Norman Spinrad, born on September 15, 1940, in New York City, is a genius and an equally grand and highly intelligent political author. His first stroke of genius was "Bug Jack Barron" (published in 1967; German edition: "Champion Jack Baron" by Heyne), in which Spinrad anticipated some of the political mechanisms and their popular incarnations that influence or even dominate the Western world. This was achieved with a uniquely captivating literary quality. Unfortunately, authors of this caliber do not always receive the commercial attention they deserve. Spinrad's probably most successful novel is "The Iron Dream" (1972). It is no surprise that a novel with a counterfactual Hitler background sells better than a book without it.