'Ragtime' wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
On January 8, 1976, Ragtime by E.L. The book deals with race relations in the 1920s, mixing fictional characters with real figures from the era. The book was made into a 1981 movie and a musical in 1997. The book established Doctorow as a major contemporary novelist.Doctorow was born in New York in 1931 and raised in the Bronx.