Books in Brief: 1945

1945, by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (Baen Books, Riverdale, N.Y., 382 pp., $24)

FANS of Newt Gingrich may be hard put to find much evidence of the fighting Speaker or the inspiring lecturer in this novel of a World War II that might have been (would have been, as the dustjacket has it) if Hitler had not declared war on the U.S. in 1941. Presumably Gingrich’s co-author and, especially, the book’s “technical editor,” Albert S. Hanser, have earned their pay. If your tolerance for catalogues of aircraft and weaponry and their capabilities is moderately well-developed, you should find this a genuine thriller and a gripping read. It deals mainly with a German commando raid on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at a crucial stage of the Manhattan Project in (oddly, in view of the book’s title) 1946, but there is also a lot of geostrategic debate about the German campaign for which the attack is a curtain-raiser. This features a real but fictionally re-elected Winston Churchill, a fictional but Truman-like American President, and the real but rather unrealistically subdued and compliant figures of General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey. Although much publicized, a sexy spy actually plays only a small part, and the sex itself could hardly be more demure and understated. The true note of Newt Gingrich is sounded in occasional excursuses on the iniquities of bureaucracy, the folly of gun control, or the dangers of national complacency. —James Bowman

About the Author

James Bowman

Featured Tags

1945, by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (Baen Books, Riverdale, N.Y., 382 pp., $24)

FANS of Newt Gingrich may be hard put to find much evidence of the fighting Speaker or the inspiring lecturer in this novel of a World War II that might have been (would have been, as the dustjacket has it) if Hitler had not declared war on the U.S. in 1941. Presumably Gingrich’s co-author and, especially, the book’s “technical editor,” Albert S. Hanser, have earned their pay. If your tolerance for catalogues of aircraft and weaponry and their capabilities is moderately well-developed, you should find this a genuine thriller and a gripping read. It deals mainly with a German commando raid on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at a crucial stage of the Manhattan Project in (oddly, in view of the book’s title) 1946, but there is also a lot of geostrategic debate about the German campaign for which the attack is a curtain-raiser. This features a real but fictionally re-elected Winston Churchill, a fictional but Truman-like American President, and the real but rather unrealistically subdued and compliant figures of General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey. Although much publicized, a sexy spy actually plays only a small part, and the sex itself could hardly be more demure and understated. The true note of Newt Gingrich is sounded in occasional excursuses on the iniquities of bureaucracy, the folly of gun control, or the dangers of national complacency. —James Bowman