Introduction: The American pale -- pt. 1. Unwelcome strangers : the Irish and the American West -- From Ireland to America's mythic West : William L. O'Brien's working-class grand tour -- Irrepressible conflicts : systems of slavery in the Civil War era -- Slavery, the Irish, and Western America -- Most unlikely Westerners -- Savage twins : Indians and Irish on the border -- pt. 2. An alternate frontier : the Irish in the American West -- Border wars : clustered Irish across the meridian -- Finding a "fair living" : patterns of Irish migration and settlement in the West -- The worlds the Irish made : transplanting the townlands to Western America -- An alternate frontier : the Irish strain in labor's Western American heartland -- Epilogue: A different kind of West -- Appendix: Western communities that sent contributions to support Irish nationalism (1880-1882, 1905).
