The Plot Against America

i really really surprised myself by finding most of this book to be totally fascinating and quite incredible, in large part due to what is going on now. i think that had i read this prior to 2015, i probably wouldn't have been too interested and would have thought that it was mostly far fetched and a strange project evidencing how some people "can't get past history." but here we are, and he describes with incredible accuracy so many things that we never thought could happen. i didn't realize that an "america first committee" existed prior to world war ii, with much the same ideas of isolationism as is spouted today. over and over again when reading i couldn't believe how he had predicted things. ("Though on the morning after the show more election disbelief prevailed, especially among the pollsters, by the day after that everybody seemed to understand everything, and the radio commentators and the news columnists made it sound s if Roosevelt's defeat had been preordained." the details are different but there is so much truth of our current reality in this book. on trump supporters: "They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.") the speed with which things happen once they start; the underbelly of hate and racism that comes to the surface and is given credence by the administration. it's all so prescient.

toward the end it got a bit wild, but the truth is that once the foundation is set, anything is possible. it is scary to realize how close we are to anything happening, really. how once something is set in motion, it's hard to stop it, and how far along we are on this path already. really scary.

as to the book itself, i was a bit disappointed in the wildness at the end, but more than that it's like there was no ending. it literally reads like my copy is missing another 50 pages or so. i wanted (especially with our current situation) an actual ending and don't like how he did this at all. i also would have liked a personal history in the back; since he included information about the real lives of the people he uses in the book, i think he should have also included a small bit about himself and his family members since they are the main characters in the book. as far as that goes, i generally find his insertion of self in his books as too much navel gazing, but here i thought it worked so well because he was taking real history and overlaying an alternative history on top of it. so the more real it was, the more believable it could be. (still, without our actual history that is happening now, i probably would have felt this was completely outside the realm of possibility.)

if the ending had been an ending this would have gotten more stars from me because i thought it was excellent right up until near the end. maybe having an ending matters so much right now because i need to see how our current situation could end, and he didn't give me that. show less

I love history but so often it is presented as static and inevitable. The heartbeat of history is entombed in a bloodless waxworks of names, dates and figures forgetting that people are the driving forces setting the whirly-gigs in motion. The best authors like Doris Kearns Goodwin (TEAM OF RIVALS) and David McCullough (1776) pump the blood back into those rendered lifeless by time. The pulse of America is palpable in both those author's works. As it is in Philip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA. Part of loving history is asking the big "What If...?" questions. What if certain guns jammed, or bombs failed to detonate or certain people lived or died due to run of the mill happenstance either inserting into or deleting their appearances show more from history. Roth asks one of these questions. What if Roosevelt lost the 1940 election to Charles Lindbergh leader of AMERICA FIRST (isolationists) which fought to keep the US out of WWII. A young and handsome hero, Lindbergh was how America wanted to see itself--creating a kind of Camelot before the Kennedy's. Written during the Bush administration, it is easy to see a kind of template over which the novel was created. It was left vague, for example, just how much Lindbergh was even in control of his own administration versus the machinations of others making decisions for him. I think it is limiting to just assume it's goal is to bash Bush although I would consider it mission accomplished. Instead, I feel it succeeds in warning against allowing anyone the power to define right and wrong without the tempering hand of common decency. Before reading I anticipated history with a big "H"---seeing all the movers and shakers (Hitler, Lindbergh, Roosevelt, etc) at home and abroad running their paths through history but to alternate destinations. What I found instead was more fascinating--history with a small "h" (personal history). History does not just affect those who create it. History falls upon us all in trickles or downpours. Even upon the Roth family of Newark, New Jersey. The power of this novel is that it reads more like a memoir. Dramatic world events unfold but we view them from the perspective of a nine year old boy who's primary concerns are his friends, his stamp collection and his family. The author takes great care in lighting up the interior lives of his novel bound Roth family so that all the shadows thrown by that light are true to those characters. I was drawn into the family as if reading letters found in the long neglected closet of my own childhood. The family was real, which made the community real and thus the greater world felt real as it worked to marginalize, obliterate and absorb a unique culture in the name of protecting America. My only complaint about the novel would be the somewhat haphazard nature of it's conclusion. I understand it is likely a reflection of how an adult would look back at his childhood...after the bright burning memorable crisis has passed, events that follow are often jumbled puzzle pieces that one no longer cares enough about to piece together. Even so it was a tad jarring to be so involved personally with the characters to have such a vivid world allowed to dissolve in such a fashion. A small quibble however when I enjoyed the rest so thoroughly. show less

