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Ragtime
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Ragtime Compact disc - 2016

by E. L. Doctorow; Read by E. L. Doctorow


About this book

Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow’s best-known novel, highlights the American melting pot and how the nation came to be what it is today. Set in the early 1900s, the story namely focuses on a wealthy family living in New Rochelle, New York, simply named Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother, Grandfather, and the boy. The boy, Father and Mother's young son, perhaps narrates the novel from a reminiscent adult perspective, but the omniscient narrator is never decidedly identified. The family’s turn-of-the-century journey of adaption addresses the tensions between reacting to the evolution of the era and executing revolution.

Yet Ragtime is far more than the family’s narrative. In a beautiful execution of historical fiction, the novel weaves together biographical subplots of prominent figures of the day, including J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, and Emma Goldman. The result: Ragtime focuses not on just the nameless or the famous, but how the two groups create history together.

Written when Vietnam was drawing to a close, Ragtime addresses issues that were affecting America at the time—from the abuse of power to racism to using sex to sell just about anything—but it also includes classic and enduring themes of morality, repression and injustice, change, and time.

Ragtime was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1975. It also won the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award the following year. The novel was adapted for a 1981 movie and a 1998 Tony award-winning Broadway musical. Ragtime is included in TIME’s “100 Best Novels” (since 1923) and ranked 86th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century.

From the publisher

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 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 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.

First Edition Identification

Random House first published Ragtime in New York in 1975. The 276-page first editions are bound in brown cloth. First edition dust jackets state the original price of 8.95. From the first printing, 150 copies were specially bound as rare Presentation Copies, which are numbered and signed by the author. Presentation Copies have sold for up to $400.

Details

  • Title Ragtime
  • Author E. L. Doctorow; Read by E. L. Doctorow
  • Binding Compact Disc
  • Edition Unabridged
  • Volumes 7
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Brilliance Audio
  • Date 2016-11
  • ISBN 9781531837204 / 1531837204
  • Weight 0.45 lbs (0.20 kg)
  • Dimensions 5.5 x 6.5 x 0.7 in (13.97 x 16.51 x 1.78 cm)
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

Citations

  • Publishers Weekly, 01/30/2017, Page 0