Doctorow: Collected Stories

A superb collection of fifteen stories—including “Wakefield,” the inspiration for the film starring Bryan Cranston—by the author of Ragtime, The March, The Book of Daniel, and Billy Bathgate

He has been called “a national treasure” by George Saunders. Doctorow’s great topic, said Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” This power is apparent everywhere in these stories: the bravery and self-delusion of people seeking the Ame...