If I were to be stranded on a desert island with a limited number of books, this would definitely be on the list. IMHO, it's one of the finest novels ever written. I re-read it every year and enjoy it even more than when I first read it many years ago. And, joy of joys!, it has a happy ending. :)

This book caught my attention right off and held it all the way through to the end, so much so that I caught myself frequently ordering up the next several installments immediately after I finished reading the scheduled installment.<br/><br/>It's a frightening tale of a Dept of Homeland Security run amok. I'm not very computer savvy so can't say anything about whether the computer parts are accurate for now or extrapolated for the future, but they seemed believable to me within the story. And I really cared about the characters. This was my first Doctorow book, but I'll be reading more.