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The Plot Against America: A Novel Hardcover – March 10, 2020

by Philip Roth (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 5,580 ratings
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Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series.
 
In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.
 
For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

"A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review
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  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Mariner Books
  4. Publication date
    March 10, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.36 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0358008816
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0358008811
  8. Lexile measure
    1640L
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Sumptuous...An almost unbelievably rich book, and another likely major prizewinner.
Kirkus Reviews, Starred

Stunning...Roth's writing has never been so direct and accessible while retaining its stylistic precision and insights into human foibles.
Publishers Weekly, Starred —

About the Author

PHILIP ROTH (1933–2018) won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004” and the W.H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year, making Roth the first writer in the forty-six-year history of the prize to win it twice.

In 2005 Roth became the third living American writer to have his works published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2012 he won Spain’s highest honor, the Prince of Asturias Award, and in 2013 he received France’s highest honor, Commander of the Legion of Honor.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (March 10, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0358008816
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358008811
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1640L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.36 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 5,580 ratings

About the author

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Philip Roth

Philip Roth

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PHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction. He twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ Prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004.” Roth received PEN’s two most prestigious awards: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. He died in 2018.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

Stephen J. J. Mount
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2006
Verified Purchase
Even if you're not a fan of speculative fiction, I would still recommend this book. I didn't quite know what to expect, but being an occasional fan of Harry Turtledove and his ilk, I gave Roth's book a try. What amazed me the most what the realization within the first few pages that this was an autobiographical novel, told in the first person, with Roth in the center. I was hoping the author would have a note about how many of the characters were real and how many of the experiences were real, though he never did. Considering the vividness of the episodes, though, I have to believe that many were drawn from real memories, and that lent a certain air to the book that I've never experienced in speculative fiction before.

The main idea is that Charles Lindbergh ran for President in 1940, and won big, mostly on an isolationist platform. Roth used bits of actual history to speculate that the Lindbergh administration would not only stay out of the war but would be an ally of Germany. Lend/Lease ended and treaties were signed with Japan to stay out of their way in the Pacific. Hence, no Pearl Harbor, no declaration of war against Japan, and none against the rest of the Axis. (One notable omission was no mention of Italy, or at least no memorable mention of Italy.) Instead of allying with the Soviets and putting anti-communism on the back burner, it was in the forefront, and Germany's invasion of the USSR was lauded in the U.S.

Against this backdrop, Roth's life continued. As a young boy, he had a unique view of the events. The point of view is of an adult writing of his time as a child, so though young Philip talks like a little boy of eight, the prose is that of an adult looking back on the events. The writing was well done. Roth lived in Newark, New Jersey, in the Jewish section, and opposition to Lindbergh was high in the community. Having heard of concentration camps in Germany, and of Lindbergh's admiration for Germany, they thought the worst. After his inauguration, Lindbergh signed a deal with Germany in Iceland, and all the worst fears of the Jews started to come true.

There was constant fear of pogroms, of camps, of persecution. And it begins, though slowly. A summer "Just Folks" program to place Jewish city youth with middle-American farmers; the Homestead 42 program to move Jewish families out of the cities and into the mid-west to help them "assimilate"; an American kristallnacht in Detroit.

The book turns some history on its head. To many today, Lindbergh is seen as a hero (though I knew of some of his anti-semitic statements before I read the book, I think this detail is lost to most Americans), but he is a villain in the book. After his untimely death, his wife tries to redeem his memory, but I'm not sure if Roth wanted us to believe the story. It is both detailed enough to be "true," but the books characters dismiss it as hysterical ramblings. Walter Winchell, a popular radio personality, is the hero; but in "real" history, he ended up a staunch McCarthyite, not exactly my idea of a hero. I found these reversals to be well done and interesting.

Overall, The Plot Against America was a great read. It had wonderful character development, and I actually would have like to have read about the next decade of these people's lives. If you're a fan of history, speculative or not, I would recommend this book to you.
8 people found this helpful
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George M Woods
4.0 out of 5 stars The masterful writer I remember
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2009
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I have long been a fan of Philip Roth, ranking his first book,"Letting Go" as one of my very favorite. "Portnoy's Complaint," " When She Was Good," "The Breast," "Goodbye Columbus," were all worthwhile investments of my time. And "The Great American Novel," well, who knew a book could be so funny? And yet somewhere around "The Ghost Writer" or maybe it was the Zuckerman Trilogy, perhaps "Sabath's Theater," I wandered away. His novels seemed now, well, bitter. And increasingly absorbed with his ethnicity and the diminishing capacities of age. I honored an old loyalty with "American Pastoral" which, while good, didn't really dispel the mood that seemed to have settled about him. So I began "The Plot Against America" with some trepidation. From reviews I knew the basic plot and feared that it might be more zionist screed than a work of literature.

