Counter-factual historical fiction, in the manner of Robert Harris' Fatherland. In it, Charles Lindbergh, the anti-Semitic aviator and admirer of the Nazis, wins the U.S. presidency by campaigning against FDR on a platform of non-intervention in the European war. I think the novel has special resonance now that a certain demagogic New York "billionaire," known primarily for his nattering narcissism and pathological lying, is licking his mid-term wounds in the Oval Office.

Though at times intricate and compelling, this is not Roth's best work. It's a somewhat uneven performance from the man who gave us the astonishing American Pastoral and the hilarious through-the-roof masterpiece, The Counterlife. But I'd argue that because the result is flatter and more straightforward than usual, one is able to see more plainly the book's structural devices. In his more dazzling works, the technique tends to vanish within the beguiling magic of his prose.

I gave this book 4 stars. I probably would have given it 5 had it not gotten a bit weak towards the end and the author seemed to lose focus of where his story was going. It seemed like he wanted it to end whereas I wanted it to continue on.

First off let me say this book is NOT what most of these reviewers are calling it. It is far too complex to be thrown into a category of "what-if" histories. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was that is was a memoir. In fact it reminded me a lot of Frank McCourt's work, but only much better.

That is not to say that there is not a "what-if" angle to the book. That is obvious. And kind of like Harry Turtldove's books, Roth is not dealing too much with the actual history and consequences of the twist of events. He is dealing with the actual people--notably his own family and only throwing in the historical figures as they played a role in their everyday lives.

Once I acknowledged that this was a very unique memoir, I read it as such. Yes I understand the author has "A Novel" posted on the cover. But it is written as a memoir and should be read in that way. You do not read biographies like you do novels, nor the Bible like you would The Odyssey. Same goes here. It is a novel because it is fiction, but Roth is a brilliant writer that can present it as a memoir detailing a specific moment in his life, but presenting it now in a way that expresses the extreme fear that bubbled within the Jewish communities of the East Coast.

And he succeeds. America has forgotten in our collected back-patting and our victories in saving the world from the Nazis that we had some of the very same anti-Semetic sentiments in our own country. We quickly criticize drunken-rages by famous actors but forget that our own heros of American history held these views soberly (Limbergh and Henry Ford). And it is because of these underlying views that Roth seeks to throw a mirror up to ourselves and question how close we came to having our own (Final) "American Solution."

The only thing that kept this from being 5 stars was the weakening of an exposition of "events" towards the end. It did help give background but I thought someone with Roth's writing talent and given the incredible journey he had already taken me on, he could have filled in the "historical gaps" better. And the twist of an ending, though hardly a happy one, was very unexpected and forced me to charge through the last 100 or so pages staying up late at night to do so.

Read this book with an open mind and with a mind on our own dark history in mind.

I need more Philip Roth in my life. If Toni Morrison and James Baldwin are the quintessential purveyors of primo black American lit, then Roth is their Semitic doppelgänger.

“I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header. Our homeland was America. Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.”

fas·​cism |  ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm : a political philosophy, movement, or regime that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

What was entertaining historical fiction in 2004 now reads like astute post-2016 prophecy. I’m not sure I could have read this a year ago because it falls into that ‘disturbingly familiar dystopia’ category (see also: The Handmaid’s Tale) that stokes my anxiety to unbearable levels of gastro-intestinal distress.

“…he could have announced that the First Lady would be inviting Adolf Hitler and his girlfriend to spend the Fourth of July weekend as vacation guests in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House and still have been cheered by his countrymen as democracy’s savior.” ~Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, 2004

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” ~Donald Trump, 2016

Edit: 11/6/2024 12:15am. Jesus Fucking Christ, it's 2016 again.

How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I'd think I was having a hallucination.

There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it - hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.

2020 UPDATE The first trailer is out. The miniseries is arriving 16 March.

HBO orders six episodes in November 2018, after almost a year of negotiations.

Damnably timely today, 27 October 2018, after the Tree of Life shooting.

This book should be as high on your TBR as 1984, Animal Farm, Snowball's Chance, and Christian Nation are already. I hope they are, anyway.

2018 UPDATE The book is going to be a miniseries! Huzzah. Now go read the article, because Philip Roth does a 45 takedown that made me guffaw in agony.

Rating: 4* of five

In my quest for article-fodder, I reread this book. I'd forgotten how much I dislike Roth's use of "Philip Roth" as a character, it still feels like a cutesy-poo arched eyebrow and crooked little finger at a tea party given by That Cousin *pursed lips and tiny warning shakes of the head* of Your Father's.

