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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Oct 2004, 400 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2005, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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This may be alternative history, but it is chillingly and convincingly realistic in its portrayal. The reader watches, horrified yet totally absorbed, as America spirals down the path toward fascism.
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. Not only had Lindbergh, in a
nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America
toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but upon taking office as the
thirty-third president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial "understanding"
with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and virulent anti-Semitic policies
he appeared to accept without difficulty.
What then followed in America is the
historical setting for this startling new book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip
Roth, who recounts what it was like for his Newark family — and for a million
such families all over the country — during the menacing years of the
Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every
reason to expect the worst.
Chapter 1
June 1940–October 1940
Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War
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 of 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. My mother— who'd wanted to go to teachers' college but couldn't because of the expense, who'd lived at home working as an office secretary after finishing high school, who'd kept us from feeling poor during the worst of the Depression by ...
Good alternate fiction has the effect of waking one from complacency, because it
shows us how the lives that we live (and on the whole take for granted) are
a result of an endless series of events through history; and if any single
one of these events had been different the world we live in would be
different. The logical extrapolation from this is that if such a small
change in the past could have such radical consequences, what of the endless
decisions made daily by governments and individuals today - what path are they
leading us down, and is it the best path?
The Plot Against America is just such a book. Aviation hero, and
vocal Aryan
supremacist, Charles Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential
election on a peace-with-Hitler platform, because the majority of voters fear
that FDR plans to bring the US into the war in Europe. Emboldened by
Lindberg's win, America spirals down into fascism as isolationists in and out of
government across the country enact new laws and create an atmosphere of hate
that results in nationwide pogroms paralleling events in Europe. ..continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Interesting Links: If you're interested in knowing more about
Lindbergh's life and how it actually panned out, during the war and up to his
death in 1974, you might find these two sites of interest:
CharlesLindbergh.com (a hobby site) and
PBS.org.
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