E. L. Doctorow

Buffalo Bill plans to put on his own Wild West sideshow, and Chief Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in it. However, Sitting Bull has his own hidden agenda, involving the President and General Custer.

A documentary profile of director/choreographer Bob Fosse. Includes clips from his films and television specials as well as interviews with Fosse, remembrances from his friends, and commentary by Gwen Verdon. A Dance in America presentation, broadcast as part of Great Performances.

An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.

For more than a century, New York’s Greenwich Village was home, playground, and inspiration to many of America’s leading writers and artists—Henry James, Edith Wharton, Eugene O’Neill, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, e.e. cummings, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan, among many others. How these writers used and were shaped by the Village is the subject of this lively history, which includes readings and commentary by today’s Village authors E. L. Doctorow, Galway Kinnell, Grace Paley, and Louis Auchincloss.

A documentary exploring the creation of the new musical Ragtime, based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow.

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

In the year 1935, a teen named Billy Bathgate finds first love while becoming the protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.

The fictionalized story of Daniel, the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed as Soviet spies in the 1950s. As a graduate student in New York in the 1960s, Daniel is involved in the antiwar protest movement and contrasts his experiences to the memory of his parents and his belief that they were wrongfully convicted.

The fictionalized story of Daniel, the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed as Soviet spies in the 1950s. As a graduate student in New York in the 1960s, Daniel is involved in the antiwar protest movement and contrasts his experiences to the memory of his parents and his belief that they were wrongfully convicted.

A sociopathic stranger all but destroys a small hardscrabble town but the 'mayor' convinces its survivors to stay and rebuild.

A teenage orphan spends ten years traveling to experience life.

A man's nervous breakdown causes him to leave his wife and live in his attic for several months.

This special event celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Broadway production. Ragtime weaves an electrifying tapestry of three families from vastly different worlds, colliding and converging as they chase the American Dream through a tumultuous era of hope, despair and the revolutionary sounds of ragtime.

A new production of EL Doctorow's historical novel, recorded at the Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre. Broadcast as part of BBC4's America Night.

The fictionalized story of Daniel, the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed as Soviet spies in the 1950s. As a graduate student in New York in the 1960s, Daniel is involved in the antiwar protest movement and contrasts his experiences to the memory of his parents and his belief that they were wrongfully convicted.

The Boston Pops performs Ragtime: The Symphonic Concert, prepared by the original creators Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty especially for the Pops. Based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime weaves together the stories of three intersecting groups in the U.S. in the early 20th century: Eastern European immigrants, the African American community in Harlem, and an upper-class white family. Together, they confront history's timeless tensions of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair.