Rating: 
Summary: still recommending it . . .
Review: I read this book in 1993 for a class in college and I am still recommending it - it was so real and so well written. The whole story affected me then and continues to do so.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!!
Review: I read this for one of my college English classes and I loved it. I could not put it down. The beginning is a bit confusing because Doctorow jumps from present to past and from first person to third and so on, but once I caught on to hius style it was an easy read. Very moving though. Read the end with a tissue box nearby. Great if you want to learn about the Rosenbergs and MaCarthyism!
-SS
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the great American novel...
Review: I would like to say that I read this book because I'd heard of it, I'd heard of the author, and I really wanted to know what was so special about it. But the truth is that I read it because I had nothing else to read.However, from the moment I picked it up I knew that this was a special book. From the first page I knew that it would challenge and entertain and inform. From the first page I was enthralled. As a student of the Cold War and American 20th century history from abroad, it seems as if America's novelists have a cathartic urge to understand their country, perhaps unmatched anywhere in the world. There is a burning desire to understand what it was all about that enthralls many authors: DeLillo, Roth, to name a couple. This book is perhaps the best example of that quest for meaning in a period many people still find troubling. It is utterly human, brilliantly engaging, wonderfully drawn, and devastatingly important. When I picked it up, I'd never heard of E.L.Doctorow, by the time I put it down I was resolved to read everything he has written. Unspeakably wonderful. A great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Sordid Tale
Review: The story of the Rosenberg trial is certainly an interesting and important topic for a novel, but I hated the way Doctorow portrayed the characters. Aside from his exasperating writing style, Doctorow's characterizations of the Isaacsons bordered on the obscene. I did not care for any of the members of this family - not even the children. Daniel's cruelty to his wife cannot be excused by his experiences, and his and Susan's arrogance and self-importance made them very unlikeable. Of course, it probably wasn't the author's intention to make the Isaacsons warm and cuddly, but he could've restrained from making them so despicable.
Rating: 
Summary: NOT GOOD FOR HISTORY PROJECTS
Review: This book is not a very good idea to read for a history project, especially if you are 13 or younger like i was when i read this. It has some very innapropriate things in it, and it overall is VERY hard to follow. I suggest Tender Comrades if you are trying to find out about the Red Histeria during the cold war. If you are looking for a good read, look somewhere else!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Horrible
Review: This book is, without a doubt, the worst book I've ever been forced to read. The book is confusing, poorly written, long-winded, has too many lists, jumps between times too often and without warning. Students should never have to read this book for any grade. It doesn't enlighten anyone's life and never will. It serves no purpose.
Rating:
Summary: Novel or Thesis?
Review: This book reads much like a rough draft of a grad thesis, which is part of the premise as Doctorow's protragonist Daniel (aka Rosenbergs' son) works on a research paper, trying to make sense of his past. That is to say, it is quite boring and at times, quite desultory. It took me over a year to finish this book - expect it to be boring. The story concerns itself with the fate of the Rosenberg children ("Isaacsons"), who are seriously dysfunctional individuals - spiritually disconnected and morally confused, despite the facade of Daniel's conventional adult life. The book takes on many issues particular to the Cold War period - the New Left, activism, and the blinding of justice by reactionary ideology. None of these ideas are analyzed in a very interesting way, and Doctorow's prose is not exactly melodious. Just my reaction - many people will find this book intriguing. Its subject matter, anyway, is plenty to chew on.
Rating:
Summary: Bugs Bunny, totalitarian
Review: This is the first book I've read from E.L. Doctorow. His style is initially disconcerting because it isn't tethered to a linear structure. Time can't progress without folding in on itself. Even sentences are often interrupted and excised of all punctuation. Perspectives shift between first and third person -- which a previous reviewer noted can be confusing. Yet the book is so saturated in details, the characters display so many nuanced shades of anger and pride and cruelty and love, that it brings the book to a level that everyone can understand. The people in this book are such smart asses, all of them! Daniel's grandmother, the black man in his basement, the pathetic palsied Mindish who we're never quite permitted to hate. In that sense "Daniel" is a politically sophisticated work in that it acknowledges politics and government as flawed and limited structures created by flawed and limited people (like sentences). Daniel observes that his sister died by a lack of analysis. It's evident that an abundance of such is how he hopes to keep living. I left the book feeling like I was cheating myself by not having a mind as active and relentless as Daniel's. I'm grateful for this book. And I'm sort of glad it isn't very popular. Seems to confirm its authenticity.
Rating:
Summary: powerful...phenomenal
Review: This is the first book of Doctorow's I have read. Looking at his other books, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But it certainly wasn't this. Doctorow's work has the feel of Kerouac, Burroughs, Heinein's Starship Troopers, Kesey, and Kafka. He takes an incident from one of the most turbulent and trying times in our nation's history and spins a story of a young man trying to understand the life and death of his parents (executed for treason). Doctorow takes on religion, Disney, and the political and social attitudes of America. And he does it well. Daniel is a man who is both confused and very knowing. He's a radical but not like any you've seen before. Doctorow's style is a little disconcerting the first few pages (he jumps between first and third person, both from Daniel's point-of-view, sometimes in mid-sentence), but after you adjust to it, it seems the only way this story could be told. This is a book you have to read. I didn't put it on my list of "best ever", but it was definitely short-listed for it.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended for understanding our world at all
Review: Well, I`ve read this book (first paperback edition) in USSR still under communists - it was semi-underground literature for us all. I was amesed by intellectual brightness and courage and by author`s skill, might, mastership. This book is not only about America - it`s about us all, about the ways of totalitarianism - and it`s impact on the whole world and every soul in it. It is very sad and yet - very optimistic book. May be - prophetic.
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