The Plot Against America (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

published

September 27th 2005 (first published 2004) by Vintage

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binding

Paperback, 416 pages

isbn

1400079497 (isbn13: 9781400079490)

description

"What if" scenarios are often suspect. They are sometimes thinly veiled tales of the gospel according to the author, taking on the claustro...more

[close] "What if" scenarios are often suspect. They are sometimes thinly veiled tales of the gospel according to the author, taking on the claustrophobic air of a personal fantasia that can't be shared. Such is not the case with Philip Roth's tour de force, The Plot Against America. It is a credible, fully-realized picture of what could happen anywhere, at any time, if the right people and circumstances come together.

The Plot Against America explores a wholly imagined thesis and sees it through to the end: Charles A. Lindbergh defeats FDR for the Presidency in 1940. Lindbergh, the "Lone Eagle," captured the country's imagination by his solo Atlantic crossing in 1927 in the monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, then had the country's sympathy upon the kidnapping and murder of his young son. He was a true American hero: brave, modest, handsome, a patriot. According to some reliable sources, he was also a rabid isolationist, Nazi sympathizer, and a crypto-fascist. It is these latter attributes of Lindbergh that inform the novel.

The story is framed in Roth's own family history: the family flat in Weequahic, the neighbors, his parents, Bess and Herman, his brother, Sandy and seven-year-old Philip. Jewishness is always the scrim through which Roth examines American contemporary culture. His detractors say that he sees persecution everywhere, that he is vigilant in "Keeping faith with the certainty of Jewish travail"; his less severe critics might cavil about his portrayal of Jewish mothers and his sexual obsession, but generally give him good marks, and his fans read every word he writes and heap honors upon him. This novel will engage and satisfy every camp.

"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course, no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews." This is the opening paragraph of the book, which sets the stage and tone for all that follows. Fear is palpable throughout; fear of things both real and imagined. A central event of the novel is the relocation effort made through the Office of American Absorption, a government program whereby Jews would be placed, family by family, across the nation, thereby breaking up their neighborhoods--ghettos--and removing them from each other and from any kind of ethnic solidarity. The impact this edict has on Philip and all around him is horrific and life-changing. Throughout the novel, Roth interweaves historical names such as Walter Winchell, who tries to run against Lindbergh. The twist at the end is more than surprising--it is positively ingenious.

Roth has written a magnificent novel, arguably his best work in a long time. It is tempting to equate his scenario with current events, but resist, resist. Of course it is a cautionary tale, but, beyond that, it is a contribution to American letters by a man working at the top of his powers. --Valerie Ryan [close]

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J rated it:

05/19/08

Read in December, 2004

I’d been a big fan of Philip Roth since stumbling across Portnoy’s Complaint in college. That book spoke hysterically of the torments of a desire conflicting with one’s upbringing and one’s own better sense. Roth captured so keenly the nature of an almost self-destructive pursuit and the complexities of repression, transference, and what Dostoevsky’s Underground Man referred to as “contrary to one’s own interests…that very ‘most advantageous advantage.’” The book was...more

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David rated it:

06/19/08

Read in July, 2006

In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth lovingly re-creates the lost world of the Jewish community of mid-century Newark, the world of his own boyhood. Then he takes the main characters, modeled on himself, his friends and his family, and tortures them by forcing them to live through state-sponsored Nazism in America.

Roth imagines an America in which Charles Lindberg defeats FDR in1940 by pledging to keep the US out of WWII, then immediately signs non-aggression pacts with both Germany an...more In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth lovingly re-creates the lost world of the Jewish community of mid-century Newark, the world of his own boyhood. Then he takes the main characters, modeled on himself, his friends and his family, and tortures them by forcing them to live through state-sponsored Nazism in America.

Roth imagines an America in which Charles Lindberg defeats FDR in1940 by pledging to keep the US out of WWII, then immediately signs non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Japan, and presides over a climate of creeping authoritarianism and anti-Semitism in the US. The story is told through the eyes of a seven year-old boy—Philip Roth--part of a lower-middle class Jewish family in Newark. The Roths are strivers living in a tightly knit community of other lower-middle-class Jews. The novel illustrates the destructive effects of the climate of fear unleashed by Lindbergh’s election by showing what happens to this particular family and the community of which they are an integral part.

