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" In 1963, when Philip Roth had published one novel (not so good), a novella, and some short stories, he wrote &amp;quot;Writing About Jews,&amp;quot; an essay defending his work against those Jews\u2014not mere Jews: rabbis\u2014who had accused him of pandering to anti-Semitism and failing to heed the lessons of the Holocaust.  &amp;quot;For those Jews who choose to continue to call themselves Jews,&amp;quot; wrote Roth, back when Hitler&amp;#039;s death camps were no less fresh in memory than the Reagan presidency is today, &amp;quot;there are courses to follow to prevent it from ever being 1933 again that are more direct, reasonable, and dignified than beginning to act as though it already is 1933\u2014or as though it always is.&amp;quot; (Emphasis Roth&amp;#039;s.) Roth went on to accuse his accusers of &amp;quot;piously summoning up the &amp;#039;six million&amp;#039; to justify&amp;quot; their own &amp;quot;timidity\u2014and paranoia.&amp;quot; Now\u2014about 40 years and 20-odd books later, in the gloaming of a career that, for my two cents, has established Roth beyond argument as the greatest fiction writer America has ever produced\u2014comes The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin, $26). It is 1940, Charles Lindbergh\u2014in secret league with Hitler&amp;#039;s Reich\u2014has wrested the White House from FDR, and the U.S. has begun tightening a noose around the tender neck of American Jewry. This is a richly terrifying historical novel, surely the only work of Roth&amp;#039;s that may be called a page-turner in the usual sense of the term. Timidity and paranoia aside\u2014but always, for Jews anywhere, within reach\u2014its terror echoes in our world and our America. Read the news, listen to Fox News&amp;#039;s vox populi, gaze deep into John Ashcroft&amp;#039;s dead-fish eyes. We live one dirty bomb away from martial law, and not much farther from another refrain of &amp;quot;Round up the Jews.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/reviews/a2472/esq1004-big-book/>