Currently On the Bookshelf

Beckett’s Children: A Literary Memoir

By Michael Coffey
OR Books
176 pages/ 2024/ $23 cloth

This profound meditation by an exquisite writer at the top of his craft centers around the author’s twin abiding obsessions: the ramifications of him being adopted and his literary hero Samuel Beckett.

Reflecting on his decades-long quest to find his birth parents and his troubled relationship with his oldest son Josh, Coffey uses snatches of poems, phone conversations and truncated emails to create an interior dialogue between him and his son. He then injects into this very personal story a perennial rumor in literary circles that Sam Beckett himself may have sired a daughter. It is an audacious pairing that gives Coffey literary license to fictitiously speculate whether Beckett’s knowledge of having a daughter may have – or may not have – influenced Beckett’s prolific body of work. And it reveals uneasy and searing truths about how Coffey sees himself as a writer, but more so as a father.

Formerly the managing editor of Publishers Weekly magazine, Coffey has written several volumes of poetry, a book of short stories and non-fiction books on no-hitters in baseball and heroes of World War II. He was co-editor with Terry Golway of the successful book, The Irish in America.

More Books

Going Back to T-Town
The Ernie Fields Territory Big Band

By Carmen Fields
University of Oklahoma Press
238 pages/ 2023/ $26.95 cloth

Boston-based journalist Carmen Fields has written a loving portrait of her dad Ernie Fields, a big band jazz leader from Oklahoma.  Popular on the ‘chitlin circuit’ for nearly four decades, Ernie navigated racial discrimination in the Jim Crowe South but shines through as an exceptional family man, musician and bandleader without rancor or remorse.  Carmen has given her dad a well-deserved place in the history of American music.

An Irish Passion for Justice
The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer

By Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy
Cornell University Press
460 pages/ 2024/ $36.95 cloth

New York legendary chieftain Paul O’Dwyer receives a fitting tribute in this biography of his life and influence on American politics.  One-time president of New York City Council and brother of New York Mayor Bill O’Dwyer, the long arc of Paul’s progressive advocacy embraced Irish-American causesbut also those of labor unions, Blacks, Jews and immigrants.

Becoming Irish American
The Making and Remaking of a People from Roanoke to JFK

By Timothy J. Meagher
Yale University Press
344 pages/ 2023/ $30 cloth

Worcester native Timothy Meagher, recently retired professor at Catholic University, has written a sweeping, intellectually engagingbook about the journey of the Irish in America, from 1585, when Irish soldiers with Sir Walter Raleigh skirmished with Native Americans, to 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected as America’s first Irish Catholic president.

Race, Politics, and Irish America
A Gothic History

By Mary M. Burke
Oxford University Press
254 pages/ 2023/ $38.99 cloth

Dr. Burke takes a different slant on Irish-American studies by focusing on several diverse constituencies often marginalized by the Irish Catholic juggernaut dominating this field.  She begins with Scots-Irish who settled colonial America, then moves on to multiracial, gay and female communities, examining popular culture, literature, film and fashion to identify the contours of the Irish “whitening” assimilation narrative so popular in academia.