Harvey has been a boxer, bartender, truck driver, public speaker, university official, and presidential speechwriter. Educated in England, Ireland, and America.
From time as a child in an orphanage to writing speeches for presidents, James Harvey travelled a rocky road to live out the American dream. In this memoir of his childhood, Harvey recreates the daily struggles of life in post-war rural Ireland and bomb-shattered London. This engrossing memoir grounds the struggles of the Harveys in both Irish history and British snobbery as the family fought for a place in the world. It takes the reader on a journey from the serenity of life in a rural thatched cottage ... through alcohol-fueled domestic violence in London's Kilburn area ... to the anguish of emigration.
Birth Place: Donegal, Ireland
Accomplishments: BlueInk Review
Harvey "possesses what many historians lack: storytelling prowess. That scene of escaping to an orphanage is a page-turner, and there are a dozen more just as gripping. Also fascinating is how James evokes postwar Ireland and England." —BlueInk Review
Clarion Review
“A timely memoir about international displacement . . . poignant memories . . . historical and cultural critiques written in a mature, professional voice . . . the prose is both intelligent and accessible, evincing love for Ireland in palpable language [with] the Irish landscape . . . portrayed as a place of “great healing peace. . . Grappling with Ghosts is an affecting memoir. —Foreword Clarion Review
The Irish Post
“Delivered by lamplight in old rural Donegal. . . . In the shadow of empire and economic hardship, one Irish childhood spans the transition from thatched cottages to postwar council flats—and all the ghosts in between. James Harvey's memoir captures the strangeness and struggle of a lost world." — Irish Post
Scholarship named in honor of James Harvey, 2023—National Superintendents Roundtable
Robert H. Koff Memorial Award for a Lifetime of Contributions to Public Education, 2024—National Superintendents Roundtable
https://www.schlechtycenter.org/nsr
Books
Grappling With Ghosts: Childhood Memories from Postwar Ireland and London by James Harvey Harvey, delivered by his grandmother in a thatched Irish cottage and raised in a London home wracked by alcoholism and violence, recreates the strange and remote realities of life in a postwar rural Ireland barely emerged from the 19th century and bomb-shattered London with “armless and legless veterans everywhere you turned.”...
Price:
$19.46
(eBook) Kindle (eBook),
Amazon.com,
LuluGrappling With Ghosts
Villanova University
College of Arts and Sciences Medallion, 2000
https://www1.villanova.edu/university/liberal-arts-sciences.html
Horace Mann League
Friend of Public Education, 2023
http://www.hmleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Fact-Sheet-2.pdf
National Superintendents Roundtable
Scholarship named in honor of James Harvey, 2023
Robert H. Koff Memorial Award for a Lifetime of Contributions to Public Education, 2024
https://www.schlechtycenter.org/nsr
