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E. L. Doctorow
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The Book of Daniel Paperback – April 1, 1996

by E. L. Doctorow (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 513 ratings
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In 1967, Daniel, the son of two convicted spys executed by their own country, ponders his life, his sister's radicalism, his appreciation for his wife and son, and the hypocrisy of the moralistic ideals upon which this country was based. Reprint.
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  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Plume
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 1996
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0452275660
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0452275669
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plume (April 1, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0452275660
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0452275669
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 513 ratings

About the author

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E. L. Doctorow

E. L. Doctorow

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E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career [places] him . . . in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
513 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Janelle
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2010
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The Story: As the novel opens a young man named Daniel, his wife and their baby are traveling to Worcester MA to see Susan, Daniels sister, who has recently attempted suicide. The most important event in Daniel and Susans childhood was the execution of their parents during the 1950s era Red Scare for conspiring to commit espionage. Susan has never been able to get past the trauma. She has however become a radical protesting the Vietnam War and wishes to set up a fund for revolutionary groups in memory of her parents. Daniel however is far more conflicted about the legacy of his parents and it's effect on him. While Susan became a radical Daniel removed himself from politics. He is supposed to be writing his dissertation at Columbia but instead writes "The Book of Daniel" a recounting of the time just before, during and after the execution of his parents. The novel is not linear Daniel bounces between his present circumstances, his childhood and points in between. He also shifts from 1st to 3rd person at random. Daniel alternates throughout the novel between a deep respect and admiration for his parents and a mocking disdain for them.

The Good: Pretty much everything. The non-linear narrative structure really conveyed how the execution of his parents reverberated through every aspect of Daniels adult life. Daniel is not always particularly likeable. He abuses his wife and in one instance his young child. Yet throughout you understand why Daniel is this way. The parts recounting Daniels childhood created a strong sense of claustrophobia as the story moved towards his parents execution. Daniels parents were not portrayed as revolutionary maytrs rather they were everyday people who happened to have radical ideas. I particularly loved how an entire period in history was encapsulated in the experience of one family. The most amazing thing about this book by far was the humanity of each character. From Daniels parents, to Daniel himself and to his sister Susan, even to the most unsympathetic Dr Mindish, each is ultimately only a flawed human being struggling to come to terms with their own lives and choices.

The Not So Good: Nothing to say here. I feel like anything I would think up would be at best nitpicky and at worst seeking out a criticism for its own sake.

The Bottom Line: For an unflinching and at times heartbreaking examination of how individuals get caught up and carried away by the currents of history pick this up.
9 people found this helpful
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Martha Miller
4.0 out of 5 stars The Rosenbergs
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2016
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I've been trying to read more Doctorow since his death. I have read several others, but I wanted to read him homage to the Rosenbergs. The story is told by the son and is at the same time first and third person. I found the childhood of Daniel and his parents arrests, trials and executions interesting and well told. These stories are woven in with an adult sadistic Daniel who (understandably) is still seeking answers. And I suppose if there's something I didn't care for it is his unapologetic treatment of his wife. As I said, it is understandable. I just wonder if it was the path of least resistance.
5 people found this helpful
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Roger Rohweder
3.0 out of 5 stars Unnecessarily difficult
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2017
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An interesting story, with a number of poignant moments, but made complicated by his jumping around in time with no hint that the he has shifted again. And again. Sexual comments seemed to be inserted as an “I am liberated” badge, rather than to enrich the moment. A long opinion piece.
One person found this helpful
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Eric Maroney
5.0 out of 5 stars The Great American POMO Novel
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2015
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E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel is a fictionalized exploration of the Rosenberg’s arrest, execution, and the impact it had on their two children. Unlike other historical novels written by Doctorow, this novel does not use the names of real historical figures (for when the book was written, they were still alive) but he employs the same techniques he does in subsequent novels, weaving fiction and non-fiction elements into the whole.

As this book was written in 1971 so there are very many post-modern elements within. Most of the novel is Daniel’s first person exposition of events, but suddenly the narrative changes, often in mid-sentence, to third person. The book is fractured: letters, journal entries, Daniel’s dissertation, and presents us three endings, one more than The French Lieutenant’s Woman, written in 1969.

