Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights:#1 I am blessed among men. I was encouraged by my daughter, Maggie, and my wife, Ellen, while writing this book.#2 My father, Malachy McCourt, was born in Toome, County Antrim. He grew up wild, in trouble with the English, or the Irish, or both. He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head. When I was a child, I would look at my father and wonder why anyone would give money for a head like that.#3 My mother, the former Angela Sheehan, grew up in a Limerick slum with her mother, two brothers, Thomas and Patrick, and a sister, Agnes. She never saw her father, who had run off to Australia weeks before her birth.#4 My grandmother’s troubles began the night she was born. She was born with her head in the New Year and her arse in the Old, or was it her head in the Old Year and her arse in the New. She had to write to the Pope to find out what year she was born in.