A "masterful and moving" saga of 1909 New York City, where locals new and old seek to find their dreams—and themselves ( Booklist ).

"Terrific fun. . . . Historical fiction at its most entertaining." — New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Notable Book

In a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century. A novel breathtaking in its scope and ambition, it is the epic saga of newcomers drawn to the promise of America—gangsters and laborers, hucksters and politicians, radicals, reformers, murderers, and sideshow oddities—whose stories of love, revenge, and tragedy interweave and shine in the artificial electric dazzle of a wondrous place called Dreamland.

"A Dickensian epic . . . meticulously researched and filled with passages of intoxicating, dreamlike frenzy." — Entertainment Weekly

"An epic re-creation of an era. . . . A boisterous, rollicking carnival." — People

"One is tempted to call this grandly entertaining saga some kind of populist masterpiece, as Baker gauges the myth of the egalitarian American melting-pot against the corruption, economic exploitation and racism of a cutthroat society." — Publishers Weekly