Frank Mccourt Popular Books
Frank Mccourt Biography & Facts
Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930 – July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Early life and education Frank McCourt was born in New York City's Brooklyn borough, on August 19, 1930, the eldest child of Irish Catholic immigrants Malachy Gerald McCourt, Sr. (October 11, 1899 – January 11, 1985), of Toome, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, who was aligned with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence, and Angela Sheehan (January 1, 1908 – December 27, 1981) from Limerick. Frank McCourt lived in New York with his parents and four younger siblings: Malachy Jr. (1931-2024); twins Oliver and Eugene, born in 1932; and a younger sister, Margaret, who died just 21 days after birth, on March 5, 1934. In fall of 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression, the family moved back to Ireland. Frank was 4 years old. His brother Malachy was 3 and the twins were 2 years old. Unable to find steady work in Belfast or Dublin and beset by Malachy Senior's alcoholism, the McCourt family returned to their mother's native Limerick, where they sank even deeper into poverty. They lived in a rain-soaked slum, the parents and children sharing one bed together, McCourt's father drinking away what little money they had. His father, being from the north and bearing a northern accent, found this trait to be an added stressor to finding a job. The twins Oliver and Eugene died in early childhood due to the squalor of their circumstances, and two more boys were born: Michael John, who later lived in San Francisco (where he was called the "Dean of Bartenders") until his death in September 2015; and Alphonsus, who published a memoir of his own and died in 2016. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was 11. McCourt related that when he was 11, his father left Limerick to find work in the factories of wartime Coventry, England, rarely sending back money to support his family. McCourt recounts that eventually Malachy Senior abandoned Frank's mother altogether, leaving her to raise her four surviving children, on the edge of starvation, without any source of income. Frank felt obliged as a child to steal bread, milk, and lemonade in an effort to provide for his mother and three younger brothers, until relatives stepped in to aid the family. Frank's formal education in Limerick ended at age 13, when the Irish Christian Brothers rejected him as a student in their secondary school. Frank then worked for the post office delivering telegrams from age 14 to 16; then he worked for Eason's delivering magazines and newspapers, and he gave most of what he earned to his mother. Less formally and in secret, he wrote debt-collection letters for a local Limerick woman who paid for clothing and other items and allowed debtors to make payments with high interest rates. Frank saved his money and once he had saved enough to pay the fare to New York and have some money upon his arrival, he left Ireland on a freighter, at age 19. Career Early career In October 1949, at the age of 19, McCourt left Ireland. He had saved money from various jobs including as a telegram delivery boy and stolen from one of his employers, a moneylender, after her death. He took a boat from Cork to New York City. A priest he had met on the ship got him a room to stay in and his job at New York City's Biltmore Hotel. He earned about $26 a week and sent $10 of it to his mother in Limerick. Brothers Malachy and Michael followed him to New York and so, later, did their mother Angela with youngest son Alphie. In 1951, McCourt was drafted into the U. S. Army and sent to Bavaria for two years, initially training dogs, then working as a clerk. Upon discharge, he returned to New York City, where he held a series of jobs on docks, in warehouses, and in banks. Teaching Using his G.I. Bill education benefits, McCourt talked his way into New York University by explaining that he was intelligent and read a great deal; they admitted him on one year's probation provided he maintained a B average. He graduated in 1957 from New York University with a bachelor's degree in English. He taught at six New York schools, including McKee Vocational and Technical High School in Staten Island, New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, Seward Park High School, Washington Irving High School, and the High School of Fashion Industries, all in Manhattan. In 1967, he earned a master's degree at Brooklyn College, and in the late 1960s he spent 18 months at Trinity College Dublin, failing to earn his PhD before returning to New York City. He became a regular English teacher at Stuyvesant High School after his doctoral studies. In a 1997 The New York Times essay, McCourt wrote about his experiences teaching immigrant mothers at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn. Writing McCourt won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1997) and one of the annual National Book Critics Circle Awards (1996) for his bestselling 1996 memoir Angela's Ashes, which details his impoverished childhood from Brooklyn to Limerick. Three years