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Summary: Hohum
Review: First, this book was very easy to read. When I was in college, they said Life magazine was for people who couldn't read and the Readers Digest was for people who couldn't think. If you don't want to strain your brain and you want the story to float effortlessly from the pages into your brain, this is the novel for you. As for me, this book is typical of the trash written these days. I guess it's because I like to read stories which are plausible. I like to get some insight into the thinking of people who live very differently from me. But every now and then I enjoy easy trash, although I am not proud of that fact.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it!!
Review: This book is ingenious. If I were to write a novel, I would want it to resemble this in form - a complex structure of strings that suprisingly connect by the end of the reading. Doctorow weaves a great story, and one that exemplifies a point in America's history. It's fun, meaningful, and a very worthwhile read.
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Summary: A Great American Novel
Review: Its one moment of tasteless erotica aside, this novel is almost perfect: controlled, balanced, humane and exciting. Only the prissy, the philistine or the cretinously right-wing will dislike it. Anyone who has ever tried to write fiction will recognize it as a masterpiece.
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Summary: my favourite book.
Review: I first read this book when I was fifteen years old and honestly, no other book that I have read has ever managed to outshine its brilliance. What I love the most about Ragtime is the way that it enfolds all these characters (some real, some not)effortlessly into a wonderful plot. This book is brilliant, it made me want to be a writer it made me want to go to New York. I got to New york eventually,but because of Ragtime I felt as though Id been there so many times before.
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Summary: Ragtime, a symbol of the decline of American Literature
Review: As I read this book, I questioned how Doctorow could show his face in public, let alone proudly boast of his 'literary masterpiece'. I am a patient man, and as I sighed through the first 100 pages or so, I remained optimistic that the book could only improve; sadly I was naively mistaken. This book is a glorified textbook with some twisted truths added in to help it fall into the fiction category. The conflict in the book deals largely with assorted characters struggles to escape from a sort of oppression. Writing a stunning classic on this topic is about as unique and ludicrous as me planting a flag in my backyard and claiming to have discovered a new nation. Doctorow is arrogant enough to compare his book with such truly great works as To Kill A Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye, when in truth he should feel honored to be seen as an intellectual peer of the man who writes those "Clifford the Big Red Dog" books. I weep for America's future if this is supposedly one of the best books of the decade. At no point in this book did I find anything that even resembled a plot, therefore Doctorow, I award you no points.
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Summary: Congratulations!
Review: You have found the page for the best book ever written. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you deserve it. Now go click that order button at the top of the screen. Why? you ask. Because this is an example of Mr. Doctorow at his very best. Because it is so moving, it brought me to tears. Because you should, that's why.
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Summary: Ragtime! a brilliant accomplishment
Review: Like its title which refers to the fresh new music of synocapated beats, Ragtime is original, "fast", and a work whose time is long overdue. I read it for English class, and lucky I did because had I read it for History, my teacher may have thrown a fit... E.L. Doctorow uses a deft blend of factual and fictional characters and events. J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford meet and discuss Egyptian mysticism, the feminist Emma Goldman lectures the chorus girl Evelyn Nesbitt, Theodore Dreiser sits in a chair turning in circles. Although he occasionally assumes an indifferent tone, the magical mosaic of a plot will convince people otherwise. I think Doctorow liked writing this novel, and I think people will like reading it. "And by that time the era of Ragtime had run out...as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano."
