Meticulously researched, The America's Emerald Kings examines the Kennedys as exemplars of the Irish Catholic experience. Beginning with Patrick Kennedy's arrival in the Brahmin world of Boston in 1848, Thomas Maier delves into the deeper currents of the often spectacular Kennedy story, and the ways in which their immigrant background shaped their values--and, in turn, twentieth-century America--for over five generations. Bringing together new research, exclusive interviews, as well as his own experience as an Irish American, Maier brilliantly illustrates the defining role of the immigrant experience for the country's foremost political dynasty.