Although I have enjoyed some of Doctorow's previous works, such as "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate", I struggled to even finish this disappointing work. Doctorow changes points of view so often and unpredictably in the book that it was sometimes baffling to read. In the end I felt that the author was simply trying to show us how much smarter he is than the rest of us and was suffering from a serious case of pretentiousness.