But the election of President Lindbergh didn't so much as raise a hair in my truth-sensitive eyebrows. The slow descent into thuggish public behavior as the new norm, the collective "meh, so what" from those not affected, the disbelieving helplessness of the affected...Roth nailed it. Look around you.

Once again, Philip Roth has published a novel that you must read - now. It's not that an appreciation of his book depends on the political climate; our appreciation of the political climate depends on his book. During a bitterly contested election in a time of war against an amorphous enemy, "The Plot Against America" inspires exactly the kind of discussion we need.

With a seamless blend of autobiography, history, and speculation, Roth imagines that Charles Lindbergh ran against Franklin Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1940. Drawing on Lindbergh's writings and speeches at the time, Roth creates a campaign for the aviation hero centered on his determination to keep America out of Europe's war. While Roosevelt enunciates complex policies in his famous upper-class cadence, Lindbergh buzzes around the country in The Spirit of St. Louis declaring, "Your choice is simple. It's between Lindbergh and war." To preserve the nation, we must resist the propaganda of "the Jewish race," Lindbergh warns, "and their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government."

After winning by a landslide, he immediately negotiates "understandings" with the Axis, consigning Europe to Germany in exchange for a promise to leave America alone. Political opponents rail against the president for "yielding to his Nazi friends," but everybody knows those nay-sayers are just warmongering Jews.

Lindbergh's first domestic initiative is the creation of the Office of American Absorption to "encourage America's religious and national minorities to become further incorporated into the larger society." In practice, this involves sending urban Jewish children to spend the summer on farms in the South - "a Jewish farm hand in the Gentile heartland." Eventually, the program expands to remove whole Jewish families from their city "ghettos" and send them to exciting, new lives in the Midwest. If their culture is dissolved in the process, well, that's OK too.

Yes, Lindbergh comes off very bad in these pages. He spouts anti-Semitic canards that sound far more shocking now than in 1938, when he accepted the Nazis' Service Cross of the German Eagle "by order of the Fuhrer." But clearly Roth's real target isn't an anti-Semitic aviation hero who died 30 years ago. It's an electorate he sees as dazzled by attractive faces, moved by simple slogans, and cowed by ominous warnings about threats to our security.

The result is a cautionary story in the tradition of "The Handmaid's Tale," a stunning work of political extrapolation about a triumvirate of hate, ignorance, and paranoia that shreds decency and overruns liberty. Roth provides brilliant analysis of political rhetoric: the way demagogues manipulate public opinion and the way responsible journalists inadvertently prop up tyrants in their devotion to objectivity and balance.

But what really gives the novel life is its narrator: a little boy named Phil Roth. He lives in Newark with his older brother, who's completely enamored with Charles Lindbergh; his righteous father, who's convinced the new president is an American Hitler; and his long- suffering mother, who struggles to hold her family together as the nation is ripped apart.

In a voice that blends the tones of the author's nostalgia with the boy's innocence, Phil describes the national crisis through its effect on his own family. It's a narrative structure fraught with risks, particularly the danger of making this 7-year-old boy look cloying or inappropriately sophisticated, but Roth keeps his bifocal vision in perfect focus. The result is a profound examination of the way children negotiate their parents' ideals and their culture's prejudices along the way to developing not just a political consciousness but a sense of safety in the world.

Soon after Lindbergh wins the election, for instance, the Roth family takes a trip to Washington, D.C., to reassure themselves of the stability of American democracy. Phil's father is full of enthusiasm, repeating the guide's patter and pointing to the sights. He also can't resist broadcasting his criticism of the new president. "That's just expressing my opinion," he protests when his wife begs him to be more discreet, but they're jeered at and thrown out of their hotel. Phil feels embarrassed and terrified, but he's also proud to have a father "ruthlessly obedient to the idea of fair play."

That conflicted response continues as young Phil struggles to keep his alliances straight in a world of baffling complexity. His brother can't say enough about Lindbergh's wonders. Their father's suspicion seems downright paranoid. When his aunt starts dating the token Jew in Lindbergh's administration, Phil can see firsthand the rich rewards of assimilation and collusion. What, after all, did his cousin gain by joining the Canadians in their fight against the Nazis, except a prosthetic leg?

By the novel's climax, the conflict tearing the world apart is violently loose in his own living room. "I was disillusioned," he writes, "by a sense that my family was slipping away from me right along with my country."

