Preview of Billy Bathgate Summary:

Doctorow again examines the meaning of success in America; if the leaders of American finance and industry were presented as caricatures of success in Ragtime (1975), another parody of the American Dream is featured in Billy Bathgate. The plot follows a young boy from rags to riches, but in this contemporary version of the Horatio Alger hero, the hero rises in the world as an apprentice to the notorious gangster...