The Other Irish
The Scots-Irish Rascals who Made America

What do Davy Crockett, Mark Twain, and Neil Armstrong have in common? They are descendants of feisty Scots-Irish immigrants who traveled the ocean to the new world in the early 1700s.

Rebellious, independent, and fervently religious . . . thousands of immigrants with grand dreams sailed from Ireland's northern harbors to the new world at the end of the 1700s and tamed the American South. Now Karen McCarthy reveals the many contributions these renegade Other Irish have made since they arrived, including settling the wild frontier, running moonshine into auto racing history, and launching a new world order.

Publisher: New York: Sterling (November 1, 2011), Hardcover, 384 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1402778285

Images | Press Release | Inside flap

RaceTalk Radio Interview, Jan 2, 2012

Irish Edition, Philadelphia, Jan 15, 2012

Irish America (History Review)
Dec/Jan 2012

"You are a writer and a half.... The link back to Derry and then forward to the last stand at the Alamo gave me chill bumps...your descriptions of the characters...Cromwell...the savage...William of Orange...the physical description brought the characters to life... I had read about all of them, but they were just names...not people with personalities and appearances."

David Crockett, Tennessee

"What I particularly appreciate is the way in which you tell the story of the Scots-Irish by concentrating on the incredible characters in that tradition. You thereby circumvent the dry as dust abstractions of the more conventional approaches taken by academic historians and sociologists. Because you are an experienced journalist with an eye for the telling detail, the figures you write about leap off the page in all their wonderful idiosyncrasy, orneriness, hardscrabble toughness, occasional tenderness and persnickety charm. For the first time you really bring the whole Scots-Irish saga to life and make us understand why they have made such an extraordinary contribution in so many different ways to American life and culture, nowhere moreso than here in the South."

James W. Flannery, Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia