From the origins of this hero of Irish lore to his habits, occupations and characteristics. This book offers enlightenment on little-known aspects of the wider fairy world, as well as turning the spotlight on the real leprechaun.Every country has its own myths about fairies and 'wee folk', but the Irish leprechaun is the undisputed king. To some, he is an impish figure full of harmless mischief, forever guarding his elusive crock of gold. To others, he is an evil gnome bent on disr...

Witch trials in the European or American sense were not common in Ireland although they did occur. In this book the stories of four remarkable court cases that took place from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century are told; other chapters chronicle the extraordinary lives of individuals deemed to be practitioners of the black arts – hedge witches, sorcerers and sinister characters.The book gives a unique insight into the fascinating overlap between witch belief and the vast rang...

The spirits of the dead return in many shapes and in many locations in Ireland. There are the wraith-like ghosts and the full-bodied type, the dangerous and damaging, the threatening and the merely frightening. There are notorious buildings where down through the centuries spectres have been seen or heard, some, such as Leap Castle, where psychics have been overwhelmed by the intensity of the atmosphere. There are families pursued by spirits who warn them of impending death or seem to be t...

By Anna Katharine GreenNarrated by Robert CurranA plan for a daring robbery is hatched between a professional criminal and an unscrupulous office manager. One person in particular has to be drawn into this nefarious scheme -the business owner's personal assistant, the young and attractive Grace Lee. Will she have the pluck and resourcefulness to deal effectively with this perilous situation?

In this follow-up volume to For Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina, Robert Emmett Curran extends his corpus of work on the history of Catholicism in the South through the eyes of the Lynch family of South Carolina. An Irish American family who sympathized with the Confederacy, the Lynches rose to prominence economically and in religious leadership during the late 1800s. Curran’s latest volume features a collection of personal correspondence from Lynch family mem...

Among the finer soldier-diarists of the Civil War, John Edward Dooley first came to the attention of readers when an edition of his wartime journal, edited by Joseph Durkin, was published in 1945. That book, John Dooley, Confederate Soldier, became a widely used resource for historians, who frequently tapped Dooley’s vivid accounts of Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, where he was wounded during Pickett’s Charge and subsequently captured.As it happens, the 1945 ed...

How a key period in American Catholic history connects with contemporary populismCatholics fought on both sides of the American Civil War, but few supported the war's evolving aim of emancipating the enslaved. After the war, white Catholics played decisive roles in creating and promoting the ideology of the Lost Cause, a romantic distortion that the war had been a noble Southern fight for freedom, not caused by secession to preserve slavery.Catholics, t...

Stoneover: The Observed Lessons and Unanswered Questions of Cannabis Legalization examines the political and social entrepreneurs that champion marijuana decriminalization efforts, their constituents’ attitudes toward legalization, the specific successful reform measures at the state level, and the consequent market dynamics in cannabis commerce. Each chapter presents a unique dataset with specific contributions in understanding local and national trends and outcomes of more than two decad...

Sin and Sorrow are Common to AllA Drama in Four ActsBy Alexander OstrovskyTranslated by George Rapall NoyesA central theme of Ostrovsky's plays is the inevitablestruggle between the demands of personal moralityand and those dictated by social propriety.In this grim drama the dramatist sketches a tragic incidentarising from the conflict of two social classes, the pettytradesmen and the nobility. From the coarse environment...

A ten-year inquiry into America's education system-by a lifelong educator determined to find solutions.After more than 30 years as a high school teacher and librarian, Dr. Jean A. Curran turned her post-retirement years into a mission: to uncover why American education continues to struggle and how we can fix it. Curran spent nearly a decade examining education through the lenses of technology, pedagogy, and policy.The Sandbox Solution: Pathways to Education Reform blends r...

Through letters and other writings, this historical study chronicles an Irish Catholic family's influence on mid-nineteenth–century South Carolina.For Church and Confederacy unveils the lives of the Lynch family during the late antebellum and Civil War years. Settling in the South Carolina upcountry, Irish immigrants Conlaw and Eleanor Lynch imparted their ambitions to their children, several of whom would make exceptional marks in such areas as education,...

Communicating Mental Health: History, Contexts, and Perspectives explores mental health through the lens of the communication discipline. In the first section, contributors describe the major contributions of the communication discipline as it pertains to a broader perspective and stigma of mental health. In the second section, contributors investigate mental health through various narrative perspectives. In the third and fourth sections, contributors consider many applied contexts such as...