The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People

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John Kelly’s new book about the Irish Potato Famine is deeply researched, compelling in its details, and startling in its conclusions about the appalling decisions behind a tragedy of epic proportions.

It started in 1845 and before it was over more than one million men, women, and children would die and another two million would flee the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disasters in the nineteenth century—it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War.

A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe. But even more extraordinary than its scope were its political underpinnings, and The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People provides fresh material and analysis on the role that Britain’s nation-building policies played in exacerbating the devastation by attempting to use the famine to reshape Irish society and character.