Abbreviations Used in Footnotes Preface to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition Introduction Ch. 1 Whiteboys, Ribbonmen, and Molly Maguires Ch. 2 The World of Antracite Ch. 3 Enter the Molly Maguires Ch. 4 The Rise of a Labor Movement Ch. 5 The Reading Railroad Takes Control Ch. 6 The Return of the Molly Maguires Ch. 7 Rough Justice Ch. 8 The Molly Maguires on Trial Ch. 9 Black Thursday Epilogue Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index

"This terrific book adds much to our understanding of the Molly Maguires and provides details about the social and ethnic landscapes of eastern Pennsylvania. It also sheds new light on how many Irish Americans understood Catholicism."--Michael A. Gordon, American Historical Review "This is a rich and subtly crafted interpretation of the Molly Maguires and their world, and the reader benefits from the prodigious research Kenny carried out...Kenny's definitive study presents a nuanced vision of the Molly Maguires' lives and the world they lived in; and his book sheds a remarkable light more generally on labour struggles in the mid-19th century."--Julie Greene, Labor History "Kevin Kenny's Making Sense of the Molly Maguires is easily the best book ever written about the subject. It is meticulously researched, carefully argued, and well written, and it brings all of the events to life...His book is a story of the hardships of the mines, of the power of the owners and their paid police forces, and most especially of the power of the media to portray the events in such a way as to inflame persons around the nation. And this book is about the way we write history...The controversy over the Molly Maguires will not end with Kenny's book. Some will see them as brutal terrorists and others as martyred heroes of the labor movement. But no one will ever again be able to think or write seriously about the 1870s violence in the anthracite coal region [of eastern Pennsylvania] without reading this stunning volume."--Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University, in a review for the History Book Club "Until now the Molly Maguires have dwelled in the half-light of myth and propaganda. No longer. In Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, Kevin Kenny dispels the shadows. Kenny gives us the flesh-and-blood men, their passions and grievances, the crimes they committed and the crimes committed against them. This is a first-class work of scholarship that unfolds with the power of a detective novel. Along with making sense of the Molly Maguires, Kenny has produced an outstanding piece of historical enlightenment. He made me think, and he made me weep. I am in awe of his achievement."--Peter Quinn, author of Banished Children of Eve "After thorough research in both Irish and American sources, Kevin Kenny has produced by far the best and the most sensitive treatment of the Molly Maguires, the Irish-born anthracite miners who battled corporate capitalism and its legal and clerical allies in Gilded-Age Pennsylvania. Kenny's book does far more than make sense of this important and tragic episode, for his is a very major contribution to our general understanding of working-class, immigration, and Irish-American history."--Kerby Miller, University of Missouri-Columbia "Making Sense of the Molly Maguires is destined to become a definitive work on the subject and one that this reviewer recommends highly."--Thomas Larkin, An Scathan "Kenny's treatment of the Mollies is thoroughly researched and neatly balanced...Kenny has assimilated and built on a century of scholarship. His excavation beneath the mythical qualities of the Molly Maguires is likely to be the standard work for some time."--Ken Fones-Wolf, Labor Studies Journal "Kevin Kenny's book plunges right into this complex amalgam of events and perceptions to understand both sides of the Mollys...Kenny's monograph is well reasoned and effectively constructed...[T]his study gives the Molly Maguires their proper place in late-nineteenth-century America, not as devils or angels, but as real men engaged in real and often violent struggles for a living and a life."--David A. Zonderman, North Carolina Historical Review "Intended as a book about the Molly Maguires both as an organization and as a symbol of unionism, Kenny tries first to understand how community was constituted among Irish-American miners. He then seeks to understand how the violent murders committed by a secret organization came to stand as a middle-class symbol of the dangers of unions and Irish workers...Kenny has demonstrated how the exploration of memory can help broaden the scope of labor history."--Scott Reynolds Nelson, Reviews in American History "[A] remarkably fine work of historical research and analysis."--Thomas Flanagan, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Kevin Kenny has certainly done historical justice to his fascinating, if elusive, topic...