Emphasis Preaching Journal

E. L. Doctorow has given us a strikingly new kind of American novel in Ragtime. This is a fascinating picture of how America developed along with the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Doctorow creates a real feeling for how things moved and developed in the period which broke out in fury at the turn of the century. He does not run us through the ordinary type of simple American plot. Instead, he helps us to see how many forces work together in the society to produce one result. Suddenly we are made aware of how all these forces in the society also can work against the family.