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Mass immigration to the U.S. was nowhere more apparent than in the immigration of the Irish between 1815 and the failure of the potato crop in 1845/1846, during which time a million Irish men and women crossed the seas to take up permanent residence in America. This work is concerned with the roots of that immigration, and it provides a detailed account of the economic, social, and political factors underlying the early migrations, an examination of the emigrant trade and its links with American shipping interests, and a history of government policy regarding assisted and unassisted emigration. Professor Adams here succeeds in treating a complex subject in both an exhaustive and engaging manner, placing the history of Irish emigration on a firm, scholarly basis, dispelling myths, marshalling facts, weighing cause and effect. His work is both a monument to painstaking research and a testament to the determination of a great people in the vanguard of an epoch-making emigration.