Plot is a kind of speculative historical fiction, but it faces some of the same problems that bedevil traditional historical fiction: how to accurately and convincingly recount the historical context without turning the novel into a research dump, and without completely breaking the narrative spell. Roth is only partially successful at this. The novel is beset with jarring juxtapositions of narrative tone, as he stops the action to set up the context, and then plunges the reader back into the narrative proper, and the rapidly unraveling world of the Roths.

Roth faces the added challenge of convincingly narrating historical events that did not occur, and making them flow seamlessly out of those that did. In this he’s much more successful. He wants to show the reader that, though fascism did not take root here, it might well have. History is only inevitable in retrospect. It’s almost always, to some degree, radically contingent while it’s happening. Unless you believe that all events are preordained, either by a higher power or by some kind of inexorable structural logic, then you have to hold open the possibility that even though things without question turned out the way they did, they might well have turned out differently. In the end, Roth returns the nation to its actual historical path, and the fascist interlude that he narrates is but a temporary swerve, but he does succeed in convincing the reader—at least this reader—that the history of the US at mid-century might well have taken a darker turn. Consider the following:
-At the time the US had its own officially sanctioned system of apartheid. Blacks in the south were denied the right to vote and were forced to use a separate but decidedly unequal set of public services. Their second-class status was codified into law. In 1940, Americans already lived in a country where an officially sanctioned racism buttressed a social system in which a despised minority was denied equal access to employment, education, public services, and political influence.
-Anti-Semitism was hardly unknown in 1940’s America—whether in the genteel version espoused by the WASP establishment or the cruder versions adhered to further down the social scale. America in 1940 was a country in which many if not most Americans at least entertained the idea that some social groups were either naturally inferior to white/Christian Americans or were superior in a potentially diabolical way, and were at least passively supportive of a political system that limited their political and civil rights. And these attitudes and forms of discrimination applied, to a lesser degree to be sure, but nevertheless, to Jews as well as blacks.
-In the novel, Lindberg defeats Roosevelt by espousing a very simple message: I will keep the US out of war. There was plenty of isolationist sentiment in the US after World War One. Americans may or may not have been appalled by Hitler’s persecution of the Jews of Europe, or worried by Germany’s aggressive military expansionism, but it took Pearl Harbor to convince Americans to enter the war--an attack by Japan, not Germany. Had Japan not attacked the US, the country could have tolerated a lot more systematic murder of European Jewry before intervening. Also, remember that it wasn’t until after the war that the defining fact of Word War II, in the popular imagination at any rate, became the systematic campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Perhaps the best one can say is that necessary but not sufficient conditions were in place for a fascist swerve. Also, I suspect that in showing us how fascism might have come to America, Roth is also showing why it didn’t.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the book was that, ultimately, the reader never knows just how real the plot against America actually was. In the end, the book dissolves into rival, tabloid-style conspiracy theories. And because the narrative voice is that of a 70 year-old man remembering events that took place when he was 8 or 9, and because the question of just what motivated Lindbergh is never answered in the “reality” of the novel, and because the things that the narrator can reveal are constrained by what he perceived then and knows to be true now, no definitive version of events can be rendered. If Roth had chosen to adopt the voice of the truly omniscient narrator he’d be able to penetrate the consciousness and observe the most intimate and secret thoughts and actions of other characters—everyone from Philip Roth to Charles Lindberg to Adolph Hitler--and to render some kind of definitive version of events—at least within the universe of the novel. Plot feels more plausible than most historical novels precisely because it never renders a definitive version of events. It dramatizes how little, ultimately, we understand the historical forces that shape our reality.

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Richard rated it:

07/11/08

Read in June, 2007

Philip Roth is certainly one of our best novelists--in fact, he may be among the last of our Great American Novelists, that crew of writers who were renown as much as public figures as writers. Norman Mailer has opted more for the public face aspect of his career than his writing career considering the quality of his work of late, and Thomas Pynchon has no public face at all. Modern masters like Cormac McCarthy (who, age-wise, is in the Mailer/Roth boat but has only become renown in his later ye...more

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Jonathan rated it:

07/24/07

bookshelves: life_and_other_atrocities

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2006

jonathan.touboul.free.fr/artic...

