Doctorow, E. L.

The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.

Recalls a certain New York City boyhood in the 1930s through the eyes of the child himself and then him as an adult trying to reconstruct the past.

Contains eleven short fiction stories by E.L. Doctorow that have never appeared before in book form, and includes a selection of his classic stories.

Three remarkable families lives' become entwined with Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Theodore Dreiser, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata at the turn of the century.