[That Most Distressful Nation: The Taming of the American Irish] will come as a great relief to Irish-Americans (hereinafter known as the Irish), intellectuals especially. To be Irish has not been a handicap for some time, but neither has it seemed to offer many advantages. It is still a common impression, shared frequently by Irish liberals, that the race is notable chiefly for producing drunks, bigots and politicians. How pleasing it is to have Irishman Andrew Greeley, a sociologist (and priest) associated with the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, tell us that the Irish are affluent, well-educated and politically liberal, and that they even value independence in their children. Greeley's book might well have been called The Next Best Ethnic Group, since it turns out, as he would have it, that Irishmen (and women) are second only to Jews.

Yet this is not a chauvinistic book because...