Volume 2 of Thomas Flanagan’s Irish History Trilogy The second volume of Thomas Flanagan’s best-selling Irish-history trilogy (which begins with The Year of the French and closes with The End of the Hunt) is set at the turn of the twentieth century, though its action revisits the thrilling revolutionary period of nearly half a century earlier. It is 1904 and the young historian Patrick Prentiss is visiting rural Kilpeder to research the townspeople’s rebellion during the 1867 Fenian Rising. Drawn into the events of that turbulent year by the intimate narration of the survivors, Prentiss discovers the struggles of the Irish nationalist movement refracted in the lives of those who participated in the failed revolt and its aftermath.

Volume 3 of Thomas Flanagan’s Irish History Trilogy This third volume of Thomas Flanagan’s best-selling Irish-history trilogy (which begins with The Year of the French and continues with The Tenants of Time) brings to epic life the events of the Irish War of Independence. Flanagan’s gaze is both world historical and intimate as he tells the story of Janice Nugent, a recent war widow who strikes up a romance with Christopher Blake, a historian and propagandist for the IRA; of Patrick Prentiss, discharged from the British army after losing an arm in World War I to find Dublin engulfed in civil turmoil; of a Virgil-toting gunman named Frank Lacy; and of a panorama of meticulously drawn historical figures on both sides of the conflict, from Winston Churchill and Lloyd George to Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins. While violence escalates and losses mount, the once-mighty British Empire shows signs of strain and Irish independence finally glimmers on the horizon.

Norman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan. Making his rounds from apartment to apartment, Moonbloom confronts a wildly varied assortment of brilliantly described urban characters, among them a gay jazz musician with a sideline as a gigolo, a Holocaust survivor, and a brilliant young black writer modeled on James Baldwin. Moonbloom hears their cries of outrage and abuse; he learns about their secret sorrows and desires. And as he grows familiar with their stories, he finds that he is drawn, in spite of his best judgment, into a desperate attempt to improve their lives. Edward Lewis Wallant's astonishing comic tour de force is a neglected masterpiece of 1960s America.

Life as a tenant farmer in a society where ownership was revered but tenancy was of vital importance.