Victims of anti-Semitism will react in a special way (as will the descendants of Japanese-Americans interned by Roosevelt), but "The Plot Against America" is really a story about the loss of innocence, about that moment when it's no longer possible for "mother and father to set things right and explain away enough of the unknown to make existence appear to be rational."

This isn't the wrathful Roth of "The Human Stain" or "I Married a Communist." This narrator is too deeply unsettled to be angry, and frankly that makes him far more unsettling to us. In a surprising final chapter, after he's neatly woven his fictional history back into the historical record we all know, Roth concludes with a small, tragic story of a neighbor whose family is crushed, almost accidentally, by the fury of racial hatred. It's a stunning, deeply disturbing episode for young Phil, and one that leaves us shaken with the narrator's "perpetual fear."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0928/p1...

Description: When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America.

Opening: FEAR PRESIDES over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.

When the first shock came in June 1940 - the nomination for the presidency of Charles A. Lindbergh, America's international aviation hero, by the Republican Convention at Philadelphia - my father was thirty-nine, an insurance agent with a grade school education, earning a little under fifty dollars a week, enough for the basic bills to be paid on time but for little more.

Hah! Thought I had already encountered this one, however, it turns out that in the past, my dear person had recounted the story with shuddering, fervent gusto.

The above opening sets comparisons to the America that is today: few 'ordinary Joes' making more dosh over that which a hand-to-mouth existence requires, religious persecution in place, and an unsuitable, untrained celebrity Republican president issuing edicts and damnations contrary to the basic needs of humankind, whilst pandering to mammon, reveling in corruption and
one-upmanship.

Avvincente romanzo non perfettamente riuscito soprattutto nella parte finale, trascinata oltremisura e liquidata in maniera laconica. Quasi uno scritto di fantapolitica, se la realtà di queste ultime ore con l’attacco al Congresso non mi avesse subito fatto ricredere , sorprendendomi ancora una volta, Roth, con le sue intuizioni e in questo caso, oserei dire, proiezioni. Si tratta in poche parole di un romanzo che ipotizza per il biennio 1940-1942 un inframmezzo politico negli Usa che non c’è stato ma che non è poi così sorprendente immaginare.
Le elezioni presidenziali del 1940 non vedono vittorioso per la terza volta FDR ma il celebre aviatore Charles A. Lindbergh, noto non solo per il suo volo transatlantico da New York a Parigi compiuto a bordo di un monoplano in sole trentatre ore o per il triste episodio del rapimento del suo figlioletto di venti mesi ritrovato poi ucciso vicino all’abitazione dei suoi genitori, ma ancor più per la sua affiliazione all’America First Committee, nato per contrastare la linea interventista di FDR e promuovere l’isolazionismo, facendo leva, lui in particolare, sull’idea che i nuovi guerrafondai fossero gli ebrei. È lui ad aver proiettato in campo americano un modello antisemita, storico e di lunga durata e di ancor più di ampia tenuta , tutto europeo. Da qui parte Roth, dall’angoscia storica e reale che gli ebrei americani hanno vissuto davvero quando la destra repubblicana contrastava Rooselvelt che invece si presentava agli elettori come un nemico giurato di Hitler e del fascismo.

Il biennio intenso e sconvolgente che vedrà al potere Lindbergh si accompagna alla storia minuta del piccolo Philip Roth, un bambino di sette anni che vive un’esistenza piccolo borghese nella tranquilla Summit Avenue della sua cara Newark, città operosa e industriale all’ombra della Statua della Libertà, un prolungamento naturale di New York. Una famiglia felice ebrea sì , accomunata nella rete di amicizie e di frequentazioni più dal lavoro che dalla religione, ma perfettamente assimilata e dimentica della propria identità: non praticano la religione, non tramandano le tradizioni, sono americani. Il piccolo Roth non sa nemmeno cosa sia la Palestina. L’avvento di Lindbergh al potere scuote gli animi e genera la rinascita identitaria. La vita della famiglia Roth andrà a intrecciarsi con i nuovi eventi storici in una commistione di storia minima e storia universale sulla falsariga dei percorsi antisemiti già lungamente praticati in campo europeo. La sensazione è quella di assistere a una nota e inarrestabile ripetizione, in campo diverso, di dinamiche generanti odio in un parossismo che Ron Jones nell’esperimento sociale denominato “La terza onda” non ebbe difficoltà a riproporre addirittura in un’aula scolastica.
Un monito oggi visti i nuovi attacchi alla democrazia.

