'Ragtime' author E.L. Doctorow dies in New York at 84
Source: AP
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Few minds were as playful and as serious as E.L. Doctorow's.
Conjurer of old-time gangsters and ragtime stars. Commentator on wars and presidents and the laws of the land. Student of political and literary history and how they tell us who we are now.
Doctorow, who died Tuesday at age 84, was the rare American writer to move gracefully between lives as engaged citizen and solitary inventor.
"Underlying everything — the evocative flashes, the dogged working of language — is the writer's belief in the story as a system of knowledge," he wrote in the introduction to his essay collection "Creationists," published in 2006. "This belief is akin to the scientist's faith in the scientific method as a way to truth."
FULL story at link.
FILE - In this April 27, 2004, file photo, American author E.L. Doctorow smiles during an interview in his office at New York University in New York. According to Doctorow's son Richard, the author died Tuesday, July 21, 2015, in New York from complications of lung cancer. He was 84. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/79f108d1c7b04694b7067b8539e3c232/ragtime-author-el-doctorow-dies-new-york-84
= new reply since forum marked as read
I consider "Ragtime" to be the finest American novel to be written in my lifetime. I used to read ir around every Labor Day.
"The Book of Caniel" wasn't very far behind in my opinion.
Rest well, E.L. 
PEACE! 
I read Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The March, and his fictionalization of those New York brothers who were the crazed hoarders of hundreds of tons of junk in their apartment. Can't recall the title right now. But it was amazing how Doctorow was able to elicit sympathy for those kooks.
RIP, sir...
