This is not a book review. This is just an attempt to work out my anger at a book that started with real promise but ended up slandering the legacy of our 40th president. Edge of Eternity is the third novel in Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy (the first two being Fall of Giants and Winter of the World), which is Follett’s attempt to do for the 20th century what Herman Wouk did so skillfully for the second world war in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. (I cannot speak highly enough of these books. If you have not read them you should run, not walk, to your favorite browser and order them right now.)

The series follows the lives of several families in the United States, Germany, Russia, and the UK through the events of the 20th century, starting just before the First World War and concluding with the end of the Cold War (save for a brief epilogue celebrating the election of Barack Obama). Follett weaves historical fact with personal narrative and tells a compelling story, touching on everything from women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement to communist oppression while giving a broad overview of historical events.

I found the first two books, while perhaps a bit too kind to the communists, to be quite good. The stories were good, the characters were interesting, and the historical narrative was easy to understand. Unfortunately, in Edge of Eternity, Follett lets his biases trump good storytelling and ruins the end of the story with bald-faced historical lies and inaccuracies.