The Great War: American Front Book

A historian by trade, Turtledove has made himself king of the alternate world novel of war and politics. How Few Remain, his prelude to the present book, showed a Confederacy that had successfully broken the Union in the First Civil War and a United States desperate for revenge; a young Teddy Roosevelt destroys General Gordon on the Canadian front, a disgraced Abraham Lincoln becomes the father of American socialism and the Prussian observer von Schlieffen has the chance to understand all that can go wrong with modern warfare and misunderstands entirely. The assassination at Sarajevo gives a Prussianised US the chance to punish the South and its Anglo-French allies-- Turtledove's bleak imagination shows ways in which the First War could have been even worse than it was, from the vicious occupation of French Canada to a genocidal war against Mormons who simply do not want to get involved. Nor is his South any less vicious--the maintenance of black slavery has become an article of obstinate faith which will have its own terrible punishment. This first volume promises a bracingly depressing and intelligent series; Turtledove is as perceptive about the motives and feelings of his characters as he is about vast historical forces.Read More