Best Place Of All

This book has all the ingredients of a traditional Irish-American saga — eloquence, humer, pathos — but this is also the fast-moving story of immigration in the twentieth century and how one dynamic go-getter embodies multigenerational progress. “Smiling Jim” Cahillane plunges into the life of mid-century Northampton, founding a family, setting up a business, and trouncing political rivals. His son’s rollicking tale follows the new arrival, a nobody from a small corner of rural Ireland, for threee decades until he becomes President Kennedy’s “Mayor Jim” and a traveler between Old and New Worlds.