Making History

Product Information

I was also quite amused by the comparisons between "American" and English" expressions in the book, as a Canadian, is was 50/50 as to which one was more familiar to me. There are a lot of liberties taken, of course, with regards to the alternate history of the world and the whole science and technology aspect of the book, but I don’t think those are the points to ponder about. Other irritations included the way the story occasionally turns into a film script, and the way that in the sections dealing with Germans, the English text is larded with German words. Therefore, even without Hitler, the basic impulse of the time is achieved through a different cast of characters. Steve corrects Michael and reveals that, while never hearing of Hitler, he is all too aware of the Nazi Party.

The outcome of the meddling is very close to my first guess and I liked very much that he arrived there. The implications on changing the past have been visited many a time before, with better end worse results. He gives up his career in academia, figuring he can at least make some money "writing" the songs that he remembers from the previous reality.World War II doesn’t happen, and America exists in a tenuous state of non-aggression with a Fascist/Communist Europe. In Making History, an ambitious History PHD student at Cambridge, along with a physicist, try to do exactly that. Ostensibly the premise holds as much sophistication as a drunken parlor game, or worse, another Back to the Future movie. The writing and performances were both excellent, and supported very effectively by nice set design and clever staging. He meets Professor Leo Zuckerman, a physicist who has a strong personal interest in Hitler, the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust.

Every chapter told by the first-person narrator in the (changing) late 20th century reality is followed by one in the German past.The book does an excellent job of capturing the human emotional level of the whole insane thing, and it's much funnier than you'd expect this kind of book to be. If I had not arranged to meet with a friend for lunch, I would have read this book straight through all morning.