In 1864, after Union general William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta, he marched his sixty thousand troops east through Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces and lived off the land, pillaging the Southern plantations, taking cattle and crops for their own, demolishing cities, and accumulating a borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that remained was the dangerous transient life of the uprooted, the dispossessed, and the triumphant. Only a master novelist could so powerfully and compassionately render the lives of those who marched.

The author of Ragtime, City of God, and The Book of Daniel has given us a magisterial work with an enormous cast of unforgettable characters–white and black, men, women, and children, unionists and rebels, generals and privates, freed slaves and slave owners. At the center is General Sherman himself; a beautiful freed slave girl named Pearl; a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius; Emily Thompson, the dispossessed daughter of a Southern judge; and Arly and Will, two misfit soldiers.

Almost hypnotic in its narrative drive, The March stunningly renders the countless lives swept up in the violence of a country at war with itself. The great march in E. L. Doctorow’s hands becomes something more–a floating world, a nomadic consciousness, and an unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own times.

E.L.多克托罗（1931—），当代美国著名作家，生于纽约犹太人家庭，在哥伦比亚大学攻读硕士学位时参军。退伍后相继担任哥伦比亚影片公司审稿人、新美国文库出版社编辑、日晷出版社总编辑，一九六九年起专事写作。

多克托罗自一九六一年发表小说《欢迎来到艰难时代》至今笔耕不辍。主要作品还包括《上帝之城》、《欢迎来到艰难时代》、《丹尼尔之书》、《雷格泰姆音乐》、《卢恩湖》、《诗人的生活》、《世界博览会》、《比利·巴思盖特》和《喷水装置》等。作品已经被翻译成三十多种文字。

多克托罗曾获得美国国家图书奖，分别两度获得国家书评人协会小说奖、美国笔会/福克纳小说奖，伊迪丝·沃顿小说奖，美国艺术与人文学院威廉·迪恩·豪斯奖，以及由美国总统颁发的国家人文奖章。

多克托罗现居于纽约。