Rating: 
Summary: Easily the most random thing I have ever read
Review: What the heck was this genius thinking when he wrote this? He's brilliant and an awesome writer, and yet he manages to actually write something that I couldn't read more than a hundred pages of. I kept on thinking that it was another of those strange beginnings or something, but nothing ever happened. So the cross is stolen and found again, what does this have to do with little scientist man? It doesn't make sense. I'll admit, his masterwork, Ragtime, was also a weaving of several seemingly unrelated stories, but these stories aren't even interesting! I find that I don't care one way or the other about any of the characters. Besides that, I couldn't even tell when we were switching characters, and when I could, I couldn't tell what character we were switching to. Luckily, Doctorow has written enough good books to outweigh this disaster. I supose that it may have gotten better, but I'mnot going to risk it and try to find out. He's still my favorite author, but I pray that he redeems himself next time.
Rating:
Summary: god is in the details
Review: i was unable to finish the book because of the plethora of scientific mistaments in the first few pages: 1.the universe is not expanding at an exponential rate as stated on the first page. it may have expanded at this rate for a small fraction of a second of it's existence, but for the most part it expanded at a much lower rate. 2. the speed of light is not 183 million miles a second as stated somewhere in the first thirty pages of the book. 3. einstein would have been able to see himself in the mirror while traveling near the speed of light. that's the major point of the theory of relativity. 3. the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects, not to the distance between two objects as stated somewhere near the start of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: God in New York City
Review: Doctorow's latest novel explores the nature of religous faith for those for whom traditional forms of religion have become difficult or lost their meaning. The book straddles the line drawn by some people between religion (in the sense of devotion to a traditional creed) and spirituality (a personal devotion to the transcendent separate from any church or group.) The predominant form of religion in the book is Judaism, but it is very evolutionist, modernistic, and personal, in many respects, and definitely not tied to the texts and practices of traditional Judaism.The book is modernistic and episodic in tone with three principal voices: a journalist who seems to be a figure for at least some of the author, a lapsed Episcopalian priest, and a woman rabbi of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism. The three are drawn together by the theft of a cross from the Church and its mysterious appearance at the Synagogue. The "mystery" is dropped but it is mostly a vehicle to discuss the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, another theme of this complex book. There are long chillingly written scenes of the Holocaust which forms a backdrop to at least some of the thought and action of the principal characters. Also, important discussions of the philosopher Wittgenstein, which I found very apropos to the spriritual questing theme of the book, comtemporary physics, the big bang theory, and popular song and film. Doctorow has New York City in his bones and the large secular city is artfulllly drawn. In fact, one of the main themes of the book is the secular city (to steal a title from Harvey Cox's book of many years ago) and of a secular America with its own Civil Religion. Contrary to what I remember of Doctorow from earlier books, such as The Book of Daniel, Doctorow appears to me to cherish the city and America in their very variety and secularity for the purposes of spiritual growth and questioning that they afford. A wonderful development from the America-bashing of the 1960s. The book also shows song and poetry, (in the line of Whitman, Reznikoff, Ginsberg, W.C Williams) as components of a spiritual jounney towards self-understanding. As befitting a book with a title from St. Augustine, the book explores questions of original sin, the nature and possiblity of immortality and religious change. It shows the continual struggle of people with religious questions and, importantly, suggests an evolving religion, not necessarily bound to the forms of the past. The book does not give answers but provokes questions and is an antidote to all-pervasive smugness or indifference. A valuable book for those who want to think about religion and spiritual issues or to see why people think about them. Difficult to read, at the outset, but the effort will be rewarded.
Rating: 
Summary: Who has time for this?
Review: This is a book for someone with a long life ahead. As I grow older - and I just had a birthday yesterday - I have less time for puzzles like City of God. No doubt Doctorow is brilliant, but I no longer have time to spend on diversions that turn out to be mostly demonstrations of how clever the author can be in juggling multiple plot ideas and literary gimmicks. Fiction writers should remember that their work doesn't mean a thing if the reader doesn't read it. If they've a good point to make, they better make it easily accessible, because the novel has a lot of competition from other media these days.
Rating:
Summary: DO WE HAVE ENOUGH WOOD TO SPEND FOR PAPERS?
