![]() ![]() Along the way you can see how much has changed, and how much is the same-even today. Doctorow raises issues that were still affecting America as he was writing, from the abuse of power to racism to using sex to sell just about anything. Published in 1975, Ragtime was written during another period of upheaval in the United States, when the Vietnam War was drawing to a close. And Doctorow has stitched it together with stories of celebrities and stories of normal folks -like an upper middle class family, a Harlem piano player seeking justice and a recent Jewish immigrant trying to overcome poverty-to show how everyone affects history and no one escapes it. Doctorow's Ragtime is a portrait of a time in America that's not just biography or a re-telling of history. If that seems like an awful lot to fit in a novel, it is. Ragtime is their story, as well as the story of the America they lived in. Morgan? How about Emma Goldman or Evelyn Nesbit or Henry Ford? Well, once upon a time they were the people who were changing America, the people on the covers of our magazines and newspapers (they didn't have TMZ then). ![]()
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