number of battles, and help shape its outcome. Tracing the Irish-American narrative after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox courthouse, the war's aftermath and later political and social impact of the Irish community is fundamental in the shaping of America as we know it today. Providing surprising information and a sobering commentary on the formation of our nation, Famine to Freedom: The Irish in the American Civil War deftly portrays the experience of an immigrant culture that was fundamental in the shaping of the United States.

The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach'—concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.

The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime: the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, perished. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Through extremely violent means, the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clear boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economy; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves integrated into Soviet society the way Moscow intended. The experience of the famine scarred the republic and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991. Cameron examines the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting the creation of a new Kazakh national identity and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.

The Irish Famine of 1846-50 was one of the great disasters of the nineteenth century, whose notoriety spreads as far as the mass emigration which followed it. Cormac O'Gráda's concise survey suggests that a proper understanding of the disaster requires an analysis of the Irish economy before the invasion of the potato-killing fungus, Phytophthora infestans, highlighting Irish poverty and the importance of the potato, but also finding signs of economic progress before the Famine. Despite the massive decline in availability of food, the huge death toll of one million (from a population of 8.5 million) was hardly inevitable; there are grounds for supporting the view that a less doctrinaire attitude to famine relief would have saved many lives. This book provides an up-to-date introduction by a leading expert to an event of major importance in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and Britain.

Richard English's brilliant new book, now available in paperback, is a compelling narrative history of Irish nationalism, in which events are not merely recounted but analysed. Full of rich detail, drawn from years of original research and also from the extensive specialist literature on the subject, it offers explanations of why Irish nationalists have believed and acted as they have, why their ideas and strategies have changed over time, and what effect Irish nationalism has had in shaping modern Ireland. It takes us from the Ulster Plantation to Home Rule, from the Famine of 1847 to the Hunger Strikes of the 1970s, from Parnell to Pearse, from Wolfe Tone to Gerry Adams, from the bitter struggle of the Civil War to the uneasy peace of the early twenty-first century. Is it imaginable that Ireland might – as some have suggested – be about to enter a post-nationalist period? Or will Irish nationalism remain a defining force on the island in future years? 'a courageous and successful attempt to synthesise the entire story between two covers for the neophyte and for the exhausted specialist alike' Tom Garvin, Irish Times