How the Irish Won the West Book

I feel the need to preface this review by saying that if it were permitted by Goodreads, I would rate this book 2 1/2 stars. Since it is not permitted, I have rounded my rating down to 2 stars. As an eternal optimist, I tend to round my ratings up, but I just can't bring myself to do so in this case - the first time I have felt such a way about a book review. I didn't dislike this book; I didn't particularly like it, either.

Several years ago, I read a book titled "How the Irish Saved Civilization" which was a well researched and even better written tale of how the sons and daughters of Erin preserved scientific, academic, and other bits of knowledge, the loss of which would likely have set the human race father behind than it found itself following the fall of Rome, Greece, and Egypt (obviously not in that order). I had hoped that I would find "How the Irish Won the West" as equally enjoyable a book; I was sadly disappointed. I have limited this review to only three of the reasons for my disappointment:

1. While well researched and filled with many interesting bits of trivia (though at times to a fault and detracting from the larger narrative), this is not a dispassionate look at the historical record. At various times throughout the book, the author chides historians more contemporary to the vignettes being shared for what he calls individual biases while himself inserting multiple moral and ethical judgments without the slightest hint of irony.

2. When not inserting his own moral and ethical judgments, the author tried to insert humor into the narrative, the vast majority of which failed to resonate with the reader. I freely admit that I did find a few of the attempts at humor truly funny and I did audibly chuckle a time or two - however, even as one who enjoys when levity is woven into an historical account, I most often found myself annoyed rather than bemused with the attempts in this book.

3. Finally, as one who acknowledges the prevailing attitudes of the time and place in which the mini-biographies that make up this book take place, the author still attacks the actions by some in this story by today's standards (hence my earlier charge of inserting his own moral and ethical judgments). After doing that, the author seemed to look for ways with at least three of his stories to insert negative/disparaging comments about the Mormons, comments that did not add to or further the accounts into which these anecdotes were forced. I can't take you serious when you judge how people treated/thought about the Chinese, American Indians, or African Americans and then attack an entire religion.

With all of that said, I did find the chapters (or the reels as they are called in this book - the Irish author's way of reminiscing about the popular American Western films of his youth) on the mountain men, the Donner Party, and the Lincoln County War interesting reads, though they were not entirely free of the fallacies listed above that turned my off from the book as a whole.