Cette uchronie nous emporte chez l’auteur lui-même, dans les années 40. Famille juive américaine de Newark, Sumit Avenue (New Jersey). Une ville bien tranquille, 3 synagogues concurrentes, où il fait bon être juif. A tel point que le père du narrateur refuse une promotion professionnelle pour y rester et y protéger sa famille. Mais toute cette tranquilité va vac...more jonathan.touboul.free.fr/artic...

Cette uchronie nous emporte chez l’auteur lui-même, dans les années 40. Famille juive américaine de Newark, Sumit Avenue (New Jersey). Une ville bien tranquille, 3 synagogues concurrentes, où il fait bon être juif. A tel point que le père du narrateur refuse une promotion professionnelle pour y rester et y protéger sa famille. Mais toute cette tranquilité va vaciller, et même s’effondrer, le jour où Charles Lindberg, l’aviateur sympathisant du régime nazi et membre du comité America First, est élu président des États-Unis au terme d’une campagne teintée d’antisémitisme et axée principalement sur le refus de voir l’Amérique prendre part au conflit qui ravage l’Europe. La suite s’enchaîne naturellement : pacte de non-agression signé avec l’Allemagne, isolationnisme, l’antisémitisme latent de la société américaine de l’époque libéré, qui se déchaîne. Le tout vu de l’oeil subjectif d’un enfant juif, nommé Philip Roth. La peur. La destabilisation de sa famille. Un cousin qui part en guerre et revient mutilé pour tomber finalement dans la délinquence. Une tante épouse le rabbin Bengelsdorf, la “caution juive” de Lindberg, et qui rencontre ce charmant von Ribbentrop. Un frère qui tombe dans le panneau de l’assimilation et de la dissolution des juifs dans la société (c’est à dire l’extermination totale et définitive) et qui se retrouve à a limite de l’antisémitisme(en plus, il mange du porc). Des juifs assassinés, après avoir été personae non grata. Le Bund germano-américain et le KKK qui triomphent. Et un beau président Lindberg fier qui parcourt l’Amérique a bord de son historique Spirit of Saint-Louis.

Roth a 7 ans. Les deux ans de gouvernance de Lindberg vont nous être décrits de ses yeux d’enfant apeuré. Et le livre de s’achever sur l’attaque de Pearl-Arbor que finalement on ne comprend pas. Comme dans la vraie histoire finalement. Puis l’histoire du complot contre l’amérique. Difficile à croire, car finalement moins mijoté que le reste de l’ouvrage. Mais finalement à ce moment là le roman s’est déjà refermé. On a renoué avec l’Histoire, la vraie. Et son absurdité, pire car réelle.

Un des points forts du roman de Roth, c’est aussi l’annexe historique. Où l’on apprend la vraie histoire. Celle où le même Lindbgerg refuse l’investiture démocrate. Mais on se rend compte que tout porte à croire que sa popularité en aurait fait un candidat redoutable contre Roosevelt. Et le ton de ses discours, dont celui prononcé à Des Moines en 1941 (un onze septembre...), intitulé Qui sont les fauteurs de guerre, reproduit intégralement en annexe, nous prouve qu’un Lindberg au pouvoir aurait changé la face du XXe siècle. Finalement, Lindberg, l’America First, et le bund germano-américain n’auront pas eu leur heure de gloire, et c’est pour le mieux. Tellement pas qu’ils sont oubliés.

Mais ce qui est fabuleux, dans ce nouveau roman de Philip Roth, c’est sa façon de donner une dimension subjective à son roman, la petite histoire qui vibre dans la grande, avec tous ses détails pitoresques qui en font un récit drôle, l’humour fût-il glaciale. Après avoir réglé ses comptes avec l’éducation à la juive-américaine dans Portnoy’s complaint, il rend à ses parents et à leur éducation un hommage. On s’amuse à le lire ; on frissone à se projeter dans l’histoire....less

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Brian rated it:

09/08/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone with a desire for a good yarn

I gave this book 4 stars. I probably would have given it 5 had it not gotten a bit weak towards the end and the author seemed to lose focus of where his story was going. It seemed like he wanted it to end whereas I wanted it to continue on.

