Emmons (emeritus history, U. of Montana-Missoula) examines the lives of Irish-born and Irish American Catholics who made their way to the western parts of the US during this period, into frontier towns or farms where they vanished from history. His topics include systems of slavery in the Civil War era, most unlikely westerners, Indians and Irish on the border, clustered Irish across the meridian, patterns of Irish migration and settlement in the west, and the Irish strain in labor's western American heartland. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)