I had never read anything by Roth and when I finally got around to him I made the mistake of picking The Plot Against America. I enjoy "what if" books and found the idea compelling... unfortunately the book is not. It doesn't dare enough in imagining an alternative (and frightening) scenario, it fails at creating suspence and pathos at almost every turn, and it's a slow and disjointed yawn of a book. Characters are mostly very flat and the there are pages and pages of truly useless page fillers... I can't imagine why i would ever want to pick up another book of his.You need to be a genius to act so poorly on such a good idea for a story.