later, a movie version of Angela's Ashes opened to mixed reviews. Northern Irish actor Michael Legge played McCourt as a teenager. McCourt also authored 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of Angela's Ashes and focusing on his life after he returned to New York. He subsequently wrote Teacher Man (2005), which details his teaching experiences. Many Limerick natives, including Gerry Hannan and Richard Harris, accused McCourt of greatly exaggerating his family's impoverished upbringing and hammering his mother. McCourt's own mother denied the accuracy of his stories shortly before her death in 1981, shouting from the audience during a stage performance of his recollections that it was "all a pack of lies." When McCourt travelled to Limerick to accept an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Limerick, those living in the city had mixed feelings about his book, or what they had heard about it if they had not read the book. McCourt was defended by Limerick socialist TD Jim Kemmy, who described Angela's Ashes as " the best book ever written about working class life in Limerick". Many of his Stuyvesant High School students remembered quite clearly the mordant childhood anecdotes he continually told during sessions of his senior-level Creative Writing (E7W-E8W) elective. Reviewers in the US had high praise for his first memoir, including the literary critic for The New York Times. McCourt wrote the book for the 1997 musical The Irish… and How They Got That Way, which featured an eclectic mix of Irish music from the traditional "Danny Boy" to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Recognition McCourt was a member of the National Arts Club and was a recipient of the Award of Excellerhe Irish American of the Year by I.... Discover the Frank Mccourt popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Frank Mccourt books.
Best Seller Frank Mccourt Books of 2024
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Tis
Frank McCourtFrank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redempti...
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Death Need Not Be Fatal
Malachy McCourt & Brian McDonaldBefore he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death sometimes hilarious and often poignant and on what will or won't happen after his last brea...
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Teacher Man
Frank McCourtNearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixtysix, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of ...
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Tales from the Los Angeles Dodgers Dugout
Rick Monday, Ken Gurnick & Tommy LasordaIt took something truly remarkable to save the 1981 Major League Baseball season from being remembered only as the year of the players’ strike. It took the Los Angeles Dodgers: Fer...
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Galway Bay
Mary Pat KellyIn the bestselling tradition of Frank Delaney, Colleen McCullough, and Maeve Binchy comes a poignant historical family saga set against the Famine. In a hidden Ireland where fisher...
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Half Broke Horses
Jeannette WallsFrom the author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon“Walls vividly depicts her astonishing, resilient grandmother with a lightness of touch that is plainspoken yet heartfelt” (Chi...
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The Big Chair
Ned Colletti & Joseph A. Reaves“An important contribution to 21stcentury baseball literature. . . Mr. Colletti’s book might be even more groundbreaking [than Moneyball] in some ways: It’s a nearly unprecedented ...
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The Dodgers
Michael SchiavoneIn 1957, the Dodgers left their home of Brooklyn, New York, where they had been since their inception in 1884, for the sunny hills of Los Angeles, California. Since arriving in LA,...
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The Best Team Money Can Buy
Molly KnightWith a new Afterword covering the 2015 season.The bestselling, insidetheclubhouse story of two tumultuous years when the Los Angeles Dodgers were remade from top to bottom, becomin...
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The Choice
Edith Eva EgerA New York Times Bestseller“I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability t...
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The Boy at the Gate
Danny EllisDanny Ellis is a survivor, strong and resilient. An acclaimed singer/songwriter, he is proud of the way he handled his difficult past: poverty in the 1950s Dublin slums and t...
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Faith
Victoria ZackheimDelve into this thoughtprovoking collection of personal essays from awardwinning and bestselling authors who explore the perennial question: What do I believe?Whether believer, ske...
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Real Irish New York
Dermot McEvoyAs they entered their six hundredth year of British occupation, the Irish looked to America. By the 1840s, America was the oasis that the Irish sought during a decade of both famin...