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    The Book of Daniel: A Novel
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    The Book of Daniel: A Novel
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    The Book of Daniel: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Book of Daniel: A Novel

    Written by E.L. Doctorow

    Narrated by Mark Deakins

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.

    His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.

    Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life-marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him.

    In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different.

    It is a confession of his most intimate relationships-with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him.

    It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents' innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House.

    It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel's interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks.

    It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case-lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself.

    It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country-its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.

    It is The Book of Daniel.

    Cover art: Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55. Art ( c ) Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 17, 2013
    ISBN9780804163781
    Unavailable
    The Book of Daniel: A Novel

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    Reviews for The Book of Daniel

    4/5

    278 ratings19 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Pretty good read; comes with Doctorow's typical changes of perspective without warning and coarseness, but the story is quite gripping about the Red Scare in the 1950s.
    • 4/5
      This was a spellbinding book. In its scope, I found it to be unparalleled. The content, as well as the writing, is very sharp and biting. You see America at its worst here and the ramifications that it insinuates are insidious in their learnings. Great book! I recommend it to everyone who loves fiction-- or at least appreciates it.
    • 5/5
      A really excellent political novel. Both the subject and structure of this book were particularly striking.
    • 4/5
      I forgot I read this. I remembered the basic plot, but I was most of the way through the audiobook when a very specific scene about seeing his sister starfished on the bed, hands and feet wrapped under the mattress jogged my memory. An enjoyable book, and one that probably would serve well in the write "literature of politics" kind of class. But not Doctorow's best work, nor a great book about American counter-culture.
    • 4/5
      Only criticism is the despicable characters..no one is admirable.
    • 5/5
      A really excellent political novel. Both the subject and structure of this book were particularly striking.
    • 4/5
      An improvisation on the case of the Rosenbergs, complex, tragic, finely realized. I would read it again.
    • 5/5
      There are some books that stay with you long after you've put them down and 'The Book of Daniel' is one of them. The narrative is both complex and impressive and despite jumping between POV, time lines and locations very frequently, you never lose your way. Many of the characters are portrayed in a rather unsympathetic manner, but it is still possible to have a spark of empathy for them. This is a window in mid-20th century US history, but one that is a subtle and highly engaging lesson.
    • 4/5
      The Book Of Daniel left me with very mixed feelings. I appreciated getting a new perspective on the Rosenberg trial and I loved Doctorow's prose style, yet I found the character of Daniel quite despicable. In this respect, the book reminded me of Philip Roth's work, which I great admire even though it challenges and sometimes repulses me. Also like many Roth novels, The Book Of Daniel features graphic depictions of the sexual degradation of a woman. It's an interesting book, but as the old saying goes, it's not for the faint-hearted.
    • 3/5
      Story of the life of the children of executed spies during the cold war. Parents were falsely accused and died for it. Messed up kids.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful evocation of living with a liberal sensibility and a social conscience in a conservative leaning open democratic society. This is a thoughtful, deep and admirable novel about the American McCarthy years. The book is based loosely around the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. How the state should deal with those whose consciences lead them to work against it is a thorny problem. The state often has to wrestle with a morass of conflicting ethical issues, things can seem much more clear cut to individuals with a narrower insight. But the mechanics of high politics can and does blur and fudge, critical rights of freedom and fundamental pillars of the democratic world can be at threat. There should always be a dialogue and continuous review and check between the power of the state and the individual. The problem is that no one agrees where the ethically correct fulcrum lies, nor where the best point of stability is achieved. And I suspect that both are variable and highly susceptible to differing political circumstances and priorities.
