Author Talks: Author Talk: Tyler Anbinder on Plentiful Country

Join us as we welcome award-winning author Tyler Anbinder for this in-person discussion of his most recent book, Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, and how it upends what we thought we knew about the Famine Irish in New York and beyond. 

In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called “Famine Irish” were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But it turns out that the Famine immigrants did far better, far more quickly, than we have previously realized.

About the author: Tyler Anbinder is a historian specializing in American immigration history, the history of New York City, and the era of the American Civil War. He is the author of three award-winning books: Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (1992); Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum (2001); and City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York (2016).