The author's work traces the experience of Irish-American Catholics from their beginnings as detested, unskilled pioneers of the urban ghetto to their rise as an essentially affluent, powerful, middle-class suburban community. Blending his work and the contributions of other scholars, McCaffrey here adds fresh interpretations to the history of Irish American Catholics. He focuses on a number of topics, including the significance of Catholicism as the core of Irish ethnicity and the source of nativist attacks on their presence in the United States; the impact of Irish America on the course of Irish nationalism; the psychological struggle to reconcile Irish loyalties to an authoritarian religion and a liberal-democratic politics; and, more recently, the fading of the Catholic dimension of Irish identity.