Review: Doctorow is one of my favorite authors. But this time I'm really sad! Literature, philosophy, religions is my area. And I'm not a reader-of-easy-readings. And I know that there are many books hard to read but you can read. City of God, a book, may be Mr Doctorow began to write down this "novel" with a big idea, he wanted to put some new-or-old "things"in it. But there must be very simple "thing"in every book. Write a book to read! And if you want to wite a book for just a few friends, a few professor who don't like to read a novel, and a few experts who write "good..perfect...revolution in literature!..." before read the book, you have no need to publish it. You can use a fotocopy machine, putthem in files and send by mail. To many papers means to many wood even if you use re-cyclings. (Sorry Mr Doctorow. My first star just for you and second star just for the name of book)
Rating: 
Summary: Sublime but frustrating & too deliberately innovative
Review: This book is at turns beautifully written and frustratingly opaque. After a string of very tight novels, Doctorow dispensed with literary convention and wrote something innovative and daring... and more than somewhat over the top. Though there are moments of sublime writing, the multiplicity of perspectives -- which the reader is forced to puzzle out -- is tedious. In its intentional striving towards novelty (no pun intended), the book reminds me of Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, except that Calvino doesn't take himself so terribly seriously; that Doctorow does is perhaps not surprising, though, given his topic (our conceptions of God). Ultimately I prefer Doctorow in a more sustained, disciplined style, as in The World Fair -- which achieves so very much exactly because its pretenses are so much more limited.
Rating:
Summary: utterly unreadable
Review: To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. This pretentious and overblown work aspires to be philosophical and grand-scale (a modern day Ulysses perhaps, but I shudder to compare this work to Ulysses which is one of my all time favorites) but is almost totally unreadable. Sure there are great snippets and some great writing, but unless you're planning on taking weeks out of your schedule, you simply will not be able to follow the threads. I'm happy to admit any shortcomings on my part as a reader for those inclined to criticize my lack of apprehension, but this work of genius really eluded me. I'll even say it went over my head. Having just finished Stendhal's The Red and the Black which was an enjoyable experience, I found reading this one a chore that I barely made it through. As I said, I did enjoy specific passages and some of the sub plots, but the pretentions to greatness and the obtuseness of the narrative wore me down. Good luck trying to get through it.
Rating:
Summary: City of God It Is Not
Review: I bought this book on the basis of the excerpt reviews on the book's cover. And the beginning of the book itself -- the Big Bang, etc. But I agree with the reviewers who have given it one star. In spite of my strong interest in philosophy, cosmology, fiction & literature & religion, the book did not sustain my interest. It does seem to be a notebook. I, too, have paid money for it; so, I will finish reading the last quarter of the book.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing and derivative
Review: This was the first book of Doctorow's I've read, and it was incredibly uncompelling. I skimmed through large sections of it because they were so annoying. The musings on the universe etc. were not new at all--anyone with a basic undergraduate background has been exposed to this information. The thoughts on religion, too, were very mundane. The "romance" was boring and almost non-existent. And just calling a story a "mystery" doesn't make it so. The best passages were the story of a young boy during the Holocaust, yet who but a total incompetent couldn't make such a story moving? This book seemed like a collection of journal entries that the author strung together. Very little effort seemed to go into turning it into a novel. Entire passages are repeated. It was painful to complete this book, but because I'd paid $... at the airport for it, I felt I had to finish.
Rating:
Summary: ..for PhD's only
Review: You know, I go through phases where I have to read, say, Oprah books, then Crichton-Follet type books and then ones such as this...I call them PhD books....'cause you have to be a PhD to read this stuff. Don't misunderstand me, this is wonderfully written, particularly in the riveting WWI and WWII-Ghetto scenes, as well in the basic plot which involves a crucifix mysteriously moving from point A to point B in Manhattan(I won't give this away). Now get out your PhD degrees and stay with me, here....the author uses this metaphysical displacement as an allegory, relating the judaical transformation of a Catholic priest as he marries a Rabbi woman...while at the same time suggesting to me, at least that such "crucificial" displacement was caused, after all, by nothing more mysterious than nervous molecules and atoms and quanta of light. Interesting, but exasperating as we plow through the book..take your time, hear him out and by all means read very carefully the last 5-10 pages, whereby our very essence as thinking yet religious human beings is put into question. Jews for Jesus...this is NOT your book...enjoy doc
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