In his latest novel, former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) takes readers through a tense spy thriller, with famed physicist Albert Einstein at its center, set against the backdrop of the pro-Nazi movement in America in 1939.

Israel retired from Congress in 2017 and later opened a bookstore on Long Island. His latest novel, The Einstein Conspiracy, is his third. The former congressman spoke to Jewish Insider about the book in a phone conversation last week from his shop, in between offering recommendations to customers.

Published last week, The Einstein Conspiracy is a fictionalized account of true events, in which the Nazis targeted Albert Einstein to prevent him from helping the United States build an atomic bomb.

“The backdrop is the chilling and widespread pro-Nazi movement across America in 1939,” Israel explained to JI. “There was a [Nazi] rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939 that attracted 20,000 people. On Long Island is a community that used to be known as Camp Siegfried, where the streets were named after Adolf Hitler, Goebbels and Goering. So I’m trying in the book to remind Americans of how close we could have come to staying out of World War II.”

With today’s rising antisemitism — from pro-Nazi sentiment on the far right and support for Hamas on the far left — Israel said he sees “reflections” of that historical moment.

“I’m not trying to preach and I’m not intending to teach lessons. I want readers to be entertained,” Israel continued. “I want to take them on an intriguing adventure where they’re going to learn a little bit about history and also reflect on some of the darker moments in American history, where Nazism was not only espoused in the U.S. but championed by many.”

The plot of Israel’s novel focuses on a fictionalized race between a Nazi agent to kidnap Einstein and the efforts of two FBI agents to prevent an attack.

“We have a Nazi spy — an ingenious, diabolical Nazi spy — posing undercover to get close to Einstein, to abduct him, and we have two FBI agents who always seem just a few too many steps behind the agent,” Israel said.

He said the novel was inspired by his long-standing interest in history, particularly “these kind of hidden moments in history that only a few people pay attention to, that have fundamentally changed the course of history.”

Israel told JI that, driving around Long Island, he came across a cottage where Einstein lived after coming to the United States, where the famous physicist wrote a letter — in collaboration with other physicists — to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning him about the Nazis’ atomic bomb research.

“I’d known a little bit about a letter, called the Einstein-Szilard letter, that was written to FDR in the summer of 1939,” he continued. “I didn’t know much more about it, and as I began researching it, I learned that it profoundly changed history, because it was the first time that FDR realized that Hitler could have an atom bomb and that America was paying no attention to the research.”

That letter, he continued, was the spark that ultimately led to the Manhattan Project.

The Nazi spy plot in the novel is also based on real efforts by the Nazis, on several occasions, to hunt down Einstein.

Israel, the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is now embarking on a national book tour to promote the new novel.

“I used to go around the country begging donors for money. Now I go around the country hustling my book,” Israel quipped. “I like selling books more than I like asking for money.”