In History's Grip

In History's Grip concentrates on the literature of Philip Roth, one of America's greatest writers, and in particular on American Pastoral , I Married a Communist , and The Human Stain . Each of these novels from the 1990s uses Newark, New Jersey, to explore American history and character. Each features a protagonist who grows up in and then leaves Newark, after which he is undone by a historically generated crisis. The city's twentieth-century decline from immigrant metropolis to postindustrial