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Sadly I gave Mr. Follett a lot of business in the past, I probably read most of his novels. In his previous installments of his trilogy (covering WW1 and WW2), I swallowed his obvious Leftist sympathies meshed onto some of the historical events depicted because a) the books were otherwise pretty good and b) I enjoying being convinced that I'm wrong. This time he went for jumping the shark, the book is effectively a pretext for relentless bashing of any conservative idea or politician. The extent of it and nearly cartoonish way in which he goes about it would have been (unintentionally) entertaining. However, outright lies about historical events make the novel into a perfect caricature of the Left's view of modern history. The more serious fault is the moral equivalence he creates between the oppression in Communist countries and the various liberal causes in the West (to be clear, many of them, meritorious). As somebody who grew up in a Communist country, this is intensely offensive to me. Mr. Follett does not seem to understand who put the Wall up and who brought it down. For the latter, his researchers need some remedial work on President Reagan, Premier Thatcher and Pope John Paul. Those of us whose only hope were their quiet actions and their loud words coming through that illegal radio broadcast every evening don't need the history WE LIVED mashed into pulp fiction.