On the eve of the 2020 US Presidential elections, I am choosing the Plot Against America by Philip Roth, a work of fiction that imagines what would have happened if the 1940 US Presidential elections had gone a different way. In this book, the US elects Charles Lindbergh who sets America on an isolationist, anti-Semitic path.
The Plot Against America is an essential read even if you are not an American because it drives home the importance and fragility of the democratic process. Citizens and businesses need to understand the role they play in the democratic process and exercise their right to vote responsibly.
Other than this being a gripping read, you will also learn a lot about the American political and business leaders in the early 1940s, and realise just how many of them, such as Henry Ford, were anti-Semitics in real life. It is the history lesson that I wish I had gotten about the Second World War.