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Lädt ... Stars & Stripes Forever: A Novel of Alternate History (Stars & Stripes Trilogy) (1998)von Harry Harrison
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. It is "read but unowned" because I threw it out. I didn't discard it, I threw it away! An unresearched howl of American Exceptionalism. But, you must understand that in history, Patrick Cleburne, a Confederate politician and soldier, proposed that the wah between the CSA and the USA should end, slavery should continue, and the two parties should not waste the big mobilized armies they had created by instead conquering Mexico and Cuba, and then every one could go home with honour. And that's what this HH book is about, except that everyone picks on the British instead. (In spite of what a professional army would have done to the assembled groups in North America, historically.) My reaction to reading this novel in 1999. Spoilers follow. Before Harry Turtledove came along, Harry Harrison was sf’s most vocal supporter and practitioner of the alternate history subgenre. This one bears some resemblance to Turtledove’s classic The Guns of the South (which wasn’t a straight alternate history since Turtledove introduces time travelers with automatic weapons as the hinge point in his history) in that both envision a Civil War which the Union is not victorious but slavery still is ended peacefully. I liked this novel though not as much as The Guns of the South. Harrison doesn’t have the skill of breathing life into historical figures like Turtledove. His plot is undercut by a couple of coincidences. Of course, by tradition, the alternate history writer gets one historical deviation. Here the “sharp agate point” history turns on (to borrow a term from Winston Churchill’s foray into alternate history) is a quite probable one: the Trent affair where two Confederate envoys were taken off a British ship by the Federal Navy in neutral waters and Britain threatened war. Unlike our history, that war happens here. In our world, the sickly Prince Albert (his wife, Queen Victoria, comes off as a bit psychotic here, ready to go to war at the drop of a hat) averts war with a carefully worded communique. Here, he’s too sick to rewrite Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell’s diplomatic dispatches. The major problem with the book is the second deviation from history in the accidental death of Brigadier General James W. Ripley. His exit takes the brakes off the Army’s conservative ordinance department and begins the steps towards arming the Union army with breech loading rifles so snipers play a larger role in Union tactics. The ironclad building program is accelerated and the navy is armed with breech loading Parrot guns. The third seeming plot contrivance (contrivance in the sense that it seems to be there to get the desired end: a British Empire dispossessed or weakened in the Western Hemisphere by America) is the British expeditionary forces firing on their supposed southern allies and, much worse and much important, raping Southern women after the battle. Still, even if I didn’t come away with the feeling of reading an actual historical novel like I did The Guns of the South, I liked this novel a lot, found it exciting and compulsively readable. I liked John Stuart Mill helping to craft a peaceful end (with a buyout for slaveowners) to slavery. I thought this plausible and psychologically realistic given Southern abolitionists in the pre-war days and a break in combat after unexpectedly harsh fighting at Shiloh. I liked the real historical bits with Gustavus Vasa Fox, Lincoln’s spymaster (more reliable than Alan Pinkerton). I liked the Union and Confederates destabilizing of British Caribbean possessions. (A lot of documents and dialogue in this novel are direct quotes from historical sources.) Lincoln’s harsh suppression of Northern abolitionists seems unfortunately plausible too. Zeige 4 von 4 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Gehört zur ReiheStars & Stripes (book 1)
On November 8, 1861, a U.S. navy warship stopped a British packet and seized two Confederate emissaries on their way to England to seek backing for their cause. England responded with rage, calling for a war of vengeance. The looming crisis was defused by the peace-minded Prince Albert. But imagine how Albert's absence during this critical moment might have changed everything. For lacking Albert's calm voice of reason, Britain now seizes the opportunity to attack and conquer a crippled, war-torn America. Ulysses S. Grant is poised for an attack that could smash open the South's defenses. In Washington, Abraham Lincoln sees a first glimmer of hope that this bloody war might soon end. But then disaster strikes: English troops have invaded from Canada. With most of the Northern troops withdrawn to fight the new enemy, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his weakened army stand alone against the Confederates. Can a divided, bloodied America defeat England, or will the United States cease to exist for all time? Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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