Every time I read a Roth novel I think: here is the best writer working today. There was so much richness in this story, such assurance, such maturity. So much meaning is packed into the language of this novel--language that superficially resembles straightforward story-telling and is so much more. I feel so taken care of as a reader. The story begins when the protagonist is in third grade and somehow Roth captures all the vulnerability and smartness of this little boy without ever letting go of the assured authorial voice that guides the story forward. No present-tense antics. No trying to write the way an 8 year old might talk in Fiction Land. Just lovely, lovely prose, an unfolding of a story that captivated me with its imagination show more and with its humanity. Thank you Mr. Roth. show less

The Plot against America is a book that's thorough in its world-building, even if its a parallel-world historical fiction.
The sense of dread pervades the entire book, and it goes beyond the perils of the period it's set in. It brings to mind the sense of having your freedoms stripped away, in any period and country, and even in today's world, it rings true.
I didn't give it a 5-star only because the ending felt a little flat to me. I didn't get a sense of conclusion, and even though it's not mandatory in a book like this, the ending was altogether too fast and it didn't have enough room to breathe. There was relief, yes, but it came from the situation itself and not for seeing the characters live on and well.
A great book, the first one show more I've read by Philip Roth, and I'll be sure to read more of them. show less

I read this book years ago when it was first published, but thought I would reread it in light of our current situation This is an alternative history in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt and becomes president in 1940. He immediately enters into a pact with Hitler (and soon after with Japan), so that the United States will not enter WW II. Soon, encouraged by Lindbergh's government, anti-Semitism is overt, government-approved, and everywhere.

Despite covering these big issues though, this is also a family story, the story of a Jewish boy named Philip Roth growing up in Newark at this time. He is growing up in a poisonous atmosphere, but he also has many of the normal experiences you might expect for a young boy. The show more family tries to live their normal lives in an extraordinary time. I have to wonder how much, if any, of the familial stories and relationships are autobiographical.

So while at times this is a sweet coming of age story, it is also a vivid reimagining of what might have been, and a terrifying look at how quickly and easily America could go so wrong. And it is all the more tragic because of how prescient the book was regarding our present circumstances.

Highly recommended.

4 stars show less

This is one of the most engrossing novels I’ve ever read. At its core, Philip Roth’s remarkable alternate history tale, “The Plot Against America,” imagines an America in which aviation hero and fierce isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Within that framework, Roth focuses on the consequences for Jews in America as Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathizing becomes increasingly evident and a wave of antisemitism stealthily builds, and most particularly the plight of the Jewish community in Newark, New Jersey, largely illustrated by drawing autobiographically on his own family and childhood experiences. The result is a richly drawn and finely detailed narrative presented show more from the viewpoint of young Philip at seven years old but told by him as an older man with many years of perspective to elucidate the fears that shrouded these events. Roth seamlessly weaves together the day’s historical figures with the incidents that occur at the national, local, and family levels into an all too plausible nightmare scenario. The novel does, however, have a few lighter moments of Philip’s youthful hijinks that serve to occasionally break the tension. I can quibble that Roth reveals the historical end-game a bit too soon, and that the ending is rather abrupt; nevertheless, this is a riveting tour de force.

I must also note the absolute artistry of Roth’s dynamic and complex sentence structure. Like fine works of handicraft, Roth’s sentences, albeit long, are beautiful little works of art, carefully molded and shaped with just the right embellishment and detail, resulting in highly polished nuggets of prose that place the particular events, characters, situations, and emotions in clear and illuminated context. show less

It avoids all the usual pitfalls of alternative history works. There's no ironic hindsight here, no showboating of possibilities and no having everything revert to the familiar with a sigh of relief at the end. All of which is admirable. The writing jumps from the politcal and objective to the familiar. The book is essentially made up of a lot of shorter stories, all gripping and original. Where the book really excels, however, is in giving insight into the real malevolance of organised hatred. Roth does this by showing the view from below, and by giving little glimpses - a trip to washington, a letter, a casual remark - of the horror of the whole.