Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times columnist and drama critic, has taken a break from the theater to write an extraordinary new book about an important link between Ireland and America. The book is entitled "White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America." William Johnson was born into a Gaelic-speaking, Catholic family in Ireland but later converted and became a Protestant, the only choice for a boy with such great ambition. Johnson would go on to serve the British Empire in North America in the 1730s. In New York State he became a successful fur trader and landowner. But he was perhaps best known because of his ability to forge cordial relations with the Iroquois Confederacy. In fact, after the French and Indian War broke out, Johnson led British, colonial, and Iroquois forces which defeated the French in a key battle. Johnson's style of warfare was so successful that the American revolutionaries would later adopt many of his tactics to defeat the British. O'Toole argues that Johnson, because of his closeness with native Americans, lived as a "white savage." O'Toole shows that North and native Americans were not always at each other's throats and were, in fact, often willing to work together. Johnson was capable of bringing these parties together. He spoke Mohawk and had two wives - one European, the other native American - and fathered quite a few children. More broadly, Johnson comes across as a central figure of the American Revolutionary period and also one of the more important - and overlooked - Irish Americans in early U.S. history. ($26 / 402 pages / FSG)