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Summary: Excellent
Review: A short, entertaining novel which captures the spirit of the United States in the early 1900's. Ragtime captures the chaos and sense of change of the period: rags-to-riches, riches-to-rags, shifting classes, colliding cultures, anarchists, communists, and capitalists old (J.P.Morgan) vs. new (Henry Ford). An outstanding novel. Some have commented that the coincidences and interconnections in Ragtime are tortured and convoluted. Not so! The fact that Doctorow manages to elegantly weave these storylines is the true genius of the novel. Many of the coincidences occur subtly without barging into the plot; for example when the family meets Tateh and his daughter on the beach, they never become aware that they're connected via the fact that he and younger brother had a link with the Nesbit. There never occurs a final "ah-ha!" in which the threads all tie together, as in life some circles come to closure while some loose ends remain. Consider that three steps separate Booker T. Washington and Matthew Perry, two real-life characters who probably never met: Washington => Walker => Father => Perry. Likewise, four steps separate the fictional racist Firechief from the Archduke Ferdinand: Firechief => Walker => Family => Houdini => Ferdinand. Some steps are coincidental brushes (Houdini stops by the family's house) and some are deeper, but Doctorow's theme is that we're all more connected than we think. The reader is aware of links that never are revealed to the characters. This is not a historical novel, but a period piece, and one of the major themes of the period was that the world was becoming smaller. Newspapers, Ford's motorcars, flying machines, newspapers, exploding immigration, these are all phenomenon of America in the early 1900's which would bring a hick firechief leaps closer to a European aristocrat. Scott Joplin hovers over the novel throughout, both through Doctorow's writing style and through Walker's references, but interestingly only enters as a character (briefly and indirectly) when friends of the terminally ill composer threaten to sue when newspapers tie him to Walker. Briskly paced, entertaining, with interesting characters. Note that in movies like as Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia you'll see a reflection of Doctorow's mosaic style. An excellent novel, highly recommended.
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Summary: Like reading a magazine from the era
Review: "Ragtime" is a fictional overview of the Teddy Roosevelt and Taft eras of American history. This was a time of crucial social and political restructuring of American society, when a large influx of European immigrants coincided with the Industrial Revolution's increasing need for mechanized, low-skill labor, leading to exploitation of workers and the consequent formation of labor unions. At the center of the novel is a nameless family in New Rochelle, New York, representing a rising middle class. The father runs a patriotic flag and fireworks company, and for sport accompanies Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole. The mother's younger brother is a clever but impetuous young man who represents a growing social consciousness in the bourgeois fabric. The family takes in a poor young black woman and her baby. The woman has attracted a suitor, a black pianist named Coalhouse Walker who plays Scott Joplin rags for the family when he comes to visit. One day, when some racist firemen extort Walker for money and vandalize his car, his pique incites a chain reaction of violence and terror in his quest for justice. This story is intertwined with that of a family of destitute Jewish immigrants who have arrived in New York from Latvia. The father, who makes fancy silhouettes for a living, draws a series of flippable sketches to entertain his daughter, inventing the art of animation and eventually becoming a mogul in the burgeoning film industry. Meanwhile, the stories of several famous personages play like a tabloid in the background: Houdini performs daring feats of escape; prominent New York architect Stanford White is shot by eccentric millionaire Harry Thaw for fooling around with his wife; the fantastically wealthy financier J.P. Morgan lives like a king and indulges his fascination with Egyptology; Henry Ford utilizes the concept of interchangeability of parts, jobs, and workers to mass-produce cheap cars. There are also brief cameos by Freud, Theodore Dreiser, and Booker T. Washington. Doctorow writes as though he were creating a series of journal entries for a magazine, detailing everything that happens to the characters without getting too close or attached to them. Interestingly, there is only narration in the novel; all the dialogue is quotationless. On first glance the book may look ponderous because of this, but actually the short, declarative sentences and light tone keep the pace lively. It's rare to find a novel like this that informs as well as it entertains.
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Summary: Just plain BORING, a struggle to finish
Review: I just finished reading Ragtime, and I have to say that it was one of the worst books I have ever read. It was one of my choices on the list of books I could read for my 11th grade summer reading project, and I thought it would be interesting to read about different families at the turn of the century. Other reviewers have been mentioning that this book is creatively written and informative, and I'm not going to deny that. However, it was impossible to enjoy those characteristics due to the fact that it is a slow, boring read. In short, I highly recommend that you stay away from this book unless you have no choice but to read it, or are specifically interested in the time period.
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