I’ve been following author Billy O’Callaghan’s career with rapt enthusiasm, since I fortuitously came across him online, last year. That he is Irish caught my attention, and as I delved further, I discovered he is the author of three short story collections, all of which I’ve read, all of which, to me, are in their own…

The West, the American West, is the place in our souls where romance and reality meet head-on. Ironically it is also the place where reality and romance have always met head-on. Ever since “the West” was that ill-defined space on the map west of the White Mountains, west of the…

As I watched Ken Loach's newest film, “Jimmy’s Hall,” I was struck by how, as had also been true in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” Paul Laverty’s writing and Loach’s directing of that writing is free of pretension.

Loach (pictured, foreground) doesn’t need fantastic sound tracks or the latest and greatest special…

This little 138-page book taught me a lot about someone who is, arguably, one of the most important figures in Irish history. First of all, the picture of St. Patrick wearing a bishop's miter that we are all familiar with is erroneous. The Bishop's miter didn't come into use until…

Fiction can often describe reality more fully than any number of newspaper articles or TV…

Over P.J. Clarke’s Bar…

"The Famine Plot," reviewed by Eamon Loingsigh (originally from bookslut.com).

Outside of Ennis, in County Clare in the west of Ireland, the wind kicks upon the hills under the same gray sky where once starved children, women and old men were buried callously, if not left by the ditches. Where the weakest of the agrarian poor were communally laid…

By Robert Cassidy

Special to TheWildGeese.irish

LEVITTOWN, N.Y — On battlefields, in parades, even during the walk to the ring, bagpipes have long inspired the great Celtic warriors.

In 1977, I was sitting ringside at the Long Island Arena when the drone of bagpipes began to fill the building. I was…

'Empire Rising' Author Explores 'High Noon' for City's Irish

By Doug Chandler

Author Thomas Kelly feels such a keen attachment to Irish-American history that he often wishes he lived in the 1930s, a period he calls "high noon for the Irish in New York."…

Review: The Jeanie Johnston Experience

Replica of Irish emigrant ship provides insights into the woes of the Atlantic crossing

By Gerry Regan

Producer/The Wild Geese Today

WGT Photo/Gerry Regan Jeanie Johnston at her Manhattan berth, with the Statue of Liberty to its left and Ellis Island immigration center, today a museum and history…

Review by Kieron C. Punch / TheWildGeese.com

After the British army suppressed the Easter Rising 90 years ago, authorities loaded their take of nearly 1,900 prisoners onto cattle boats and shipped them across…

REVIEW: 'The Gangs of New York' by Herbert Asbury

By Patricia Jameson-Sammartano 

Special to The Wild Geese Today

To buy Herbert Asbury's book, click on the cover.…