Less than two months after losing so many residents to the World Trade Center attacks, the Rockaway section of Queens, New York, suffered another devastating blow: a plane bound for the Dominican Republic fell from the sky, killing over 200 passengers on board, as well as six members of the community of Belle Harbor. The loss of life, for Rockaway residents, could have been far worse. But it was yet another blow to this resilient community which, as Kevin Boyle's excellent new book indicates, has been taking hard knocks for over a century.

Boyle, a Brooklyn native, as is the case of so many of Rockaway's Irish American residents, watched the twin towers crumble from across the bay in Queens. But it was the plane tragedy on November 12, 2001 which spurred him to write "Braving the Wave." While the media flocked to Rockaway during those tragic months of 2001, Boyle's books makes it clear those journalists merely scratched the surface. He digs deeper and comes up with a fascinating slice of local history, much of it deeply Irish, and tilted toward the uniformed services.

Boyle's sections on men like George Johnson, one of the flag-raising firefighters at Ground Zero in the now-famous photo reminiscent of the marines at Iwo Jima, and Mike Moran, the firefighter who told a packed Madison Square Garden that Osama Bin Laden could kiss my royal Irish ass, might make some see this as just another superficial 9/11 book. They could not be more wrong. Boyle's book is a poignant, thoroughly Irish, but also universal look at one fascinating corner of the world. ($21.95 / 200 pages / Rising Star Press)