Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works The Man with the Iron Heart, The Guns of the South, and How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Hot War books (Bombs Away, Fallout, and Armistice); the War That Came Early novels: Hitler’s War, West and East, The Big Switch, Coup d’Etat, Two Fronts, and Last Orders; the Worldwar saga: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, and Striking the Balance; the Colonization books: Second Contact, Down to Earth, and Aftershocks; the Great War epics: American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs; the American Empire novels: Blood and Iron, The Center Cannot Hold, and Victorious Opposition; and the Settling Accounts series: Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple, and In at the Death. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters—Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca—and two granddaughters, Cordelia Turtledove Katayanagi and Phoebe Quinn Turtledove Katayanagi.
It's 1881, in a world where the Confederacy won its independence at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. The United States declares war over the Confederate purchase of part of northern Mexico. The Confederate president is James Longstreet, its commanding general is Stonewall Jackson and the man assigned to direct the occupation of the territories is Jeb Stuart. The United States, on the other hand, has to cope with James G. Blaine as president, with generals whom few except Civil War buffs have ever heard of and with junior officers like George Armstrong Custer and an enthusiastic volunteer cavalry colonel named Theodore Roosevelt. With British and French support, the Confederacy wins this second war. Meanwhile, Frederick Douglass continues his fight for civil rights in the North and freedom in the South, and Abraham Lincoln slowly turns to socialism. The novel displays the compelling combination of rigorous historiography and robust storytelling that readers have come to expect from Turtledove, who once again deftly integrates surprising yet believable social, economic, military and political developments. Turtledove's America isn't the escapist fantasy of much alternate history. It's a darker, grimier world, in which much that we have taken for granted has vanished or will never arise save at a terrible price in blood. Its grim nature rings true, however, as Turtledove delivers his most gripping novel since 1992's The Guns of the South. (Oct.)
In 1862, the Confederacy won the War of the Rebellion (not by interference of time travelers, as in Turtledove's Guns of the South, LJ 9/1/92, but by their own skillful military and diplomatic efforts). The defeated North has stewed for nearly 20 years. In this alternate history, the South exercises an opportunity to purchase Sonora and Chihuahua from the bankrupt Mexican Empire, having already wrested Cuba from Spain. James G. Blaine, now president of the United States, arrogantly seizes upon this pretext and invades with the aim of reunification. Lincoln has become an outcast of the Republican Party and preaches socialism while Custer is a frustrated and embittered colonel on the frontier, Samuel Clemens a fiery newspaper editor in San Francisco, and Rosecrans the inadequate head of the Union Army. Turtledove is an accomplished professional at this sort of thing and has given us an entertainment that makes us think somewhat about why we are the way we are. Highly recommended for history, historiography, military, and popular fiction collections.‘Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
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