E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015) was an American author, best known for the novel Ragtime . After growing up in New York, Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio where he majored in philosophy and took part in theatre. He graduated with honours and then went to Columbia University where he finished a year of graduate work in English drama. At that point, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, with whom he served as a corporal in the signal corps in Germany during post-war Allied occupation. Doctorow went home to New York and read for a motion picture company. After reading so many westerns, he got the idea for his first novel ( Welcome to Hard Times ), which began as a parody, but ended up as a serious entry into the genre. Doctorow passed away in July 2015 of lung cancer, while living in New York City.
