Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timePublished in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday … an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow’s imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
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A masterpiece
Good depiction of the times. Well drawn characters. Interesting story, well told.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. Highly recommended.
A true classic – and one of my all time favorites
Best book I ever read; read it several times.
The setting in the early 1900s in New York and the real life people such as Houdini, J.P. Morgan, the differences between living rich and living poor, political ideas, and racial discrimination all intertwine with the main characters’ lives. Sometimes it’s a chance meeting or taking a chance on a possible opportunity that changes one’s whole life, alters one’s thinking, and even allows one to grab the brass ring.