Vast social forces may help direct the course of human events, yet individual actors are what actually make history. Certainly, for most people, they are what make history interesting. With The Immortal Irishman, Timothy Egan has written a page-turning biography of a little remembered but fascinating figure from Irish and American history, Thomas Francis Meagher.
Although born into a family of landed Irish Catholics, he rebelled against British rule and was sentenced to a Tasmanian penal colony. Escaping to America, he became a general in the Union army and, after the Civil War, Governor of Montana. A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, Egan tells the story beautifully. The Immortal Irishman is polemical and hagiographic, but its arguments and the lavish praise heaped on its subject are grounded in solid research.
