Title: Ragtime
Description: Published 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 & the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, NY, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. Almost magically, the line between fantasy & historical fact, between real & imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud & Emiliano Zapata slip in & out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family & other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler & a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
Subjects: Fiction, History, Race relations, African American families, Fiction in English, Jewish families, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Einwanderer, Ragtime, English fiction, United States -- History -- 1901-1909 -- Fiction, New York (State) -- History -- 1865-  -- Fiction, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Large type books, American fiction (fictional works by one author), New york (state), fiction, Fiction, historical, general
Places: United States, New York (State), New York, New York (N.Y.), Harlem
People: Henry Ford, Emma Goldman (1869-1940), J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), Harry Houdini
Time periods: 1901-1909, 1865-