[O]ne should salute a scholar who takes on a controversial subject and, with sober mastery, rips off the veils of legend."--Michael Kazin, Washington Post Book World "A convincing and well-written book, Kenny's work clearly establishes the ways and means used to 'demonize' the Molly Maguires and through them the Irish and trade union movement...He 'makes sense' of the Molly Maguires and, in doing so, the economic, social, and political forces surrounding them...He opens a new and rich perspective on a well-known event."--Robert D. Sampson, H-Labor "This is a thorough examination of the role of the Molly Maguires in the bitter struggle of working people to attain justice in 19th-Century USA and an incisive expose of the ruthless methods employed against all efforts to organize labor...It would be especially useful in a course that studies American resistance movements."--Anthony Garavente, California State University "A bold, even a brave, book....[Kenny] has made sense of the Molly Maguires and...all historians of both American labour and Irish rural protest are in his debt. He has written a fine book."--David M. Emmons, Saothar "[The book] is a fascinating and compelling study which not alone contains a vivid account of the Molly Maguires, but also incorporates a sustained interpretation of the origins, ideology and broader importance of this shadowy grouping."--Immigrants and Minorities "Seldom have I read a book that does a better job than this one of unraveling popular mythology and clearing away the ambiguities surrounding a conplex and contentious topic. That it grew directly out of the author's Ph.D. thesis and will almost certainly be considered the standard work on the question for some time to come makes it all the more impressive."--Gary Owens, Journal of American Ethnic History "A valuable addition to the literature on the Molly Maguires and an aid to understanding this tragic episode in the history of Irish-American immigrant labour."--C.F. McGleenon, Seanchas Ardmhacha "Kevin Kenny has brought several new and valuable levels of analysis to the story by placing the Mollis within the contexts fundamental to 'making sense' of them--their Irish origins, the intense nativism they faced, and the opposition they encountered from the Catholic church."--Perry K. Blatz, Business History Review "[A] well-balanced and well-researched study which substantially increases our understanding of this legendary group."--Pennsylvania History "Despite the story's many retellings, Kenny's work remains a provocative vehicle for understanding the epic struggles between capital and labor in industrializing America, and for demonstrating the continuities between the old and the new worlds in the lives of immigrations....Kenny challenges the prevailing historiography of the Irish in America by acknowledging the significance of the immigrants' Irish roots in understanding their subsequent behavior after crossing the Atlantic....An imaginative and innovative history linking the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania's coal region to larger trends in Irish and Irish-American history. His book sets a new standard for subsequent work in these fields by bridging the gap between the exciting new scholarship in Irish social history and our growing understanding of the role of Irish Americans in the diaspora."-Janet Nolan, New Hibernia Review/ Iris Éireannach Nua "Kenny's book demonstrates how a concentration on the broader context of workers' lives illuminates not only the Molly Maguires, but the whole process of industrialization and its meaning for common people....Kenny's thoroughly researched and well-crafted study represents a breakthrough in many respects."--James R. Barrett, International Labor and Working-Class History "Historians, folklorists, novelists, and filmmakers have lavished attention upon the Molly Maguires....Kevin Kenny has written what is easily the best book in this large library....His critique is informed by recent explorations of the history of Ireland, which have replaced the familiar English versus Irish dichotomy with a panorama of regional and class diversity and a postfamine 'devotional revolution.'"--David Montgomery, Journal of American History

Kevin Kenny is Glucksman Professor of History at New York University. He is the author of Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2013), The American Irish: A History, and The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (OUP, 2023), among other books.

Selling point: An unsurpassed history of the Molly Maguires that combines American and Irish history in a vivid narrative Selling point: Connects the Molly Maguires for the first time to violent organizations in the Irish countryside Selling point: Illustrated with rare contemporary drawings of the Molly Maguires, their accusers, and their environment