"James T. Farrell's five novels about the O'Neill and O'Flaherty families are among the incontestable masterworks of American culture. The series provides a panorama of first and second generation immigrant experience that is indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand life in the twentieth-century United States." Alan Wald, professor of English and American culture, University of Michigan "The influence of James Farrell's work has been pervasive and accumulative as generation after generation of American writers continue to explore the urban subjects that Farrell so forcefully defined." Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed with Magellan, and other fiction