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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, disap-pears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sig- mund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorows 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.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-able hardbound editions of impor-tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Librarys seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoringas its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

"'Ragtime' is a unique and beautiful work of art about American destiny, built of fact and logical fantasy, governed by music heard and sensed, responsive to cinema both as method and historical datum, shaken by a continental pulse....Its central excellence is its central vision, the idea of the book, which is generative without being obsessive, original without being clever."

Stanley Kauffmann, Saturday Review, 07/26/1975

"'Ragtime' is as exhilarating as a deep breath of pure oxygen....At times, the swift, short sentences suggest the pristine flicker of silent films; at others, the sharp angles and sardonic deployment of detail in 'Citizen Kane'....The grace and surface vivacity of 'Ragtime' make it enormous fun to read. But beneath its peppy, bracing rhythms sound the neat, sad waltz of 'Gatsby' and the tunes of betrayed promise. History resonates with special clarity here. Doctorow has found a fresh way to orchestrate the themes of American innocence, energy, and inchoate ambition."

Newsweek

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