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Making Sense of the Molly Maguires

by Kevin Kenny (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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Twenty Irish immigrants, suspected of belonging to a secret terrorist organization called the Molly Maguires, were executed in Pennsylvania in the 1870s for the murder of sixteen men. Ever since, there has been enormous disagreement over who the Molly Maguires were, what they did, and why they did it, as virtually everything we now know about the Molly Maguires is based on the hostile descriptions of their contemporaries.

Arguing that such sources are inadequate to serve as the basis for a factual narrative, author Kevin Kenny examines the ideology behind contemporary evidence to explain how and why a particular meaning came to be associated with the Molly Maguires in Ireland and Pennsylvania. At the same time, this work examines new archival evidence from Ireland that establishes that the American Molly Maguires were a rare transatlantic strand of the violent protest endemic in the Irish countryside.

Combining social and cultural history, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires offers a new explanation of who the Molly Maguires were, as well as why people wrote and believed such curious things about them. In the process, it vividly retells one of the classic stories of American labor and immigration.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0195116313
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0195116311
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    February 12, 1998
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    9.2 x 0.94 x 6.44 inches
  7. Print length
    368 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This terrific book adds much to our understanding of the Molly Maguires and provides details about the social and ethnic landscapes of eastern Pennsylvania. It also sheds new light on how many Irish Americans understood Catholicism."--American Historical Review

"This is a rich and subtly crafted interpretation of the Molly Maguires and their world, and the reader benefits from the prodigious research Kenny carried out...Kenny's definitive study presents a nuanced vision of the Molly Maguires' lives and the world they lived in; and his book sheds a remarkable light more generally on labour struggles in the mid-19th century."--Labor History

"Kevin Kenny's Making Sense of the Molly Maguires is easily the best book ever written about the subject. It is meticulously researched, carefully argued, and well written, and it brings all of the events to life...His book is a story of the hardships of the mines, of the power of the owners and their paid police forces, and most especially of the power of the media to portray the events in such a way as to inflame persons around the nation. And this book is about the way we write history...The controversy over the Molly Maguires will not end with Kenny's book. Some will see them as brutal terrorists and others as martyred heroes of the labor movement. But no one will ever again be able to think or write seriously about the 1870s violence in the anthracite coal region [of eastern Pennsylvania] without reading this stunning volume."--Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University, in a review for the History Book Club, January 1998

"Until now the Molly Maguires have dwelled in the half-light of myth and propaganda. No longer. In Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, Kevin Kenny dispels the shadows. Kenny gives us the flesh-and-blood men, their passions and grievances, the crimes they committed and the crimes committed against them. This is a first-class work of scholarship that unfolds with the power of a detective novel. Along with making sense of the Molly Maguires, Kenny has produced an outstanding piece of historical enlightenment. He made me think, and he made me weep. I am in awe of his achievement."--Peter Quinn, author of Banished Children of Eve

"After thorough research in both Irish and American sources, Kevin Kenny has produced by far the best and the most sensitive treatment of the Molly Maguires, the Irish-born anthracite miners who battled corporate capitalism and its legal and clerical allies in Gilded-Age Pennsylvania. Kenny's book does far more than make sense of this important and tragic episode, for his is a very major contribution to our general understanding of working-class, immigration, and Irish-American history."--Kerby Miller, University of Missouri-Columbia

"Making Sense of the Molly Maguires is destined to become a definitive work on the subject and one that this reviewer recommends highly."--Thomas Larkin, An Scathan

"Kenny's treatment of the Mollies is thoroughly researched and neatly balanced...Kenny has assimilated and built on a century of scholarship. His excavation beneath the mythical qualities of the Molly Maguires is likely to be the standard work for some time."--Labor Studies Journal

"Kevin Kenny's book plunges right into this complex amalgam of events and perceptions to understand both sides of the Mollys...Kenny's monograph is well reasoned and effectively constructed...[T]his study gives the Molly Maguires their proper place in late-nineteenth-century America, not as devils or angels, but as real men engaged in real and often violent struggles for a living and a life."--The North Carolina Historical Review

"Intended as a book about the Molly Maguires both as an organization and as a symbol of unionism, Kenny tries first to understand how community was constituted among Irish-American miners. He then seeks to understand how the violent murders committed by a secret organization came to stand as a middle-class symbol of the dangers of unions and Irish workers...Kenny has demonstrated how the exploration of memory can help broaden the scope of labor history."--Reviews in American History

"[A] remarkably fine work of historical research and analysis."--Thomas Flanagan, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Kevin Kenny has certainly done historical justice to his fascinating, if elusive, topic...[O]ne should salute a scholar who takes on a controversial subject and, with sober mastery, rips off the veils of legend."--Michael Kazin, Washington Post Book World

"A convincing and well-written book, Kenny's work clearly establishes the ways and means used to 'demonize' the Molly Maguires and through them the Irish and trade union movement...He 'makes sense' of the Molly Maguires and, in doing so, the economic, social, and political forces surrounding them...He opens a new and rich perspective on a well-known event."--Robert D. Sampson for H-Labor

"This is a thorough examination of the role of the Molly Maguires in the bitter struggle of working people to attain justice in 19th-Century USA and an incisive expose of the ruthless methods employed against all efforts to organize labor...It would be especially useful in a course that studies American resistance movements."--Anthony Garavente, California State University

