Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: This is a great book about a future that fortunately did not happen. It is also, in many ways about pasts that did happen in several places and throughout history. I know the "if the Nazis had won the second world war" theme has been beaten to death. I would however like to point out that this is NOT the theme of this book -- the theme of this book is hidden identity, public identity and the scary point at which the two merge. (It is also an interesting study in how dictatorships exploit what ANYONE has to hide. Any careful reader will notice that even the non-Jewish characters are afraid and have things they would like to hide.) As such, the fact that the fall of the Reich is much like the fall of the USSR (and really, we don't have any other models for the fall of a dictatorship in the modern age) didn't disturb me. The second half of the book is a tale of how the characters bring both their public and their secret identities into actualization and achieve some sort of coherent whole. It is a story of the characters -- Jewish and not -- finding their humanity with their freedom.As such, I don't know a more relevant story for our time. A book worth buying, reading, re-reading and reading to your children.
Rating: 
Summary: More Of Same
Review: Turtledove is back with another foray into alternate history. In this case, he has a group of Maranos living in the 21st century Third Reich. This was originally a short story, and worked better and more poignantly in that form. The expanded version is only mildly interesting, with way too much focus on one character's dysfunctional marriage.
There are also some cutesy corrolaries with current history. The story starts with a Fuhrer is named Kurt Haldweim (Kurt Waldheim). There is a coup attempt while the new Fuhrer is on vacation in the Crimea (Gorbachev). The leader of Czechoslovakia is a former playwright (Vaclav Havel). One of the satellite countries' new political party is called Unity (Solidarity). And so on. Probably some more that I missed.
While this is not a bad book, it doesn't compare well to "A Different Flesh" let alone to "Guns of The South". There is no new ground here. At least he keeps the shifting viewpoints down to just a few characters this time.
If you are looking for something unchallenging to pass the time, its OK. If you have something better to read, give this a pass.
Rating:
Summary: Fall of the USSR as the Greater German Reich
Review: Turtledove likes to follow real history in his books, with an added twist. Here, he expands on one of his short stories of Germans winning both World War 2 and 3. Following a family of hidden Jews at the heart of an eighty year Reich, Turtledove uses the real history of the fall of the USSR to map out the transformation of the Reich into a more modern liberal state. It was an interesting read, took me about a day. Turtledove does go into a bit too much detail with the card games and I thought the school system mentioned throughout was a little more old German-American and a lot less of the actual German system. I am not certain if that was to make the schools more understandable to Americans or what. Interesting and made me think.
Rating:
Summary: Fall of the USSR as the Greater German Reich
Review: Turtledove likes to follow real history in his books, with an added twist. Here, he expands on one of his short stories of Germans winning both World War 2 and 3. Following a family of hidden Jews at the heart of an eighty year Reich, Turtledove uses the real history of the fall of the USSR to map out the transformation of the Reich into a more modern liberal state. It was an interesting read, took me about a day. Turtledove does go into a bit too much detail with the card games and I thought the school system mentioned throughout was a little more old German-American and a lot less of the actual German system. I am not certain if that was to make the schools more understandable to Americans or what. Interesting and made me think.
Rating:
Summary: Clever story; characters could use some work
Review: Turtledove's nightmarish world dominated by a decaying Third Reich is clearly designed to parallel the demise of the Soviet bloc, and he does an excellent job in cleverly drawing together many elements to complete this picture.
However, his characters are uncompelling, the dialogue is poorly written and Turtledove exhibits a shocking laziness when it comes to names- he names one Nazi potentate "Kurt Haldweim" (I don't know if he thought this was clever, but he should have either have come out and said that the Fuhrer was former UN Sec-Gen, Austrian president and Nazi war criminal [in our timeline] Kurt Waldheim, or picked a totally different name. Ditto goes for his character "Globocnik", whose name is stolen from the infamous Odilo Globocnik without explanation of the relationship between them.
The book slows down to a crawl towards the middle and then rushes to an excellent conclusion that leaves room for a sequel. I would definitely recommend this book for the plot and its clever allusion to recent events in our timeline, but if you're looking for character development, interpersonal relationships and communication, better look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Turtledove's alt-hist take on the fall of the Soviet Union
Review: With a title like "In the Presence of Mine Enemies", and a story concept like what we have here (hidden Jews trying to survive in a world where Nazi Germany won World War II and subsequently conquered America), one might not expect the book to turn out to be Turtledove's alternate-history take on the last years of the Soviet Union...but that's exactly what it is. Building on a short story which originally appeared in his collection _Departures_, Turtledove cleverly expands on that base and incorporates the real-world events of 1985-1991 (for instance, the incident where hardline Nazis try to embarrass the reformist Fuhrer by publishing a savagely critical letter in the press while he's on a foreign trip precisely parallels a notorious real-life incident where Gorbachev's reactionary enemies within the Communist Party tried to show him up by ginning up a critical letter), putting his own unique twist on them. The book sort of peters out after the climactic events, but overall it's quite a satisfying read - more so, for instance, than his more recent _Days of Infamy_.
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