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 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.