For an author called "The Master of Alternate History" Harry Turtledove suffers from an appalling lack of imagination. Whereas most people take the label "alternate history" to mean an exploration of the human experience or historical events through positing a counterfactual event and adducing its subsequent effects, Turtledove seems to take it to mean "What would history look like if the exact same things happened with different names?"

That's what's going on in "Joe Steele". Beginning at the Democratic Convention in 1932, where the leading nominees are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the eponymous California Congressman. Joe Steele is the son of immigrants who fled the Russian Empire just before his birth, and has risen from his agricultural labor origins to legal practice and now politics, having changed his name from the original that sounded like "a drunken sneeze". Now, with the help of his fellow first generation American aides, Vince "the Hammer" Scriabin and Lazar Kagan, he's trying to cut deals in a brokered convention to secure the nomination in an election where the Democrats are certain of victory. A fortuitous fire in the NY state governor's mansion kills Roosevelt and leaves the nomination open to Steele, who takes the White House, and begins his program to get the US out of the Depression, an contemplating the emerging strife in Europe, as Hitler and Mussolini rise to power in opposition to the Soviet Union under Leon Trotsky.

Long-time Turtledove readers will be unsurprised at the relative whitewashing of Stalin and Molotov, who typically come off fairly well for two of the most despicable and contemptible individuals so high in the leadership of major powers in 20th century. Instead, Turtledove, politically a far left militarist, instead uses his counterfactual setting to demonize J. Edgar Hoover and take gratuitous shots at the Republican Party and General MacArthur. For the most part, there is little difference in the domestic policies of Steele in this book, and Roosevelt in OTL, and even less in their foreign policies. The only major difference appears to be Steele never recognized the USSR in the early 30s as Roosevelt did, out of personal pique and an unexplained detestation of Trotsky. World War Two progresses almost exactly as it does in OTL, with the only real difference coming at the end of the Pacific War.

A great deal of Steele's characterization is the same as in OTL, despite a completely different background and upbringing, while other changes come about through unexplained reasons, and US policy is largely unchanged from OTL. Either Turtledove is trying to point out that US policy is akin to what one of the worst tyrants in history would have enacted in our place, or else he honestly holds a Panglossian perspective on history, and is highlighting Stalin's ability and foreign policy acumen by showing him doing the "right" thing.

Furthermore, the more he writes about World War Two, the more the history professor and military writer Turtledove reveals his systemic ignorance of historical politics and military & economic matters. For example, Carter Glass is a prominent opponent of Steele's nationalization of the banks, presumably because Turtledove picked a random conservative to smear, without considering that the man sponsored the bill to establish the Federal Reserve!

Those who enjoy Turtledove's writing and characterization will probably appreciate his portrayal of two reporter brothers (the only two point of view characters) with slightly different perspectives on Steele & his administration. But history buffs looking for an alternate history with Stalin in the White House will not find much meat here.