Sensational tales of true-life crime, the devastation of the Irish potato famine, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the turbulent emergence of the American labor movement are connected in a captivating exploration of the roots of the Molly Maguires. A secret society of peasant assassins in Ireland that re-emerged in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region, the Mollies organized strikes, murdered mine bosses, and fought the Civil War draft. Their shadowy twelve-year duel with all powerful coal companies marked the beginning of class warfare in America. But little has been written about the origins of this struggle and the folk culture that informed everything about the Mollies. A rare book about the birth of the secret society, The Sons of Molly Maguire delves into the lost world of peasant Ireland to uncover the astonishing links between the folk justice of the Mollies and the folk drama of the Mummers, who performed a holiday play that always ended in a mock killing. The link not only explains much about Ireland’s Molly Maguires—where the name came from, why the killers wore women’s clothing, why they struck around holidays—but also sheds new light on the Mollies’ re-emergence in Pennsylvania. The book follows the Irish to the anthracite region, which was transformed into another Ulster by ethnic, religious, political, and economic conflicts. It charts the rise there of an Irish secret society and a particularly political form of Mummery just before the Civil War, shows why Molly violence was resurrected amid wartime strikes and conscription, and explores how the cradle of the American Mollies became a bastion of later labor activism. Combining sweeping history with an intensely local focus, The Sons of Molly Maguire is the captivating story of when, where, how, and why the first of America’s labor wars began.

A compelling, action-packed account of the only officially sanctioned I.R.A attack ever conducted on American soil. In 1922, three of the Irish Republican Army’s top gunmen arrived in New York City seeking vengeance. Their target: “Cruxy” O’Connor, a young Irishman who kept switching sides as revolution swept his country in the wake of World War I. Cruxy’s last betrayal dealt a stunning blow to Ireland’s struggle for independence: Six of his IRA comrades were killed when he told police the location of their safe house outside Cork. A year later, the IRA gunned him down in a hail of bullets before a crowd of horrified New Yorkers at the corner of 84th Street and Central Park West. Based primarily on first-hand accounts, most of them never before published, Ambush at Central Park is a cinematic exploration of the enigma of “Cruxy” O’Connor: Was he really a decorated war hero who became a spy for Britain? When he defected to the IRA, did his machine gun really jam in a crucial attack? When captured, did he give up his IRA comrades only under torture? Was he a British spy all along? Or was he pursuing a decades-old blood feud between his family and that of one of his comrades? A longtime editor at The New York Times, author Mark Bulik delved through Irish government archives, newspaper accounts, census data, and unpublished material from the families of the main actors. Together they add to the sensational story of a rebel ambush, a deadly police raid, a dinner laced with poison, a daring prison break, a boatload of tommy guns on the Hoboken waterfront, an unlikely pair of spies who fall in love, and an audacious assassination plot against the British cabinet. Gravely wounded and near death, Cruxy refused to cooperate with the detectives investigating the case. And so, the spy who stopped spying and the gunman who stopped shooting became the informer who wouldn’t inform, even at death’s door. Here is a forgotten chapter of Irish and New York history: the story of the only officially authorized IRA attack on American soil.

Sensational tales of true-life crime, the devastation of the Irish potato famine, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the turbulent emergence of the American labor movement are connected in a captivating exploration of the roots of the Molly Maguires. A secret society of peasant assassins in Ireland that re-emerged in Pennsylvania's hard-coal region, the Mollies organized strikes, murdered mine bosses, and fought the Civil War draft. Their shadowy twelve-year duel with all powerful coal companies marked the beginning of class warfare in America. But little has been written about the origins of this struggle and the folk culture that informed everything about the Mollies.
A rare book about the birth of the secret society, The Sons of Molly Maguire delves into the lost world of peasant Ireland to uncover the astonishing links between the folk justice of the Mollies and the folk drama of the Mummers, who performed a holiday play that always ended in a mock killing. The link not only explains much about Ireland's Molly Maguires where the name came from, why the killers wore women's clothing, why they struck around holidays but also sheds new light on the Mollies' re-emergence in Pennsylvania.
The book follows the Irish to the anthracite region, which was transformed into another Ulster by ethnic, religious, political, and economic conflicts. It charts the rise there of an Irish secret society and a particularly political form of Mummery just before the Civil War, shows why Molly violence was resurrected amid wartime strikes and conscription, and explores how the cradle of the American Mollies became a bastion of later labor activism. Combining sweeping history with an intensely local focus, The Sons of Molly Maguire is the captivating story of when, where, how, and why the first of America's labor wars began.