And so I am happy to report that the old Roth is back, light-handed, deft, at the very top of his form. Some of the credit surely belongs with the real events for which he creates a parallel story line - they themselves were so fantastic as to make Roth's alternate reality plausible. The book's characters, FDR, Fiorello LaGuardia, Walter Winchell, Henry Ford and others were all larger than life figures before Roth ever set pen to paper. A non-fiction tale about the Nazi villains, about Charles Lindbergh and others who populate this book would read like the wildest imaginings if we didn't have the unambiguous historical record. The story takes as its theme what would have occurred had Charles Lindbergh, hero of the 1927 Atlantic crossing, used his popularity, his innate isolationist bent and his unfortunate anti-semitic beliefs to best FDR in the 1940 presidential election. As Roth tells his story it is through the senses of a nine year old protagonist named, clear enough, Philip Roth. That choice helps greatly to blur the line between fact and fiction since many of facts of this child's life were Roth's own. This book is, in part, autobiography. But that choice also informs the book's tone with a sense of wonder and revelation as the child comes alive to a sense of the world's wonder and venality. Roth's gifts as one of the foremost observers of human nature are on full display as the child watches both his parents and himself make choices they cannot justify nor avoid. Roth's time rupture is over a span of just two years as facts merge again with the fiction by 1942 and the Allies go on to defeat the Axis powers. To some degree the minimal nature of the bubble Roth has created accounts for the novel's power - it would have been such a small change in events as we know them to have had history turn out so radically different. To consider how similar conditions were in the US and Germany in the 1930s - economic catastrophe the prime breeding ground of demagogues - is to wonder at how we managed to escape Germany's fate and to make Roth's telling all the more believable. To know, as every sentient being must, that human cruelty knows no geographic border, no unique planetary alignment, that genocide could, too, happen here.

To share some of the credit for this novel with real life is in no way to minimize the authorial talent on display here. Philip Roth is one of the most talented, prolific writers of the past fifty or so years. Reading this novel was immensely enjoyable.
9 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Lillyco
5.0 out of 5 stars Not true, but true!
Reviewed in Brazil on June 4, 2021
Verified Purchase
Through an imagined America, Roth depicts what really existed at that time under the surface of a republic, the so-called “land of freedom”. The anguish of the caracters is so devastating and profoundly exposed.
One person found this helpful
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Grace Ferguson
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent livre
Reviewed in France on July 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
Pour les anglophone, le titre de ce livre traduit en français étant "Le complot contre l'Amérique".
C'est une fiction vraiment originale et très attachante.
Même s'il s'agit d'une fiction, je pense que ce livre permet de comprendre comment une famille juive pratiquante peut se sentir menacée par l'extérieur....
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Robert P. Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars Roth Fortells The Future
Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
It is 1940 and Charles A Lindberg, a highly publicized figure with ties to Nazi Germany and no previous political experience, enters the race to become the Republican Presidential nominee in the upcoming election. To everyone`s surprise, he wins. Even more surprising he wins the election over the incumbent, Franklin Roosevelt on a platform of isolationism and the motto, America First.

This impressive novel then goes on to imagine what Lindberg`s presidency would have been like. As a supporter of the Nazis, he invites the German Foreign Minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop to the White House, he rails against negative press reviews, he attacks the Jews as being warmongers, he flies around the country to appear at rallies in his support.

Fast forward to the present. Replace Lindberg with another highly publicized egomaniac with no political experience; replace Germany with Russia and Ribbentrop with the Russian ambassador; replace Jews with Muslims and warmonger with terrorist; replace Nazis with Neo-Nazis (some fine people); the results are disturbing. However, what is truly amazing is that Roth wrote this book in 2004! How could he foresee what would transpire twelve years later?

Lindberg, of course, never ran for President although many encouraged him to do so. He was, however, anti-Semitic, a white supremist who greatly admired the Nazis. (He was awarded a gold medallion by Hitler, "Service Cross of the German Eagle"). His biographer writes that Lindberg believed Western (and therefore American) civilizations depended on a "united strength among ourselves, on a strength too great for foreign armies to challenge, on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back...an infiltration of inferior blood".

Ring any bells?
6 people found this helpful
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Horst
5.0 out of 5 stars Unglaublich, unheimlich
Reviewed in Germany on August 30, 2018
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Roth präsentiert in unnachahmlicher Weise, auf der Basis historisch-fiktiver Handlungen, was in einer Gesellschaft passieren kann, wenn eine Mehrheit einen Sündenbock ausmacht und dabei perfide politisch unterstützt wird. Absolut lesenswert und aktuell.
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Vicente Jiménez
5.0 out of 5 stars Vicente
Reviewed in Spain on November 23, 2017
Verified Purchase
Muy buen libro. Se puede leer en inglés con un nivel medio-alto del idioma. Por lo demás Roth es un valor seguro y el libro es muy entretenido
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