Bill Brett’s latest book, “Boston, Irish,” is literally a labor of love, a work that offers an evocative and deeply layered examination of the city’s unique Irish history and heritage, from the high and mighty to those whose impact upon the community has been quieter but no less important.
The cornerstone, of course, is Brett’s photographic treasure trove of the Irish and Irish Americans his camera lens has captured over his five decades as an award-winning photojournalist at the Boston Globe (his 50th anniversary with the newspaper was in June 2014). With Carol Beggy’s incisive, keenly hewn prose accompanying the book’s 262 photographs, “Boston, Irish” is a work that belongs not only in the hands of anyone with even a passing interest in the city’s rich Irish tapestry, but also in those of anyone with an interest in the history of Irish America and Ireland itself.
Brett has dedicated the book to his late mother, Mary Ann Brett, an Irish immigrant whose devotion to her family and her faith were the bedrock of the Brett family’s success. Her family’s saga both on the “old sod” and in Boston (Dorchester, in the Bretts’ case) will ring familiar for countless readers of Boston Irish.
