While St. Patrick's Day is mostly a day of celebration – it also gives us an excuse to learn more about Irish history.
In his new book, "Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine," Historian Padraic Scanlan debunks common myths about the Famine and traces the ecological and economic consequences to the crises of today, such as food insecurity and climate change.
The bleak lesson of the Famine is not that the British were deliberate perpetrators of starvation, but that they tried and failed to end Irish suffering by relying on the exploitative structures and faith in free markets and capitalist values that made the catastrophe possible in the first place.
