Philip Roth’s latest novel traces the journey of a second-generation Jewish family in a working-class, Jewish neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, and what happens to them emotionally, psychologically, and socially when Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt for President in 1940. Upon inauguration Lindbergh signs a non-aggression pact with Hitler and the Axis powers, and novel itself—and what happens to this family, the neighborhood, and the country—commences. Roth's choice to focus his novel on a single family, and narrate the story through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy is a smart one. It gives what could have been a political thriller real gut-level resonance.


The tight-knit, immigrant, and character-rich milieu will be familiar to readers of Roth’s other novels, and once Lindbergh is elected, the community quakes with fear. Unable to change the world that marshals to change them, people pummel themselves and each other. Some buy in. An eerie program to relocate Jews to America’s ‘heartland’, titled Just Folks, is implemented. And all is told through the visually perceptive, yet not-quite-comprehending eyes of a 7-year-old-boy named Philip Roth who loves his stamp collection and longs to sneak into the movies.

Roth’s well-researched book is based on real, though minority historical currents afoot in America during the 1930s and 1940s while also winking at today’s American landscape. Lindbergh actually was an anti-Semitic admirer of Hitler, along with Henry Ford and other prominent and not-so-prominent Americans. In the 1940s, Republicans bitter about "New Deal socialism" and longing for the 19th century seethed against FDR and some might note, still seethe at FDR’s legacy of social security and other social programs today. Organizations such as The America First Committee did campaign to keep this country out of the war, taking up an isolationist argument from WWI. Lindbergh--via Roth--taps into all of these elements, and in The Plot Against America makes a coalition that seizes power.

Lindbergh, campaigning to keep America out of WWII, defeats Roosevelt, who brought America out of the depression, with a swift, laconic, and eerie speed. It occurs in the novel's first chapter and it reminds one of the unassuming ease of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, where Bush’s humble and moderate rhetoric does not match his war presidency. Both Roth's fictional Lindbergh and the current White House occupant speak in short, declarative sentences, make a show of distaining oratory, and possess aw-shucks, all-American looks. Tapping into both past and current American elements, Roth pulls off plausibility for his drama. There is a certain terrible innocence that runs through American history, and most recently Reagan and the current Bush have tapped into it with their respective images of grandfather and son. Roth uses the real-life image of Lindbergh, the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, and Lindbergh's Nazi-sympathizing to highlight this innocence—like a Warhol silkscreen of a car crash.


The Plot Against America is a page-turner as the family’s fear and desperation intensifies. Yet the ending seems rushed, and one wonders if Philip Roth rushed it in order to publish the book before the 2004 election. Without a doubt, Roth's fictional Just Folks program and the current theme of "Homeland Security" are parallels on the level of language, a level of special importance to writers, and one which George Orwell himself explored in 1984 and the essay, “Politics and the English Language.” The Plot Against America manages to be one of the few recent novels that have commented on pressing topicality with lasting grace. Salmon Rushdie's The Fury, about the late-1990s Internet boom; and J.M. Coetze's Disgrace, about reconciliation, revenge, and political correctness in post-apartheid South Africa; provide The Plot Against America with good company.