Roth's American Story

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a less-than-successful novel, "It can't happen here" about how a fascist government overtook the United States. Philip Roth's 2004 novel, "The Plot Against America" seems to me a book in the tradition of Lewis's and other attempts to write novels of alternative history. I found Roth's book, gripping in places as it follows through on its premise. And on a smaller scale, the book offered a good portrayal of Jewish life in Northeast America in 1940s. The book offers a chilling picture of what might happen in any human society overtaken by fear and demagoguery. But for all its virtues, I found the book largely unconvincing.

The story is told by a narrator we are intended to think is the author -- named Philip Roth -- who, at the time book begins is 7 years old in living in Weewauken, New Jersey. His brother, Sandy, age 12 shows the makings of a talented artist and his parents are decent, hard-working people striving to arrive in America's middle class. There is much in this book about growing up Jewish in America and about Roth's and many people's ambivalences. Thus,early in the book Philip says: "It was work that identified and distinguished our neighbors for me far more than religion... The adults were no longer observant in the outward, recognizable ways, if they were observant at all."

The premise of the book is that aviation hero Charles Lindbergh captures the Republican nomination for President in 1940 and defeats President Roosevelt to become the thirty-third President of the United States. Lindbergh pursues a policy of keeping the United States out of WW II and by showing sympathy to Hitler and Nazi Germany. His vice-President is the isolationist Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, and Henry Ford is Secretary of the Department of the Interior, which is implementing programs to move Jews from their homes, to destroy their communities, and to assimilate them into American life.

Phillip's family lives in fear with the election of Lindbergh, as do most members of their community. But even some family members are sympathetic to Lindberg. As the novel progresses, anti-semitic outbursts and violence in the United States assumes an increasing intensity, until the character of the story shifts at the end. Roth shows how Phiilp's parents, in particular, react to the fascist threat. Roth also portrays a highly diverse and secular Jewish community, some ambitious and upwardly mobile, some involved in organized crime, and many highly ambivalent about their course and life. With all their fear about violence and anti-semitism in what in the book is a fascist America, the characters strive otherwise to be Americans and to place themselves in the mainstream of American life. Thus, in a key passage late in the book, Philip says of his father after he uncharacteristically gets involved in fisticuffs: " He's like the very fathers he wants to be rid of. That's the tyranny of the problem. Trying to be faithful and to get rid of what he's faithful to at the same time." (p. 298)

In an important episode in the book, Roth's brother Sandy goes to live with a tobacco farmer in Danville, Kentucky as part of a Lindbergh administration program to weaken ties of Jewish young people to their community. Paradoxically, Sandy is well treated in Kentucky, becomes close to the Kentucky family, enjoys his experience of farm life, and learns something valuable in broadening his outlook and his understanding of people with a background different from his.

There was a substantial undercurrent of anti-semitism in the United States of the 1940s. Roth captures it well in his story and in the notes he appends to his novel. But the burden of writing a counter-factual story -- what didn't happen -- is too strong for this book. The Republicans nominated Wendell Willkie to run for president -- a highly responsible choice and no fascist. Lindbergh did not run for President, and the United States did not turn to fascism. This book is full of laceration, of the families in the book, and of American politics that is painful and largely overdone. For all the difficult times, I resisted most of the themes of the book and came away with a respect for the strength of American democracy. The book also reminded me of the freedom our country offers, as Americans may choose what to believe in the way of religion, or to practice a religion or not practice, as seems proper to them. These are great gifts offered by our country, and Roth's book reminded me of their value, almost in spite of itself.

Robin Friedman

A racist in the White House? Really? A demagogue turning America into a fascist nation? Come on! That’s a little too far fetched, don’t you think?

I admit I didn’t know much about Charles Lindbergh except for his flight across the Atlantic, his anti-Semitic attitudes, his three-fold “polygamy”, and the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. What I didn’t know, for instance, was the fact that he was also spokesperson of the first n  America First Movementn and about the public speeches he held in 1940 and 1941 in front of large audiences and on the radio, especially the one from September 11 (of all dates) 1941 in Des Moines, IA which is also featured in the book (text and some original audio clips here).

