From: "Mark" 


"Steve Ewing"  wrote ... Roth has a new
novel on a similar subject-- in which Lindbergh, an
> "America-Firster", gets elected.

I think that "America-Firster" is not an accurate depiction (not
consistently anyway). That said, I read this review of that book the other
day: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/james

I don't think you can get there from here (recent changes in their access
model) but the reviewer makes that book sound very tenuous at best,
excerpts:

"Roth's preparation of an alternative history is just a rearrangement
of the furniture. If it had really concerned him, he might have done it
more adroitly. But what really concerns him is the notion of an America
with its traditional anti-Semitic prejudices given official endorsement.
"Our homeland was America," says the Roth-like narrator.
"Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything
changed." Roth's challenge is to show how it changed. The challenge is
not easily met, because America was never Germany."

"In the United States, where the separation of powers is the
fundamental principle of the Constitution, not even the most charismatic
President-not even, say, Charles Lindbergh-could have instituted, in
peacetime, racially selective federal laws without the approval of
Congress. Had Lindbergh set about to gain such approval, he would have had
to sway the media, not to mention Hollywood."

"As Roth must have realized long before he finished writing it, the
insuperable problem with The Plot Against America is that America is
against the plot."

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5