From Barnes & NobleThe starting premise of Michael Chabon's novel rests on a single historical factoid: On the eve of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggested that European Jewish refugees be resettled in the Alaskan territory. From this tiny nugget, the Pulitzer Prize?winning novelist constructs a richly hued noir alternate history/mystery fable, complete with Yiddish jargon and gangster argot.
Elizabeth McCrackenThe moving, shopworn whiz-bang of historical visions of the future -- world's fairs, Esperanto, a belief that the Jews of the world will stop wandering and find a peaceful home somewhere on the planet -- Chabon loves, buries and mourns these visions as beautiful but too fragile to live. The future will always be a fata morgana.