First off let me say this book is NOT what most of these reviewers are calling it. It is far too complex to be thrown into a category of "what-if" histories. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was that is was a memoir. In fact it r...more I gave this book 4 stars. I probably would have given it 5 had it not gotten a bit weak towards the end and the author seemed to lose focus of where his story was going. It seemed like he wanted it to end whereas I wanted it to continue on.

First off let me say this book is NOT what most of these reviewers are calling it. It is far too complex to be thrown into a category of "what-if" histories. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was that is was a memoir. In fact it reminded me a lot of Frank McCourt's work, but only much better.

That is not to say that there is not a "what-if" angle to the book. That is obvious. And kind of like Harry Turtldove's books, Roth is not dealing too much with the actual history and consequences of the twist of events. He is dealing with the actual people--notably his own family and only throwing in the historical figures as they played a role in their everyday lives.

Once I acknowledged that this was a very unique memoir, I read it as such. Yes I understand the author has "A Novel" posted on the cover. But it is written as a memoir and should be read in that way. You do not read biographies like you do novels, nor the Bible like you would The Odyssey. Same goes here. It is a novel because it is fiction, but Roth is a brilliant writer that can present it as a memoir detailing a specific moment in his life, but presenting it now in a way that expresses the extreme fear that bubbled within the Jewish communities of the East Coast.

And he succeeds. America has forgotten in our collected back-patting and our victories in saving the world from the Nazis that we had some of the very same anti-Semetic sentiments in our own country. We quickly criticize drunken-rages by famous actors but forget that our own heros of American history held these views soberly (Limbergh and Henry Ford). And it is because of these underlying views that Roth seeks to throw a mirror up to ourselves and question how close we came to having our own (Final) "American Solution."

The only thing that kept this from being 5 stars was the weakening of an exposition of "events" towards the end. It did help give background but I thought someone with Roth's writing talent and given the incredible journey he had already taken me on, he could have filled in the "historical gaps" better. And the twist of an ending, though hardly a happy one, was very unexpected and forced me to charge through the last 100 or so pages staying up late at night to do so.

Read this book with an open mind and with a mind on our own dark history in mind. ...less

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Jace rated it:

(review of isbn 0224074539)

12/22/07

Read in December, 2007

I don't usually do this, but I'm halfway through this book and I want to write a review of my progress so far. For a couple of reasons:
1, The thought has crossed my mind a couple times in the first 200 pages to put the book down. If I don't finish it, I'll probably never write a full review.
2. As I near the midsection of the book, it becomes clearer that things might be about to turn upside down. If so, by the time I finish it I probably will have erased from memory everything I'm thinking ...more I don't usually do this, but I'm halfway through this book and I want to write a review of my progress so far. For a couple of reasons:
1, The thought has crossed my mind a couple times in the first 200 pages to put the book down. If I don't finish it, I'll probably never write a full review.
2. As I near the midsection of the book, it becomes clearer that things might be about to turn upside down. If so, by the time I finish it I probably will have erased from memory everything I'm thinking about this book now.

Anyway, this book is nothing like I thought it would be. With the title of The Plot Against America and a giant swastika on the cover, I expected it to be some sort of post-apocalyptic political thriller. Especially after just finishing, The Handmaid's Tale, I had high hopes. Well, it turns out to not be so much about Charles Lindbergh's fascist takeover of the USA. Instead it's a [fabricated:] autobiography of Philip Roth, then a 9-year-old Jewish boy growing up in Newark, set in an America where Republican Lindbergh defeated FDR in the 1940 election. Lindbergh is an anti-semite who, instead of entering World War II, signs a Memorandum of Understanding with Hitler's Germany--which would lead the reader to believe something ominous is in the works. But for 200 pages, it's just a droll account of Roth's childhood. The most excitement so far is Roth's older cousin who joins up with the Canadian military only to lose a leg fighting in France. One sinister thing the Lindbergh administration has done is introduce the Office of American Absorption [OAA:], which sounds like it belongs in the alphabet soup of FDR's New Deal. Though benign on its face, the OAA seeks to assimilate "minority" [i.e., Jewish:] youth into rural American life, thus driving a wedge between them and their parents. Roth's brother Sandy spent a summer in Kentucky with a pro-Lindbergh family and now he's back home in Newark and moody. It's not exactly Hitler Jugend, but it's what passes for drama in this book. That's my report so far. We'll see what the final 200 pages hold.
------------------------------------
Well, I finished the book. I don't really have the time or the inclination to give any more of an in-depth review, so I'll just say this. The rise AND the defeat of a fascist American government happened in all of EIGHT (8) pages. The entire escapade was condensed into a short newsreel blurb. It turns out that Roth is supposed to be one of the greatest living writers of our age, but I didn't see it. This book was a literary cock-tease. The emotional tension built up by the Lindbergh administration's machinations was betrayed by a fizzling, easily forgettable climax. ...less

