Insurance salesmen Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) is getting a promotion, and aims to buy a new house and move his family out of their rented apartment. It’s here where the chief protagonists, the Levins, live. With its roots in Roth’s own family background in New Jersey, it derives much of its plausibility from its meticulous recreation of pre-war Newark, with its period clothes, buses and automobiles, Jewish delis and local bakeries. This HBO version (on Sky Atlantic) has been masterminded by Ed Burns and David Simon (creators of The Wire), with the late Roth getting a name-check in the writing credits. He makes friendly overtures to Germany and Japan, and America’s Jews have their rights curtailed and find themselves being forcibly relocated. The real Lindbergh had lived in Europe during the 1930s and was suspected of Nazi sympathies – he was awarded the Order of Merit of the German Eagle, which the Hitler regime gave to favoured foreigners – and his fictional presidency triggers a violent eruption of anti-semitism as he promotes his America First doctrine. Instead of the re-election of Franklin D Roosevelt for a third term in 1940, the aviation pioneer and wildly popular celebrity Charles Lindbergh is elected President, on a platform of keeping America out of the new war in Europe.
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