Michael Plemmons

Fianna: a Story Every Canadian School Child Learns, but One Conveniently Forgotten in America. Michael Plemmons

Harry Truman famously said: "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." Truman would love this book. Fianna recounts the largely forgotten story of an army of Union and Confederate Irish-American veterans who joined forces after the Civil War to invade British North America - what is now Canada. Their purpose: to overthrow centuries of British rule in Ireland by capturing sovereign territory on this side of the Atlantic. And for one brief historical moment, they almost pulled it off. As author Michael Plemmons says in his foreword, even for most well-educated Americans this history is "news." It's a story rarely taught in classrooms here, yet considered a seminal event in Canadian national history.