Nonetheless, it is in the high end of the Roth oeuvre which I have discovered over the last few months to be endlessly full of surprises and variety - perhaps more so than most of the other writers I have read. I did not give it five stars because as much as I liked it, it was not the narrative, gorgeous masterpiece that American Pastoral or The Human Stain were. I will not give any spoilers because - even if it is too late before Election Day 2016 to read this - it is an excellent book and I would not want someone to read this review and pass it over. The scenario is Interesting, but what Roth does best is describe the terror and uncertainty of the days during this fictive version of 1940-1942 where the US President proudly wears a medal from Hitler (and in real life, Lindbergh did have one from Göring as Roth points out in the fascinating and exhaustive 'real history' postscript) and introduces seemingly innocuous programs that are aimed at destroying the Jewish community. In it, Roth features himself as the 6-8 year old narrator seeing the events from a Jewish kid's eyes in Newark.

Campbell Memorial Award, and came in 11th for the 2005 Locus Awards.Breathtaking and highly realistic, The Plot Against America is Philip Roth's vision of an alternative path history could have taken had Charles Lindbergh have not kept his anti-Semitism as a private matter, but (like Mr Trump) brought it into the political arena. It won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, was a finalist for the John W. In 2005, the novel won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction given by the Society of American Historians.

The novel depicts the Weequahic section of Newark which includes Weequahic High School from which Roth graduated. The novel received praise for the realism of its world and its treatment of topics such as antisemitism, trauma, and the perception of history.

Roth based his novel on the isolationist ideas espoused by Lindbergh in real life as a spokesman for the America First Committee, and on his own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The narrator and central character in the novel is the young Philip, and the care with which his confusion and terror are rendered makes the novel as much about the mysteries of growing up as about American politics. The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels. Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh. It is an alternative history in which Franklin D. The Plot Against America is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004.

The plot against america book review