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If you loved
Books like Ragtime
A kaleidoscopic, syncopated dance through turn-of-the-century America where historical titans and ordinary lives violently collide. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with Ragtime.
- kinetic
- kaleidoscopic
- turbulent
- nostalgic
- 01
Billy Bathgate M/TV
E. L. Doctorow
A lyrical, blood-soaked coming-of-age tale that transforms the brutal reality of the 1930s underworld into dark American mythology.
- 02
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz · 2007
A hyper-verbal, Spanglish-fueled tragicomedy about a doomed nerd fighting the weight of history and a generational curse.
- 03
Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem
A hyper-verbal, darkly comic spin on the classic noir, filtered through a mind that cannot stop playing with language.
- 04
Martin Dressler
Steven Millhauser · 1996
A hypnotic, architectural fairy tale about the dizzying heights and hollow center of the American Dream.
- 05
The Immigrants
Howard Fast
A sweeping, dramatic epic of ambition, forbidden love, and the relentless pursuit of the American Dream in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.
- 06
Jazz
Toni Morrison
A syncopated, intoxicating plunge into the vibrant chaos of 1920s Harlem and the haunting echoes of the past.
- 07
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
A mythic, soaring journey through ancestry and identity that blends the gritty reality of the American Rust Belt with the transcendent magic of folklore.
- 08
Let the great world spin
Colum McCann
A sweeping, polyphonic love letter to a gritty 1970s New York, where disparate lives are briefly united by a single moment of impossible beauty.
- 09
Rules of Civility
Amor Towles
A sparkling, martini-dry plunge into 1930s Manhattan society, where ambition and chance collide in a haze of jazz and cigarette smoke.
- 10
To Paradise
Hanya Yanagihara
A sweeping, symphonic epic that shatters the illusion of utopia across three centuries of American longing and heartbreak.
- 11
Liebeszauber
Louise Erdrich
A polyphonic, deeply rooted tapestry of family, survival, and the enduring pull of home across generations.
- 12
The 42nd Parallel
John Dos Passos · 1986
A kaleidoscopic, fragmented plunge into the chaotic birth of the American twentieth century.
