Philip Roth's New Novel

The most widely anticipated novel of the season is Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, expertly reviewed by Paul Berman in the NYTimes Book Review. The story is set in an alternative past where Wendall Wilkie is defeated for the Republican nomination for the presidency by Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh, unlike Wilkie in the real history, defeats FDR and pursues a policy of non-intervention in the conflict being fought between Hitler and the other European powers. Roth quickly shows how easy it is for a nation to become entranced by anti-semitism and fascism. As a story about how a country can be cajoled and coerced, it is certainly going to be the novel that all politically conscious America will be talking about in the next few months.