Bob Schwartz

Among many famous dystopian novels (Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc.), 1984 has currently risen to the top of the Amazon bestseller list. But the book to really read is Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America: A Novel (2004)

In this alternative history, one of the world’s biggest celebrities surprisingly becomes the Republican presidential nominee and defeats FDR in the 1940 election. Charles Lindbergh, a known Nazi sympathizer who wants to keep America from fighting Germany, is a friend of Hitler and an enemy of the Jews. And he is President of the United States.

Here are just a few reviews:

“A terrific political novel. . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review

“Roth’s most powerfrul book to date. Confounding and illuminating, enraging and discomfiting, imaginative and utterly–terrifyingly–believable.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“It’s not a prophecy; it’s a nightmare, and it becomes more nightmarish–and also funnier and more bizarre–as is goes along. . . . [A] sinuous and brilliant book, with its extreme sweetness, its black pain, and its low, ceaseless cackle.” –The New Yorker

“Ambitious and chilling. . . a breath-taking leap of imagination. . . . The writing is brilliant.” –USA Today

“Intimately observed characters in situations fraught with society’s deepest, most bitter tensions. . . . Too ingeniously excruciating to put down.” –Newsweek

“Raises the stakes as high as a patriotic novel can take them. . . . Effortlessly, it seems, Roth has led us to suspend disbelief; then he makes us believe; then he suspends this belief and finally removes it. . . . A fabulous yarn.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review