Doctorow is a masterful novelist, at home in any genre or technique, so these stunts are not forced or frivolous but integral to the plot. If you want to read a POMO novel without the gags and tricks of someone with a fresh MFA, playing with their new found toys, read this novel.
11 people found this helpful
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kathy miriam
5.0 out of 5 stars or swallowing the patent misogyny--or taking it into account--I can't believe i never read this great author before
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015
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Despite, or swallowing the patent misogyny--or taking it into account--I can't believe i never read this great author before. the Rosenberg execution is a kind of historical trauma, in particular for the left, and probably more in particular for Jewish members of the left. it shadowed my own childhood. I was impressed by the striking shifts in point of view--the ease in which the author moved from third to first person. I was moved by this kind of transition, moving inside and outside of the main character. I felt that the trauma was etched beautifully. The novel has an unusual quality of experimentation and accessibility. strong storytelling but stylistic innovation to some extent.
11 people found this helpful
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L. K. Brown
4.0 out of 5 stars It's a wonderful book, but just too long
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2016
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This is a historical novel about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their children. The names are different and instead of two sons, the couple has a son and a daughter. It's a wonderful book, but just too long, so it becomes tedious after awhile.
13 people found this helpful
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Reuben Sivan
2.0 out of 5 stars Bad edition (Kindle) of a great book
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2014
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I am afraid anyone looking at my low rating will think I rated the book contents. Amazon.com does not allow rating the book edition separately from the content, but if it did I would have given 5 stars to the book contents, and 1-2 stars to the terrible Kindle edition.
In a nutshell, the editions is full of errors, misspellings, missing words, incorrect capitalization, in short it was probably done by a scanner without a proper editor ever reviewing the result.
I verified these errors against a paper edition (Modern Library Edition 2005)

As an example, these three locations have "well" instead of "we'll" (it is correctly spelled in the printed edition):

P. 49: Well teach you!
p. 57: I will go back and take them to the park and well see if there are any boats on the river--
p. 58: There," Phyllis said. "You take a nap now. And soon well be at your grandma and grandpa's house

It's a shame!
88 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Carmen Dumitriu
4.0 out of 5 stars Buono
Reviewed in Italy on March 31, 2016
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Il libro va bene, e arrivato un po' in ritardo, ma e stato utile comunque. Sarebbe bene se non li servirebbero due settimane per mandare il libro.
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alex proctor
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is written from the perspective of Daniel and explores the Macarthy period with great insight and telling observation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2015
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This deals with the arrest and trial and subsequent execution of the Rosenburghs and the effects their incarceration had on their two children . The book is written from the perspective of Daniel and explores the Macarthy period with great insight and telling observation. If anyone needed to be convinced why the death penalty should be abolished in America, then the description of both their deaths is essential reading. Horrendous period in American history - but with the rising inequality in the USA today the book still has relevance on Americans ideas on freedom and the pursuit of happiness!
2 people found this helpful
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Michael Schäfer
5.0 out of 5 stars A most intriguing piece of "postmodern" fiction
Reviewed in Germany on September 6, 2011
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E.L. Doctorows 1971 novel "The Book of Daniel" is both a fictionalization of the then controversial execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as "atom bomb spies" for the Soviet Union in the Cold War and Anti-Communist hysteria in the USA of the early 1950s and the McCarthy era, as well as an intriguing piece of fiction in its own right, a novel about a young man and his struggle to come to terms with his past and his present life. Daniel Lewin, protagonist and narrator of the novel, is a young graduate student and the elder of two children of the deceased Communist couple Rochelle and Paul Isaacson (easily identifiable as "the Rosenbergs"). In the course of the novel, the reader is granted more and more insight into his present life with his wife and his baby son, his conflicts with his foster parents and his sister, his struggle to position himself as a criticial thinker in the political framework of Vietnam War-traumatized America, and his longing to finally get to know the truth about why his parents were actually executed by a state that claims to be democratic and based on principles of justice. Thereby, the text is shaped by what one could label "postmodern" techniques: Neither is Daniel's life story told in a linear fashion, nor is he a reliable narrator, but rather a very doubtful and sometimes horribly unlikeable character, who on the other hand proves to possess a very intelligent and self-critical mind and does not take anything for granted, not even the left-wing myth of his own parents as heroes. Thus, "The Book of Daniel" delivers an intriguing mixture of captivating episodes of treason and betrayal, sex, rock music and drug abuse, but also reflections about post World War II US governmental policy, political systems in general and, last but not least, Communist ideology, with a critical focus on all these aspects. In this way, the novel manages to draw a multi-layered, critical, clear-sighted and unideological portrait of two periods of American history which are heavily intertwined - and certainly worth looking at from our 21st century perspective. But the most intriguing thing about Doctorow's novel is the fact that albeit this strong political focus, it is still a most personal and touching story of an angry, yet not inhuman young man who has suffered immensely, and who desperately strives to make sense of his existence. "The Book of Daniel" is one of the most complex and intriguing works of American fiction I have ever read - I can only recommend it to everyone who is willing to have a good read not exclusively for the prupose of quick entertainment, but also for serious reflection about such concepts as life, love, death and politics.
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Nadia Kamolz
5.0 out of 5 stars My absolute favorite book of all time.
Reviewed in Germany on January 9, 2022
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Very touching
Based on a true story about the Rosenbergs being arrested and the effect
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Mrs's anon
4.0 out of 5 stars Based on the Rosenbergs.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2021
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Got very depressed as I read. Had just finished the biography of Ethel Rosenberg which is why I read it. As dark as its cover. Couldn't empathise with the narrator. Didn't enjoy it.
One person found this helpful
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