The Luck Of The Irish

It’s St. Patrick’s Day! Katie makes shamrocks to help celebrate and ends up learning what it means to be lucky in this Ready-to-Read eBook with audio.

Few countries have been as dramatically transformed in recent years as Ireland. Once a culturally repressed land shadowed by terrorism and on the brink of economic collapse, Ireland finally emerged in the late 1990s as the fastest-growing country in Europe, with the typical citizen enjoying a higher standard of living than the average Brit. Just a few years after celebrating their newly-won status among the world's richest societies, the Irish are now saddled with a wounded, shrinking economy, soaring unemployment, and ruined public finances. After so many centuries of impoverishment, how did the Irish finally get rich, and how did they then fritter away so much so quickly? Veteran journalist David J. Lynch offers an insightful, character-driven narrative of how the Irish boom came to be and how it went bust. He opens our eyes to a nation's downfall through the lived experience of individual citizens: the people responsible for the current crisis as well as the ordinary men and women enduring it.

The luck of the Irish was chronic bad luck, as their sad history attests. That's how it looked for 250 Irish convicts when their ship, the 'Hive', sank ignominiously off the NSW coast in 1835. Miraculously all survived, guided to safety by local Aboriginal people...They landed at a time when the so-called slave colony was at its height, ruled by the lash and the chain gang. Yet as Babette Smith tracked the lives of the people aboard the 'Hive', she discovered a very different story. Most were assigned to work on farms or in businesses, building a better life than they possibly could have experienced in Ireland. Surprisingly, in the workforce they found power, which gave rise to the characteristic Australian culture later described by DH Lawrence: 'Nobody felt better than anybody else, or higher.'..'The Luck of the Irish' is a fascinating portrait of colonial life in the mid-19th century, which reveals how the Irish helped lay the foundations of the Australia we know today...'Deeply researched and vividly written, it's a terrific new and up-to-date account of the convict experience, mainly from the bottom up' - 'Emeritus Professor Alan Atkinson FAHA, University of Sydney'..'Brings the convict era to life through personal stories and insightful analysis.' - 'Lindsay Tanner'

From 1970, things were changing in Ireland � the Celtic Tiger had finally woken, and the rules for everything from gender roles and religion to international relations were being entirely rewritten. Luck and the Irish examines how the country has weathered these last thirty years of change, and what these changes may mean in the long run. R. F. Foster also looks at how characters as diverse as Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson, Charles Haughey and Bob Geldof have contributed to Ireland�s altered psyche, and uncovers some of the scandals, corruption and marketing masterminds that have transformed Ireland � and its luck.

When an upwardly mobile African-American couple wants to buy a home in an all-white neighborhood in 1950's Boston, they pay a struggling Irish family to "ghost-buy" a house on their behalf.

An original folktale full of wit, magic, and leprechauns, that is sure to delight for St. Patrick’s Day as well as all year round. The luck of the Irish has waned after the greedy Leprechaun King has taken all the good fortune in Ireland and locked it away. It is up to one cunning girl, Fiona to come up with a plan to get the luck and good tidings back from the leprechauns to help the people of Ireland. Through clever charades, Fiona uses her wit to outsmart the powerful Leprechaun King and restore luck to the Emerald Isle. Luminous and enchanting illustrations add to the wonder of this original folktale, that is sure to charm readers young and old who are looking for a bit of magic to spark their story time.