In this novel Lindbergh rose to the presidential candidate of the Republicans and won the election against Roosevelt after a landslide in 1940 to become the 33rd President of the United States. His candid anti-Semitism and ingratiation with the Nazis in Germany (he was even awarded an “Order of Merit” by Hermann Göring in 1938) leads to intensified distrust and anxiety among most Jews in America. The story is told from the POV of the seven-year-old Philip Roth and covers the period from June 1940 to October 1942. The Roth family: Philip, his older brother Sandy, the parents Herman and Bess as well as an orphaned nephew Alvin. They live placidly in the Jewish district Weequahic of Newark, NJ. But the peacefulness comes to an end when Lindbergh takes office. Slowly but surely the life of the Roths in the “land of the free” becomes more and more difficult. During a family visit in Washington, shortly after the election, they are abused by passers-by as “loudmouth Jews” and the reservation in their hotel got canceled without justification. Cops are called in but don’t want to help either:

“And the problem?” the cop asked.
“We’re a family of four, Officer. We drove all the way from New Jersey. You can’t just throw us into the street.”
“But,” said the cop, “if somebody else reserves a room—”
“But there is nobody else! And if there was, why should we take a back seat to them?”
“But the manager returned your deposit. He even packed up your belongings for you.”
“Officer, you’re not understanding me. Why should our reservation take a back seat to theirs? I was with my family at the Lincoln Memorial. They have the Gettysburg Address up on the wall. You know what the words are that are written there? ‘All men are created equal.’”
“But that doesn’t mean all hotel reservations are created equal.”
The policeman’s voice carried to the bystanders at the edge of the lobby; unable any longer to control themselves, some of them laughed aloud.

This is a relatively small issue, and the Roths later found another accommodation, but it already shows how the people on the street are beginning to handle Jews from now on, after the new president sets an example by his speeches. The father, an American patriot and ardent admirer of Roosevelt, starts to realize early on how bad the situation will get for Jews in America. This is confirmed by a letter from his employer, an insurance agency, in which Herman Roth and his family is “congratulated for having been chosen to be among the company’s first pioneering ‘homesteaders’ of 1942.” A resettlement plan for Jews, euphemistically called “Homestead 42” and referring to the orginal Homestead Act of 1862, is already under way. Little by little Jews are loosing more and more of their freedoms; the cival contract, as far as the Jews are concerned, is unilaterally broken by the government. There is resistance, however, most prominently by Walter Winchell a famous and powerful Jewish journalist and radio commentator (who coined words like “razis” and “swastinkers”). But even Winchell cannot really hinder the avalanche that is about to crush the Jews. What I found most depressing (and was therefore the strongest part of this book for me) is how under the fascist government the Jewish families are beginning to fall apart. In this case it’s the older brother Sandy becomes estranged from his family after joining “Just Folks”, another invention of the newly created “Office of American Absorption”), a “volunteer work program introducing city youth to the traditional ways of heartland life”. Sandy comes to blows with his father when he suddenly starts to speak of Jews as “you people” to which his father replies:

“I told you already about the dirty words, and now I’m telling you about this ‘you people’ business. ‘You people’ one more time, son, and I am going to ask you to leave the house. If you want to go live in Kentucky instead of here, I’ll drive you down to Penn Station and you can catch the next train out. Because I know very well what ‘you people’ means. And so do you. So does everyone. Don’t you use those two words in this house ever again.”

The conflict in the family escalates further when Sandy is invited as a representative of “Just Folks” to the White House, where Lindbergh is holding a banquet to which he invited Nazi German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. All this and much more is experienced by the young Philip Roth and has to be processed somehow. That this is not easy for a child is self-evident: nightmares, false feelings of guilt, ghosts of the dead in the cellar, running from the parents’ house are the consequences.

On the whole I liked this novel quite a bit. The subtle changes (read deteriorations) in the life of the Jews are skilfully depicted. One can see the growing concern, can understand it, is frightened and angry at the helplessness of the individual against a repressive state apparatus. In this way, the author has achieved his goal. However, I find the text as a whole too long and in parts too bumpy. It was actually getting on my nerves sometimes. For instance, the fact that a table got broken during a fight in the Roth apartment is described like this:

The glass-topped coffee table with the dark mahogany frame that my mother had saved over the years to buy at Bam’s (and where, at the conclusion of a pleasant hour of evening reading, she would set down, with its ribboned bookmark in place, the new novel by Pearl Buck or Fannie Hurst or Edna Ferber borrowed from the local pharmacy’s tiny rental library) lay in fragments all across the room […]

All these little details (in the context of a fight) are completely unnecessary and reading this and other passages like this felt like I was driving my car in the wrong gear.

The other problem I have with the book, I have to attribute to myself. I have to admit ot myself that the genre “alternative history” is obviously not my cup of tea. Some historical “facts” from the book are obviously true, others are false. My knowledge of American history is not sufficient in this case to be able to assess everything that is said at once, and to separate facts from “alt-facts”. At some point I gave up to find out about the differences on Google. In a fictional novel the author obviously doesn’t falsify history. Nevertheless, some “facts” (whether true or false) may remain, which are unconsciously deposited in the wrong drawer, and that’s a pity.