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tara rated it:

04/16/08

Read in April, 2008

I began this book with sort of low expectations, for a variety of reasons: (1) the other non-sci-fi alternate history book I read recently, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, was disappointing; (2) I had a friend who did not like it; and (3) I started reading it about a year ago and put it down because it didn't grab me. But my expectations were exceeded, and not just because they were low to begin with.

This book isn't...more I began this book with sort of low expectations, for a variety of reasons: (1) the other non-sci-fi alternate history book I read recently, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, was disappointing; (2) I had a friend who did not like it; and (3) I started reading it about a year ago and put it down because it didn't grab me. But my expectations were exceeded, and not just because they were low to begin with.

This book isn't your typical alternate history (taking a sci fi alternate history as typical) in that it does not revolve around describing the alternate world, it doesn't put every titillating detail of the alternate world in front of you all at once, and it doesn't spend the whole book dwelling on these differences. It is the exploration of these differences that usually draws me to alternate history, so when there wasn't a ton of details up front, I was initially turned off by the book.

But when I finished reading, and thought about it, I realized this book (and to a certain extent Yiddish Policemen's Union too) actually does something more interesting and satisfying -- instead of just writing a book about the alternate world, Roth has set himself in the alternate historical context, and written a book that an author actually living in that world would write -- a personal account of one family’s experiences within that world.

Towards the end of the book, Roth gives a blast of juicy alternate-historical description which is the typical brain-candy of this genre. The stuff that makes you think “holy crap, it didn’t happen like that, right?!?!” and gives you a bigger picture of how everything could have turned out so differently. Without that, I think I would have found the book unsatisfying in the end (and why I think Yiddish Policemen’s Union was a much weaker book). Roth has clearly done a ton of historical research to be able to piggyback on real historical figures and events to mess with your brain and make you try to figure out what is fact and what is fiction. (And I really appreciate that he gives the real facts of the historical figures in the Postscript -- my memory of the Real History is weak enough that there’d be a chance I’d remember this Fake History instead and embarrass myself somewhere down the road.)

Also, I love how Roth turns the typical “butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane” theme on its head. The book begins employing this trope -- i.e. it’s obviously partially based on Lindbergh deciding to run for president instead of declining to do so. But it also demonstrates how even when huge, horrible, monumental things happen in the world, some things will still turn out the same....less

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Sam rated it:

03/06/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2007

recommends it for: People who are into alternate history

Note that I will discuss major plot points in this book, including the end. If you have any intention of reading the book, don't read below. I'll simply say that I was very disappointed.

I was very disappointed by this novel. Philip Roth does a good job of building the hopes of the reader that he will find a compelling and provocative conclusion to the events that begin with the election of Charles Lindbergh to the presidency. However, he ...more

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Jesse rated it:

02/18/08

Read in September, 2004

Read probably 3 seconds after it came out. Roth takes a faintly possible fictional premise--Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 Presidential election, then proceeds to implement suspiciously Hitleresque policies--and imbues it with relentless realism. It's an astonishing act of bravura...or chutzpah, if you prefer. This is what it would have felt like to suddenly realize that coded speech, political discrimination, the whole gamut up through pogroms, could happen here, to coin a phrase. Roth has alw...more Read probably 3 seconds after it came out. Roth takes a faintly possible fictional premise--Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 Presidential election, then proceeds to implement suspiciously Hitleresque policies--and imbues it with relentless realism. It's an astonishing act of bravura...or chutzpah, if you prefer. This is what it would have felt like to suddenly realize that coded speech, political discrimination, the whole gamut up through pogroms, could happen here, to coin a phrase. Roth has always created, ahem, frictional characters, and here he gives them something substantive to rub against: every American Jew's worst nightmare.

