Nicholas Lefevre answers “This book is full of revisionist history...”

Lynn Williams asked this question about Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3):

This book is full of revisionist history and incorrect statements! I know it is fiction but so full of propaganda.

Nicholas Lefevre I was born in Washington DC in 1951 so this is the volume that corresponds with my life. I didn't find anything in it that was inaccurate historically…moreI was born in Washington DC in 1951 so this is the volume that corresponds with my life. I didn't find anything in it that was inaccurate historically outside of the fictional characters. Obviously the fictional character, Maria Summer, is so central and so tied to JFK that it is problematical, but JFK's liaison with Mary Pinchot Meyer, though white, makes this not so much of a stretch.

Many readers are offended that Follett shifts the story from America to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980's. As someone who has lived through all of it, I agree entirely with his judgement. The really substantial events of the last half of the 20th century are covered. As I discussed recently with some octo and nanogenarians, the events after 1975 or so have been evolutionary, not revolutionary, except the collapse of the Soviet Union. One can quibble about whether the computer and internet "revolutions" were of historic proportions (and having worked in Silicon Valley from 1983 through 2008 I would argue that they were) but they were not events so they didn't belong here. The events in the US since 1975 have been like pressure building in techtonic plates without any cataclysmic fracturing,

The collapse of the Soviet Union was driven entirely by the building inefficiencies in their system and the collapse in oil prices in the 1980s. The Soviet Union would have fallen regardless of who was President. If, as Mark Cahill says, it was a hatchet job on Reagan/Bush I, it was a hatchet job on a myth.(less)

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Diane Lidia, I totally agree with you. Our family had spent decades hoping for and watching the gradual decline of the Communist system. Reagan had nothing ...more
Jun 17, 2018 12:19PM · flag

Tom I've heard a lot of people say that the Chernobyl disaster and losing the war in Afghanistan were big factors too. Not as big as oil prices, of course ...more
Aug 16, 2019 05:29PM · flag

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Edge of Eternity

by Ken Follett (Goodreads Author)

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