    • 5/5
      The first of his books that I read - it inspired me to read many more!
    • 5/5
      "The Book of Daniel" is a brilliant evocation of 1950s and 1960s America, from McCarthy-era Red Scare to hippie culture and anti-war movement. Narrated by Daniel Isaacson, whose parents are tried and executed for stealing atomic secrets in a loose recreation of the historical Rosenburgs, the novel is a masterpiece of characterization and narrative: you won't want to put it down. The keenest moments are Daniel's flashback memories to life as a child with his parents, not yet notorious, who lead a recognizable and all too accesible existence.
    • 4/5
      Interesting novel based on the Rosenbergs. Not my favorite book, but worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Intrigerend boek. Het beschrijft hoe de jonge Daniel Isaacson de dood van zijn ouders verwerkt. Dat waren overtuigde communisten die begin jaren 50 op de elektrische stoel ter dood werden gebracht voor het verraden van de atoombomgeheimen aan de Sovjet-unie. Een heel interessant gegeven, gemodelleerd naar het ?chte verhaal van de Rosenbergs. We zien Daniel echt worstelen met het trauma, terugblikkend op zijn jeugd, in de verhouding met zijn waanzinnige (maar veel rechtlijniger) zus, rebellerend tegen de wereld, en dat alles gezet in de hippiewereld van eind jaren 60. Politiek, psychologie, sociologie, ... het komt allemaal aan bod in een moeilijk gecomponeerde, maar toch veelgelaagde en heel interessante mix. Het is wel even aanpassen aan de rechttoe-rechtaan-stijl van Doctorow, het duurt 50 tot 100 bladzijden voor je echt in het verhaal zit.
    • 3/5
      Intrigerend boek. Het beschrijft hoe de jonge Daniel Isaacson de dood van zijn ouders verwerkt. Dat waren overtuigde communisten die begin jaren 50 op de elektrische stoel ter dood werden gebracht voor het verraden van de atoombomgeheimen aan de Sovjet-unie. Een heel interessant gegeven, gemodelleerd naar het échte verhaal van de Rosenbergs. We zien Daniel echt worstelen met het trauma, terugblikkend op zijn jeugd, in de verhouding met zijn waanzinnige (maar veel rechtlijniger) zus, rebellerend tegen de wereld, en dat alles gezet in de hippiewereld van eind jaren 60. Politiek, psychologie, sociologie, ... het komt allemaal aan bod in een moeilijk gecomponeerde, maar toch veelgelaagde en heel interessante mix. Het is wel even aanpassen aan de rechttoe-rechtaan-stijl van Doctorow, het duurt 50 tot 100 bladzijden voor je echt in het verhaal zit.
    • 3/5
      The Book of Daniel is Doctorow's highly regarded fictional story of the Rosenbergs who were executed for spying in the 1950s. This is the first book of his that I've read and I'm interested in the subject matter, so I gave it a try. It's taken me a long time to get through it; the style is not something I really appreciate and I found a lot of the story inaccessible. I'm also somewhat of a conformist as a reader so I want stylistic choices to be meaningful. For example, I once read a lengthy book without much punctuation. After I got used to it, I enjoyed it. It helped the flow and made the story lyrical (the author was a poet). In The Book of Daniel, the author often switches time frames (no problem with that) but tenses within the same paragraph. Sometimes it's in third person and sometimes first, for no particular reason I could see. It reminded me of Wolf Hall, another book whose subject matter I found very interesting but was stylistically inaccessible. I guess what I'm trying to say that while I enjoyed parts of this book, it wasn't really my cup of tea.
    • 4/5
      I can tell just how much I love an author's writing mostly the days after I've finished reading one of his books. When I start writing an e-mail to a friend and after a couple of sentences think"wait a minute, this is not my style, where did I get this from?". When an author is that good, his way of using punctuation or syntax, his unusual metaphors or sentences or a certain attitude and tone behind the words inevitably work their way into your own writing style. Doctorow is that kind of author. His voice stuck inside your head for days and days. Using language and writing in a way that constantly undermines the reliability o language and writing. "The early morning traffic was wondering - I mean the early morning traffic was light, but not many drivers could pass them without wondering who they were and they were going" Or if you prefer: "In any event, my mother and father, standing in for them, went to their deaths for crimes they did not commit. Or maybe they did commit them. Or maybe my mother and father got away with false passports for crimes they didn’t committ. How do you spell comit?" And if you think all this is postmodern mumble-jumble and