Review: A Disturbance of Fate
Premise: Bobby Kennedy, avoiding assassination, presides over America's shift to democratic-soocialism. Epilogue covers the 2nd US Civil War (1986-7).
Grade: B+
A leftist dream, this frictionless thought experiment, whisked me away...then dropped me back at square one. No precient insight into Obama's first term, the tale sidesteps the needles of "what to do" for the rich alt-hist teliology of "what should've been done".
The author displays an obvious skill for research and thoroghness, but no ear for dialogue or speeches (a few ellipses would have saved them). His is a historian's imagination, which produces tantalizing solutions to now-intractible problems. I don't agree with all his politics. But he helped me better understand the right, the left, and the circumstances behind our politics.
His point: it doesn't have to be this way.
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