Helpful Score: 5
Another great book. With circus workers as a backdrop, you get to explore a whole time period that really wasn't that far ago. The characterization is amazing and you will remember all of the characters long after you put this book down. I really loved this book and I strongly recommend it.
Helpful Score: 3
Kevin Baker's Dreamland is the kind of novel that begins with a two-page list of characters and ends with a nine-page glossary. In between, this vast, sprawling carnival of a book takes in Coney Island and the Lower East Side, midgets and gangsters, Bowery bars and opium dens, even Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. It is, in short, a novel as big, lively, and ambitious as Gotham itself, and if you can stomach some of the more garish local color, it's every bit as much fun.
Helpful Score: 1
Kevin Baker tells the story of New York City at the turn of the century in a gritty, grotesque, unapologetic manner creating characters that we care about deeply that stay with us long after the book is done. Is is a love story, a life story, a death story? You see Coney Island's Dreamland, the immigrant's experiences, and the gangsters impossible lifestyles jumping from the perspective of one character to the next. Being a New Yorker born and bred it broke my heart, and held my hand while I wept. Highly Recommend...
Helpful Score: 1
Great Historical Fiction. Story surrounds Coney Island in his hayday and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Helpful Score: 1
A huge, sprawling historical novel, great characters, a perfect novel to escape into.
