As one of the most acute and attentive observers of the social and political reality of the United States, his work between short stories and novels – “novels of ideas, allegory of passion and mortality” – have inspired movies such as Ragtime, Milos Forman’s 1981 film set in pre-WWI America, The Book of Daniel, Sidney Lumet’s 1983 film on the Rosenberg spy case, and Billy Bathgate Robert Benton’s 1991 film about the notorious gangster Dutch Schultz. After the City of God in 2000, E.L. Doctorow provided the text to the photographic book Lamentation with images by David Finn dedicated to September 11th. He has received numerous literary prizes, amongst which are the National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner, and two National Book Critics Circle Award.