A highly engaging, yet hearbreaking account of the Irish's plight due to the Great Potato Famine. Gallagher explains why and how the famine happened, but also details the agonizing human experience of life in Ireland and aboard devastatingly crowded ships in search of...
Ireland in the mid-1800s was primarily a population of peasants, forced to live on a single, moderately nutritious crop: potatoes. Suddenly, in 1846, an unknown and uncontrollable disease turned the potato crop to inedible slime, and all Ireland was threatened. Index.