"[Kenny] has made sense of the Molly Maguires and...all historians of both American labour and Irish rural protest are in his debt. He has written a fine book."--Saothar

"[The book] is a fascinating and compelling study which not alone contains a vivid account of the Molly Maguires, but also incorporates a sustained interpretation of the origins, ideology and broader importance of this shadowy grouping."--Immigrants and Minorities

"Seldom have I read a book that does a better job than this one of unraveling popular mythology and clearing away the ambiguities surrounding a conplex and contentious topic. That it grew directly out of the author's Ph.D. thesis and will almost certainly be considered the standard work on the question for some time to come makes it all the more impressive."--Journal of American Ethnic History

"The definitive word on the Molly Maguires...thoroughly researched and neatly balanced...Kenny has assimilated and built on a century of scholarship. His excavation beneath the mythical qualities of the Molly Maguires is likely to be the standard work for some time."--Errata

"[A] well-balanced and well-researched study which substantially increases our understanding of this legendary group."--Pennsylvania History

Book Description

Offers a thorough and compelling narrative history of the Molly Maguires

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (February 12, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195116313
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195116311
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1570L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 0.94 x 6.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

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Kevin Kenny

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

chuck
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of research went into this
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2013
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I found this very interesting because I live only a few miles from where the movie "Molly Maguires was filmed and was active in union politics in the 70's and 80's. Nothing much has changed in this area, the people are a bunch of drunken whiners and big business controls law enforcement. I found the origins of the behavior dating back to Ireland and the fact that the Mollies came from the same area in Ireland to be interesting.
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TJB
5.0 out of 5 stars Answer all my questions!
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021
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Very well written! Research A1!
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Scott&Scott (aka Romentics)
4.0 out of 5 stars Political Uses of Mythologized History
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2020
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Historian Kevin Kenney reexamines the mythology of the notoriously violent "secret society" of Irish Americans from western Ireland who committed a handful of murders over fifteen years from the Civil War to 1875 in the coal mining counties of Pennsylvania. Kenney does not attempt to deny "Molly Maguirism" existed, and that its participants operated out of bars and lodges of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. However, he deftly contextualizes this violent activity (which was not nearly so widespread as the mythology suggests) against relations between labor and capital in the coal mines, so that the violence is seen as an expression of labor's resistance (especially after the dominant union failed in 1875) when other more peaceful avenues were blocked. Capital here gets rough treatment from Kenney. Indeed, he describes in detail how the president of the monopolistic Reading Railroad not only hires the Pinkerton detectives and private police that arrests the Mollies, he also serves as the prosecutor at their trial. That the trials were grossly unfair (Irish Americans excluded from juries, liars put on the stand, the Ancient Order of Hibernians described as synonymous with Molly Maguirish) is clear from Kenney's account.

What is most interesting is Kenney's analysis as to how the idea of the Molly Maguires was put to nativist and anti-labor political uses. It sounds very much like the use to which the term "Antifa" is put in modern times. Neither is truly an "organization" in any sense of the word (especially when compared to the then-existing labor unions); both "Molly Maguire" and "Antifa" are rather convenient tropes and mythologies, which ignore context, are selective about facts, and create good versus evil stories that belie reality.

My quibble with the book is that the first third is greatly repetitive and feels like a journal article expanded to fill a book's covers. Kenney himself is able to sum up the material in his conclusion in about four paragraphs.
2 people found this helpful
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WCSR
5.0 out of 5 stars been up in that area in PA where it started ...
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2015
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been up in that area in PA where it started this book answers a lot of my questions if your a history buff or into history this is the book
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JC
3.0 out of 5 stars Good research and detail, not so good story telling
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2011
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I somewhat enjoyed, but mostly trudged through Kevin Kenny's exploration of the Molly Maquires. He begins his tale in Ireland looking as social status and living conditions. It seemed like a little too much detail was spent there. But important points were made which give a perspective needed to build the story upon. After that he gets into weaving facts, circumstantial evidence and speculation and he pretty clear on which is which. Where I had hoped to read a story, I actually forced myself through a textbook.

The research and content took priority over Kenny's way to tell the story. If you are hoping to read a history novel similar to David G. McCullough's story-telling style, this book will disappoint. If you are a hard-core history buff, this book will give you good insights to the treatment of Irish immigrants working in the mines in Pennsylvania.

I read this on the Kindle. The print was poor--it almost looked like an old fashion typewriter with worn letters typed the story. This probably didn't help my experience.
2 people found this helpful
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dorrie12
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2015
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Bought this book for my Dad, who was very interested in the Molly Maguires. He really enjoyed it and found it easy to read.
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Delores J. Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2018
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I love this book
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J. Killeen
1.0 out of 5 stars knowledge can be enjoyable
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2000
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How is it possible that the Molly Maguires could be made boring! It's about real life and real people! History is exciting. This book is a cold and lifeless list-the way many of us were taught history in school. I wanted to learn about the Molly Maguires but this book was a disaster. The print was very small-get a magnifying glass-I'm serious.Were I taking a course in school and this was one of the textbooks and I had a decent professor then thats ok. This reads like some long boring detailed document.There should be some sort of warning. I'm not blaming any one but somewhere there should be an explanation about not just if a given reader liked a book but what kind of book it is.
13 people found this helpful
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