Written by Phillip Roth (who won the 1998 Pulitizer Prize for Fiction), "The Plot Against America" is a historical fiction novel. The premise of the book is that Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in 1940 on an isolationist and somewhat anit-Semitic platform. He draws on Lindbergh's, Henry Ford's and other isolationsist and known anti-Semites as characters for his book about what dark days could have come to pass in America.
Roth does a magnificent job of telling this tale through the voice of a nine-year-old Phillip Roth; that is, he tells hwat life for him and his family in Newark, New Jersey--and across the US-- might have been like if events had actually transpired. The civil liberties of Jews in America begin to quickly erode as Lindbergh stikes a truce with Hitler, and America actually begins a pogrom. The plot turns and twists are facinating, and his character development is magnificent.
I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions if Roth is attempting to get us to think about civil liberties in present day America. I truly enjoyed reading this book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
Roth does a magnificent job of telling this tale through the voice of a nine-year-old Phillip Roth; that is, he tells hwat life for him and his family in Newark, New Jersey--and across the US-- might have been like if events had actually transpired. The civil liberties of Jews in America begin to quickly erode as Lindbergh stikes a truce with Hitler, and America actually begins a pogrom. The plot turns and twists are facinating, and his character development is magnificent.
I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions if Roth is attempting to get us to think about civil liberties in present day America. I truly enjoyed reading this book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
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