What ties the novel together is the human dimension of the story--seven-year-old narrator Philip Roth's vision of a Washington, DC suddenly awash in polite (and impolite) anti-Semitism, his parents' fights over whether to flee to Canada and to let Philip's older brother go off and work in Kentucky under another suspicious steal-the-kids program that will make ghetto Jews into burly country farmers (surely intended as a perverse goyische [and maybe Roth's own as well:] parody of Zionism, perhaps echoing his defense of "diasporism" in Operation: Shylock), his feelings about America and its patriotic icons--some, like the Lincoln Memorial, being worth their weight; some being Lindbergh. Roth has fun with the historical record, turning sleazy (but Jewish; birth name: Walter Winchel) radio personality Walter Winchell into a lone voice of patriotic conscience, Fiorello LaGuardia into the national hero a lot of New Yorkers certainly expected him to become, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh into a kind of savior. (Mothers, in general, come off well, as beacons of unshowy concern and love, whether it's Phil's careful, sensitive mom, Bess, or nerdy downstairs neighbor Seldon's frazzled, suffering Selma. Or Anne M.L., of course, for the whole nation.) There's a lot bound up here, most powerfully in his Mom's plangent statement, "this is their country now." Despite a somewhat rushed denouement, this is one of his best books, certainly the best since American Pastoral and maybe back to Portnoy....less

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rebecca rated it:

11/26/07

bookshelves: tried-but-gave-up-on

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who wants to take it away from (for?) me

as you can (maybe) decipher from my strangely-worded recommendation, i'd recommend that someone come by soon and take this book away from me. please. you might enjoy it, but i haven't so far, and it came close to making me feel like i don't enjoy reading books, which is a horrible thing for a book to do.

i will say, as a selling point, that i've heard rumors that other people have really enjoyed the plot against america. they say things like, "it's an interesting 'what-if?' kind of hi...more

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Sammy rated it:

(review of isbn 0224074539)

06/20/07

bookshelves: the-okay

Read in June, 2007

Now before you jump on me screaming and bitching about how I could possibly give this book a C, hear me out. In my own opinion, I just didn't like the book too much. It didn't grab me or hook me at the beginning, and it wasn't really until the last quarter of the book that my attention was really held.

I can't figure out why else I didn't really like it. Roth is a very skilled writer, the book reading like a historical memoir of hard times, the tone of a distant adult voice recounting his ...more

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David rated it:

09/22/08

bookshelves: read-in-2007

This book definitely has a great coming of age story involved in what is looked at as a historical novel. But the best insight that I got from it was something along the lines of this: it warns of the dangers of big government. And by that, i mean not the actuality of large government, but how a large government can fall in to the hands of the wrong people and easily become a dictatorship or a fascist state.

As a liberal, its easy to romanticize the New Deal era and all of its programs. One s...more

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Gregg rated it:

06/28/08

Read in December, 2005

Philip Roth’s re-imagining of history reminds me of the old What If? comic books, wherein they take a specific point in history and change an event or the choice someone makes. The narrative then follows this alternate reality to demonstrate how different the world would have become. It’s like Clarence the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life when he shows George how different his entire town would be had he never been born.

But in The Plot Against America, Roth chooses to ask What if Charles L...more

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Mark added it

07/25/08

During my recent long depression, I wouldn't leave the house for days, had no new books to read, and re-read a good-sized chunk of my own library.

PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is a book I re-read twice. Everyday details observed from an utterly believable (and hilarious) childs-eye view... that of a fictional Philip Roth, aged ten.

There's a lightness and humor to this book not found in "American Pastoral" or "I Married a Communist". Crazy, huh, considering the subject matter is mu...more

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Brittany rated it:

08/21/08

bookshelves: historicalfiction, sciencefiction