PanThe AtlanticInsecurity saturates The Plot Against America. Unfortunately, the saturation goes right down to the level of its telling. For a writer blessed with the eyes and ears to find real life fantastic in every detail, fantasy is the wrong form … 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 … It's an understandable bad dream. But it hasn't led to a good book, and couldn't have.