Memories of the Irish Potato Famine from 1845–1850 were so devastating for the survivors that few ever talked about it, even among their own family members. But Susan Campbell Bartoletti has managed to uncover enough first-person anecdotes to personalize her balanced account of the history and politics behind the Great Famine. This book also includes information gleaned from newspapers and public records, in addition to secondary sources. Her narrative, accompanied by period sketches, chronicles the effects of years of potato blight, which led to massive starvation, disease, emigration, and the complete failure of an economic system based on absentee landlords and tenant farming. (Ages 11–14)