The earlier decades of the 20th century provide the settings for two new works of Irish-American fiction.Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg explores life on the homefront during World War II, as seen through the eyes of the three Irish-American Heaney sisters from Chicago.Kitty, Louise, and Tish each have differing conflicts, and Berg masterfully divides time between each character.Kitty, for example, does not merely sit home and weep about her lad off at war. Instead, she works a hard job at a manufacturing plant. In the end, Berg illuminates this oft-forgotten era in U.S. history, while also beautifully recreating a slice of Irish-American life.
Died: January 7, 2021. IT was the early spring of 1971, and there was deep unease within the offices of the Washington Post. The paper’s senior editors had learned that the New York Times was working on an exclusive that would blow the Post out of the water. They began to fear the worst. On Sunday, June 13, as the Post devoted much of its front page to the wedding of Tricia Nixon, President Nixon’s daughter, the New York Times finally revealed its scoop: several pages devoted to a top-secret, 47-volume study of American involvement in the Vietnam War. A team of reporters and editors had spent several weeks reading the documents, but on that Sunday only one name appeared at top of the story: that of Neil Sheehan, the paper’s brilliant Vietnam War correspondent.
Warrior for Truth Neil Sheehan, reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who broke the story of the Pentagon Papers for The New York Times and
who chronicled the deception at the heart of the Vietnam War. Image: nbcwashington.com
By Tom Deignan
His name was Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan. A son of Irish immigrants, he was born at the height of the Great Depression and raised on a farm in Massachusetts.
By the time “Neil” Sheehan died earlier this month, at the age of 84, he’d won an armful of literary awards, and played a key role in altering the course of U.S. history, as depicted in Hollywood films like 2017’s Oscar-nominated
Neil Sheehan, who has died aged 84, was the Irish-American journalist behind the Pentagon Papers scoop in The New York Times, exposing classified secrets about the Vietnam War which the US government tried to suppress in 1971.
War correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Neil Sheehan dies at 84 theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.