I would still like to recommend this book simply because it is now more relevant than ever. It seems to me that many people think fascistic governments like the one depicted here come over night, like a lightning from the sky or some other natural disaster, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s not true. Even fascists need time to deploy their evil goals. There’s always the chance to throw a wrench in their works, in other word: To resist.

n  n
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Plausibility is a difficult thing to assess when taking about alternative history - after all, those events did in fact, not happen, and are therefore in a manner of speaking, impossible. But in general, Roth prods history with a very light touch, building on real people and events, and working within the constraints of the American political system, its vulnerability to the caprice of shifting public opinion, as well its checks and balances, which afford the system its capacity to correct itself in the long term. This realism is both a positive feature, and a disappointing one, since a more drastic departure from actual events would have made for more compelling reading.

In the execution, there are three things I felt were identified and portrayed very astutely – all of which remain relevant in modern political discourse:

i) When a real threat to freedom and equality arises in a democracy, it is extremely difficult for the people to identify it as such. How can a genuine threat be distinguished from the usual cries of “wolf” emanating from the extremes? Do one or two steps down the wrong path imply that the nation will slide all the way? When is it time to trust the system, and when is it time to resist?

ii) In such a climate propaganda and disinformation are extremely effective, not in directly swaying the opinion of the majority, but in convincing just enough of the minority to confuse the matter, and to provide a resistance against organisation of a counter-movement. People who are unable to settle upon a view of how things stand are likely to be disengaged, passive, and to let things take their course.

iii) Even without a widespread change of public opinion, when fringe opinions are endorsed at a high level, they become normalised, and their expression can rise in prominence in the actions of the public at large, by people in whom these opinions were already latent. The example here is the endorsement by the President of anti-Semitism (here, even in a coded or restrained manner), which results in noticeable changes in the way the family is treated in its daily life, even before there is any change in law or policy.

The failing of the novel is really in its main narrative, which focuses on the experience of the author himself and his family, placed inside this alternative America. Though this is an interesting approach and the story is well told, it’s too detailed in its personal scope, and not particularly interesting or original in itself. At times it seems to neither rely on or to benefit from the novel’s alternative history - an example being the crippling of Philip’s uncle Alvin in battle, which features heavily in the story and which could just as likely have occurred in actual history, with mostly the same consequences. There are really two stories being told here: one of America, and one of the Roth family, and the author has unfortunately chosen to focus on the lesser of the two.

With a title like this and written by Philip Roth, how can one not be curious?

Add in the facts that Charles Lindbergh, the man who crossed the Atlantic solo, was intrigued with the Nazi party, was given Germany’s highest honour by Hitler and made political waves with his views during the war years adds to the fire.

The Democrats were in power with Roosevelt. They wanted to go to war to help out Europe but were remaining neutral. The Republican Party did not want to help Europe fight the Germans again, fearing the huge losses like in the First World War, which makes sense. They had an America First campaign going. But add in the strong anti-Jewish sentiment and it definitely added to the turbulent times of the 1940s.

Roth throws us a curveball. What if Roosevelt didn’t win his third term as president, but instead Charles Lindbergh did, running as a “man of the people” who would steer America in a different direction? Make is more American First? Blend in racism and you have, what the beginnings of a more right wing, hard line America.

This book was published in 2004. It is scary to see some of the same things happening again in 2016? Or 2020? When a series of events happen near the end of the book (I won’t give this away), you can see people being manipulated, torn apart by prejudice and hatred, violence and mistrust, I had a thought...did a certain world leader use this a role model for himself? This is scary stuff.

Now it is only a novel. Philip Roth, like all good writers, can manipulate the reader. But through the political manipulations and machinations, the entire story is told through nine year old Philip Roth. Yes, himself. His family is torn apart by his older brother who loves Lindbergh, his father who hates Lindbergh and his mother, who holds the family together and in my mind, the real hero of the book.

His cousin, Alvin, who fights for Canada, is a challenging character and his outcome reveals the harsh reality for all those men swept up in a cause.

As we see the world through the eyes of a young boy, Roth let’s us see both sides of the cause. The boy is trying to make sense of the world when all he wants is the comfort of home. For things to stay the same. For people to get along. Don’t we all want this?

Roth compares family life like war and peace. Most of the times we are at war and all we want is peace. Isn’t this a universal truth?