where's the plot, the story? The story, I will let you know, is wonderful. Wonderful and sad and infuriating and thought-provoking and suspenseful and everything you could wish for. This is the story of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (renamed in the book Paul & Rochelle Isaacson) seen from the point of view of their son - Daniel in the book. Our protagonist. Trying to make sense of something that could not and should not make sense for any person calling himself/herself a human being. I could go on with this review but I find that all I want to do is not describe the book (which would be doing it an injustice) but quote passages from it. So I'll just say for me this is a must-read. And stop there."The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one has ever been put to death in Socrates’ name. And that is because Socrates’ ideas were never made law."
    • 4/5
      This is not a Biblical story. It’s about the execution of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, but even so, it’s not much of a political story either. It’s more about history; how history’s made, written, who tells it, its helping to cope and make sense of actions, the events around us, which is exactly Daniel Isaacson’s reason for sitting down at his university library in 1967 to look back 14 years to his early bar mitzvah: the death of his parents Paul & Rachel, attempting to write his metahistorical thesis for Ronald Sukenick and understand just what the hell happened to him, his sister and his parents in 1953, why his parents were taken from him as part of the infamous McCarthy hunt for the Red American.Daniel employs every obnoxious literary trick he can to dig and shift through his own history whether it be addressing directly the reader, even straight out yelling at us, the prick, taking Faulknerian liberties with the use of pronouns, throwing in some very real details on the history of torture and death, the tools used by societies up to modern times, how they worked, &c., or going back and forth in time from the present to his childhood, often even midsentence, from his own fucked up ‘60s life and disturbing attempts to feel anything at all for his teenage wife and child to his own fucked up childhood starting from before his father’s arrest and the night his very innocent mother vanished talking often of his father’s naïve political beliefs, his unwavering trust in justice especially, and his backwards relationship with the government even after their hopes to pin treasonous charges on him become transparent; both these story threads go side by side, ending together in The Book’s last few pages, with Daniel finally finding (sort of) a sense of peace and understanding with the former family friend that pointed his finger at the Isaacson’s in order to get a lax prison sentence and the death of his parents, the actual action presented to the reader in gruesome unwanted detail, down to Rachel/Ethel not exactly dying on the first go…Daniel’s day deconstructing Disneyland was the novel’s highlight. I mean, damn, those nine pages provide one of the most powerful postmodern passages these eyes have seen. Daniel’s here at Anaheim's Disneyland to meet—finally—the indirect executioner of his parents, the man whose finger pointed the Isaacsons to their electric deaths in June ’53 to satisfy the socially predominant America v. Russia Cold War Hysteria. Disneyland’s used to, despite the intense and obvious change of colors/scenery, work alongside the rest of TBOD’s bleakness, extending both the antagonistic personification of electricity and the idea of social simulation. Disneyland’s womb is cut into numerous zones—Adventureland, with a plasticized imagining of Mark Twain’s river boat “Life on the Mississippi” experience, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Main Street USA, and, where Mindish, mind now far gone from SDAT, spends his remaining days, Tomorrowland—each with its own individual concentrated sentimental focus of simulation.Everything’s a simulation. The Cold feud between the Red White & Blue and the just Red is a simulation of war, both sides holding the other at bay threatening and boasting their own nuclear arms supply. The trial Daniel’s parents were pushed through was a simulation of a trial, a bullshit stage show put on by our own government to appease the social demand for justice. The whole American way of life, man, consuming and seeking out entertainment, it’s a sham, an illusion, transparent in its banality and its unreal hunt for that particular sentimental high. No one even reads Carroll or Twain anymore, they just watch Disney’s romanticized vision—a technique Doctorow refers to as an “abbrieviated shorthand culture for the masses”—anything as long as it has the Disney stamp of approval, an ounce of that cultural respectability that makes this harvesting of icons so worthwhile on behalf of the Corporation…I only wish I got the chance to spend more time with Doctorow’s brilliant novel, a lot more time with that trip to Disneyland. I’m going to cut this short here. Highly recommended, &c.&c.&c.80%[619]