Miller and his colleagues labored mightily to make Land of Canaan inclusive. They represented literate personalities from Ireland's various economic and social classes, but also did their best to give voice to those who could not write. They sought, in copious footnotes, to explain every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph that might seem obscure to readers circa 2004. Reviewing the book in the Irish Times, journalist and author Brendan O'Cathaoir called it a "treasure trove" and a "monumental work."

Lee, the New York University and University College Cork professor, says the new book "sets the standard for all future endeavors of this type. The combination of scholarship, intellect, imagination and craftsmanship has already earned the volume enthusiastic endorsements, and will earn many more as the full richness of the treasure trove, so delicately excavated, burnished and presented, comes to be ever more widely known."

Both admirers and critics often assume that Irish blood courses through Miller's veins. They are mistaken. In fact, Miller's research expertise derives from coincidence and serendipity rather than heritage. Born in Phoenix in 1944, Miller hails from a Protestant family of public school educators. His mother and her ancestors hail from around Moberly, Mo., but moved to Arizona during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Baptized as an Episcopalian, raised as a Congregationalist in reclaimed desert, Miller knew nothing about the Irish as an adolescent. Miller's mother taught high school English; his father followed the guidance counselor track to become a high school principal.

Miller doesn't recall feeling a burning desire to become a history professor, but says he did feel a fondness for historical study. He earned a degree in history from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., where he also played forward on the basketball team. Still uncertain about a vocation, Miller applied to graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley. Its history department attracted top students from places like Harvard and Yale; Miller recalls feeling, at first, somewhat underprepared and overmatched. It also attracted top professors, and lots of them -- Miller says they probably numbered 100 -- offering courses in nearly every specialty imaginable. Somehow, though, Irish history went largely unrepresented. Miller completed his master's a year after entering. He earned his doctorate nine years later, under the supervision of well-known U.S. Civil War historian Kenneth Stampp.

Under Stampp's tutelage, Miller gravitated toward history courses about the Old South, including those about slavery. That interest broadened into curiosity about oppressed cultures outside the United States, especially how the systems of slavery in the Caribbean, Central and South America compared to North American slavery. In an unexpected way, African-American history led Miller to Ireland. Miller enrolled in a seminar taught by Stampp about Northern race relations during the Civil War era. Casting around for a topic within that narrow rubric, Miller happened on the 1863 draft riots (think "Gangs of New York," the recent Hollywood blockbuster); those riots, as it turned out, involved lots of Irish immigrants to the United States, with racism against African-Americans part of the mix.

One unanticipated byway led to another, until, in 1972, Miller received a Ford Foundation fellowship for study in Ireland. Spending most of his time in Dublin, Miller fell in love with the culture. He quickly came to believe that "by attempting to understand and clarify the central motifs of Ireland's tragic history, I might also unlock the mystery of my own instinctive affection for that country and its people."

When the time arrived to apply for a job, Miller could think of nothing other than a college faculty position. He mailed lots of applications -- about 80 total, as many as half of them to institutions outside of the United States. MU's history department expressed interest -- not because they needed an Irish-American specialist, but because they wanted a historian of urban studies.

"The chair of the search committee apparently figured my knowledge about the Irish in American cities was enough," Miller says with a wry smile. He took the job.