Generally, the reviews of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime have all been superlative, praising the novel as a rare evocation of American history and imagined life during the critical years before and during World War I…. Against the panorama of this era, with all of its turbulence and fury, an imagined family seeks its way toward the dreams of a peculiar brand of human achievement and ultimately to the ironic discovery of the dissolution of its dreams. At every level, Doctorow's narrative is compelling and painful in its intensity—both for the personal fate of its people and for its powerful imprint of a century in the making.

The history of an age is always deceptive because it lacks the vivid dramatization of life experienced internally…. Ragtime is history, but it is the past recreated in the dreams of its people. As the drama unfolds, the distant music of...