Philip Roth

When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the thirty-third president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial...

Roth's "Nemesis" is the story of a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.

The tragically human hero of this book discovers the universal experiences of love, loss, regret, and mortality as a painful surprise. At the pinnacle of his life, he's a swaggering advertising director, a fond but flawed parent, and a faithless husband. Then his life winds down to something far less comfortable. At the end, he has a daughter who adores him, but he's three-times divorced, his sons aren't speaking to him, and he's estranged from his...

What impact can American history have on the life of the vulnerable individual? It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working...

A reader's edition of key writings by the acclaimed author includes the National Book Award-winning "Goodbye, Columbus" and the trenchant psychological portrait, "Letting Go."