E. L. Doctorow · 1975 · global

E. L. Doctorow's 1975 novel. Three families - a comfortable white household in New Rochelle, an immigrant Jewish father and daughter, and a black ragtime pianist - are braided together with Houdini, Peary, Emma Goldman and J. P. Morgan. The century opens, and everyone in it is moving: north to the pole, south to Mexico, and up or down the American ladder.

1. 1
   New Rochelle

   In a comfortable house on the hill at New Rochelle, Father, Mother, the little boy and Mother's Younger Brother live in the certainty that the new century belongs to them - which the book spends its length dismantling.

2. 2
   The Arctic

   Father sails north with Peary's expedition toward the pole, into months of ice and monotony - and comes home to a household and a country that have moved on without him in ways he cannot follow.

3. 3
   New York

   In the city, Coalhouse Walker's Model T is wrecked by volunteer firemen and no court will hear him - so he takes the Morgan Library with an armed band, and the most cultivated building in New York fills with dynamite.

4. 4
   Atlantic City

   On the boardwalk at Atlantic City the family's new arrangement plays out among the wicker chairs and the bathing machines - the immigrant film-maker rising, the old household quietly dissolving into the twentieth century.

5. 5
   Mexico

   Mother's Younger Brother goes south to make bombs for Zapata and dies there, which is the most useful thing he ever does - and the novel closes with the war coming and the ragtime finished.