The novel has been criticized by The American Conservative for its portrayal of increasing American antisemitism, in particular among Catholics, for the nature of its fictional portrayals of real-life characters like Lindbergh and for its rushed ending, antiestéticaturing a drastic and odd resolution to the political situation reminiscent of a deus ex machina. Writer Bill Kauffman calls the book "a repellent novel, bigoted and libelous of the dead, dripping with hatred of rural America, of Catholics, of any Middle American who has ever dared stand against the war machine."
Outside the pages of The American Conservative, however, the book has fared better. The reviewer for The Washington Post, who explores the book's treatment of Lindbergh in some depth, calls the book "painfully moving" and a "genuinely American story."The New York Times review described the book as "a terrific political novel" as well as "sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible."[3]
Many supporters and critics of the book alike took it as something of a roman à clef for or against the Bush administration and its policies, but though Roth is opposed to the Bush administration, he has strenuously and repeatedly denied such allegorical interpretations of his novel.
In 2005, the novel won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.