The Iron Dream is not a pleasant book to read. Even readers of head-bashing sword and sorcery or heavy-duty military science fiction may blanch at the stream of atrocities that "Hitler" spews out. This is one of the effects the real author intended, of course, but it does not provide much fodder for a discussion. The worthwhile ideas are concentrated in the final eleven pages of the "Afterword." For this reason, a session built around the novel may end quickly or veer into a more general discussion of history or of violence in media and literature.

However, it is an excellent title to include in a multibook program on any of several different topics. Groups studying the history of Nazism or of World War II might treat it as a roman a clef, identifying real-world parallels of the novel's events and people. It fits easily into...