Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (1975)

At the time that this novel was published--which was 1975--historical fiction was just not done.  Reading this in the 21st century, 37 years afterwards, this does not seem so innovative, but then it was.  Be that as it may, the setting is in New York before WWI--somewhere towards the end of the novel the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot, and we know where it goes from there.  Nowhere good.  But at the time that comes before that, there is a different feeling in America.  People are entrenched in the Jazz Age.  Crazy stunts are being pulled.  Houdini is all the rage--and when interest in his antics wanes in the U. S., he sets off for Europe to wow them there.  Socialism is on the rise, and Emma Goldman, the famous Russian immigrant who is best known for advocating birth control for women and being briefly suspected of a conspiracy to assassinate President McKinley, is very sympathetically portrayed here.  So it is very fun to read about the time period, and having real people who we recognize inhabit the story along side of people who are bona fide fictional is an enjoyable interplay of fact and fiction.  The story that overlies the historical one is about the overt as well as the unconscious racism of the times--not that we are at all beyond that, because as the Obama-Romney Presidential Election of 2012 clearly demonstrates, race still matters in the 21st century, just less so and for fewer people.  That part of the book is sadder and  therefore how much you like it depends on what you like to read.  I read it along with one of my sons because he was assigned it for a course on understanding American culture, and it surely does help with that.