My monthly e-newsletter, The Throwback, is filled with history stories that will make you say “Wait? What?” Click here to read this month’s edition, in which I talk turkey about the time when Thanksgiving was more like Halloween and the origins of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Also some tips for fellow history geeks on…

My monthly e-newsletter, The Throwback, is filled with history stories that will make you say “Wait? What?” Click here to read this month’s edition, in which I discuss the struggle for workers’ rights in America and how just days after President Grover Cleveland established Labor Day as a federal holiday, he sent federal troops to…

Thanks to Damian Shiels of the excellent Irish in the American Civil War web site for running this piece I wrote about John O’Neill, who repeatedly led a series of Irish-American invasions of Canada known as the Fenian Raids. Canada was O’Neill’s “white whale.” I’m convinced that at the time of his death, O’Neill had…

My monthly e-newsletter, The Throwback, is filled with history stories that will make you say “Wait? What?” Click here to read this month’s edition, in which I discuss the legacies of Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Bonaparte, the buddy-buddy road trips of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, the first impeachment of an American president, and a…

Fourteen tons of fireworks illuminated the New York night on May 24, 1883, to celebrate the completion of one of the greatest engineering feats of the Gilded Age—the Brooklyn Bridge. Billed as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” the longest suspension bridge ever built at the time spanned the East River to link the twin…

My monthly e-newsletter, The Throwback, is filled with history stories that will make you say “Wait? What?” Click here to read this month’s edition, in which I discuss the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the first men on the moon, including links to stories on how a virtual lighting model debunks conspiracy…

Great to see the Wall Street Journal publish a review of WHEN THE IRISH INVADED CANADA on page A15 in the June 17, 2019, print edition. “Mr. Klein is keen to celebrate the idealistic Fenians with their audacious dreams of national liberation, but he doesn’t fail to catalog the foolhardiness of their endeavors. His book…

A little over a year after the end of the Civil War, a private army of Irish-Americans marched into battle to undertake one of the most fantastical missions in military history—to kidnap Canada and ransom it for Ireland’s independence. It may sound like a bunch of blarney, but it’s a true story. In fact, the…

A little more than 24 hours after leading an invasion of Canada with an Irish-American army, John O’Neill could see the enemy approaching. From his perch atop a limestone ridge outside the village of Ridgeway, Ontario, O’Neill could see an army three times the size of his marching in their direction. Although outnumbered, O’Neill’s Fenian…

Thirteen months after Robert E. Lee laid down his sword at Appomattox Court House, former Confederate rebels slipped on their gray wool jackets. Union veterans longing to emancipate an oppressed people donned their blue kepis. Battle-hardened warriors from both the North and the South returned to the front lines, but not to reignite the Civil…