{"product_id":"the-book-of-daniel-9780812978179","title":"The Book of Daniel","description":"The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHis 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOut 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case--lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt is \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Daniel\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Random House Publishing Group\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/10\/2007\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780812978179\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 320\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.50lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.90h x 5.20w x 0.70d","brand":"E. L. Doctorow","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44776004714677,"sku":"9780812978179","price":17.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_984bb552-2d78-48cc-989a-530a28b97d53.jpg?v=1730821652","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-book-of-daniel-9780812978179","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}