Thomas Fleming is the author of more than 40 books of fiction and
history. He was born in Jersey City, N.J., the son of a powerful
local politician, who gave him a lifelong interest in politics and
history. He is the only writer in the seventy year history of the
Book of the Month Club to win main selections in both fiction and
nonfiction. His 1981 novel, "The Officers' Wives," won
international acclaim, selling more than 2,000,000 copies."
Liberty! The American Revolution" was listed as one of the eight
best books of 1997 by the History Book Club. Fleming has made the
Revolution his special field.
Three of his books have won best-book-of-the-year citations from
the American Revolution Round Table of New York. He has also
demonstrated a sweeping grasp of the entire course of American
history in "West Point" "The Men and Times of the U.S. Military
Academy, The New Dealers' War" and other books. Fleming is a senior
scholar on the board of the National Center for the American
Revolution. He is also a fellow of the Society of American
Historians. He often appears as a commentator on PBS, the History
Channel and A&E. He lives in New York.
"Thomas Fleming is one of my favorite writers because he combines
powerful storytelling with the skills of a superb historian."--John
Jakes
"I don't read Thomas Fleming just to learn about American history.
I read Thomas Fleming because I want to smell what the Americans in
that time smelt, to see as our ancestor's saw, and most important
to feel every emotion, every thought, and every moment that the
people of our country felt."--W.E.B Griffin
"Thomas Fleming is one of my favorite writers because he combines
powerful storytelling with the skills of a superb historian."--John
Jakes
"I don't read Thomas Fleming just to learn about American history.
I read Thomas Fleming because I want to smell what the Americans in
that time smelt, to see as our ancestor's saw, and most important
to feel every emotion, every thought, and every moment that the
people of our country felt."--W.E.B Griffin
Bess Fitzmaurice, the idealistic heroine of Fleming's historical melodrama, suffers no reticence in recounting her many sexual liaisons ("He took my hand and put his swelling manhood in it"). More seriously, through Bess's gushing first-person narrative, Fleming (When This Cruel War Is Over) portrays the Irish in post-Civil War America without the usual romantic claptrap. In 1865, Bess flees Ireland for the New World with her brother and her Irish-American lover, Dan McCaffrey, an unscrupulous rogue somewhat in the Rhett Butler mold. Bess discovers that the cynical Irish she meets in New York City, the lying congressmen in Washington, D.C., and the murderous KKK in the defeated South are all interested only in money. Fleming excels at depicting the underside of New York. The festering downtown slums, packed with poor Irish immigrants, horrify Bess, as do the gambling parlors and brothels uptown, all feeding incestuously on crooked Irish politicians and their cronies. Bess eventually allies herself with the Fenian Brotherhood, helping to raise money for an invasion of Civil War Irish veterans into Canada that ends in a predictable fiasco. Bess is as resourceful as Scarlett O'Hara, but the Southern portion of this windy tale is unlikely to win over many fans of Margaret Mitchell's classic. (Mar. 1) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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