Preview of World's Fair Summary:

The concerns of a child's life—security, growth, fear, and love—are the subjects of World's Fair. The fictional child and the real author share the same first name, the same year of birth, and the same lower middle-class background in a Jewish section of the Bronx. E. L. Doctorow is playing games with history again, but this time the history is his own. The novel begins with the earliest memories of the child made welcome in his parent's bed and extends to his eighth year when he makes a visit with his parents to the World's Fair.

The larger political and economic problems of America in the 1930s are reflected in the novel as the little boy gradually understands the concerns of his mother and father. The hardships of the Depression are felt in the family when the father loses his...