Irish Americans

Moloney recorded or produced more than 70 albums of Irish music and is credited with bringing traditional Irish music to a wider audience. He died July 27. Originally broadcast in 2006 and 2009.

In a 1996 interview, the late memoirist shares richly detailed memories of his Limerick childhood and his adult life in the United States.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli previews season two of the FX series The Riches, staring Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard.

Writer Alice McDermott won the National Book Award in 1998 for her novel, Charming Billy. McDermott has just brought out a new novel called After This, and our book critic says that it's a stunner.

Singer, musician and folklorist Mick Moloney's new album, McNally's Row of Flats, centers on theater songs by an Irish songwriting team from the late 1800s. In those days, Vaudeville and minstrelsy were giving way to American Musical Theater in New York City.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Tis" Frank McCourt's sequel to "Angela's Ashes."

Malachy McCourt is best-selling author Frank McCourt's ("Angela's Ashes") younger brother. He's just written a memoir of his own, entitled "A Monk Swimming." (Hyperion) It picks up where Frank's left off, in 1950s America. Malachy is also an actor and has had featured roles in the films "The Devil's Own," "She's the One," and "The Bonfire of The Vanities."

Television critic David Bianculli reviews "Scarlett," CBS's eight-hour mini-series that starts this Sunday. He says it's better than what most other critics are saying.

Novelist, journalist and columnist Pete Hamill. He's written seven novels, including "Flesh and Blood," and "Loving Women." Most recently he was editor-in-chief at the New York Post. He's latest book is a memoir of the years he spent drinking, "A Drinking Life: A Memoir," (Little, Brown & Co.) Hamill quit drinking twenty years ago. One reviewer in Publishers Weekly writes about Hamill's new memoir, "This is not a jeremiad condemning drink, however, but a thoughtful, funny, street-smart reflection on its consequences."

Author and Journalist T.J. English. His new book is "The Westies: Inside the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob." From the 1960's to the 1980's the mob led by James Coonan terrorized Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Testimony from a former hitman of the gang, Mickey Featherstone, eventually broke up the gang. English's book has been called, "a grotesque chronicle" of the gang and "reminiscent of Poe and Dostoyevsky in subject and character," by New York Newsday. English's book is published by Putnam.

Book critic John Leonard reviews "Harp," John Gregory Dunne's new memoir.

Journalist, screenwriter and novelist John Gregory Dunne. In his new book, Harp, Dunne explores what it means to be Irish Catholic in America. Dunne explores his own history - "from steerage to suburbia in three generations" - his college days longing to be a WASP, his family's scarred history (suicides, murders), and what he calls his "insane desire to be assimilated." Dunne's earlier novels include The Red White and Blue, True Confessions, Vegas and Dutch Shea, Jr.

Father Michael Doyle. He's the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Camden, New Jersey, which sits in the center of a rundown neighborhood in one of the most depressed cities on the East coast. A deeply religious man who over the years has had his differences with the church hierarchy, Fr. Doyle has committed his church to social change and helping the poor.