The author's main interest was economic history but on beginning to write this book he became aware that this was too large a task so he attempted "to trace one strand in the economic life of England from the close of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Civil War." This strand was agrarian life. The resulting book looks closely at rural life in England and discusses issues such as landlords, tenants, and smallholders.

Publisher description: The novel follows talented young saxophonist Latif James-Pearson as he migrates from Boston to New York in hopes of apprenticing himself to his hero, Albert Van Horn. The center of Latif's universe soon becomes his room in a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days alone, practicing intensely, and a downtown nightclub called Dutchman?s where Van Horn's group performs. There, Latif studies the musicians from afar, unwilling to meet Van Horn until he feels musically ready. It is at Dutchman's that Latif stumbles into another apprenticeship, this one to a charismatic drug dealer named Say Brother, and inadvertently comes under the wing of Van Horn's pianist, Sonny Burma. Latif also meets Mona, a white painter who is a regular at the club, and they begin a complex affair, which causes both of them to question their ideas about artistry, race, and love. As Latif drifts slowly toward the life of a hustler and away from that of a musician, Van Horn himself steps in and begins to mentor the young man, relating his own remarkable life story in the process. But even as Latif makes his way into his hero's inner circle, his frustration with his playing, the turn his relationship with Mona is taking, and the demands of hustling begin to take their toll. Desperate and in dire straits, Latif returns to Boston to seek the help of his mother, his first music teacher, and the crew of childhood friends he left behind. When tragedy spurs him to return to New York, Latif is forced to finally confront his music, Mona, and himself. An intricate, riveting, and original improvisation on classic themes, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important and beautiful new voice in American literature.

Presenting a full and precise description of all legal ties between landlord and tenant in early modern England, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After re-examines one of the key issues in English agrarian history - the question of the legal security of the copyholder. Comparing historical records and literary evidence, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After reprints much of the important 1969 edition of the book, and asserts that: * customary tenants enjoyed legal security in and before the sixteenth century * enclosures proceeded legally, without oppression, and in much the same form (whether ratified in parliament or not) throughout the whole period * depopulation was less extensive than sometimes supposed and that such depopulation as there was often proved economically profitable and not without social benefit. When first published in 1969, this fascinating book represented a unique viewpoint that affected, and in some cases reversed, much accepted opinion. As a landmark work in a highly important area of English agrarian history, it still has considerable impact today.