(1998)Fair speculation as to WW I if the South had won the Civil War. I would like it more if there was more spent on the big picture than his empasis on the effect of the war on the grunts. Need some perspective as to global affairs to make it really work. Ending has a wide-spread black uprising in the South causing a shift in balance of power.(PW) This masterpiece of alternate history takes place in the same world as Turtledove's How Few Remain and begins a projected tetralogy of a First World War fought with Germany and the U.S. allied against Britain, France and the Confederacy. The reader is drawn in at once as a German cruiser approaches Boston and Jeb Stuart III trains his artillery on the Capitol Dome, and Turtledove sustains high interest throughout the lengthy narrative. As in How Few Remain, the author gives full recognition to social and economic factors (e.g., how conscription impacts politics; how labor shortages affect the position of barely emancipated blacks in the Confederacy). He also plausibly depicts the opening stages of race war. In addition, he unleashes the horrors of trench warfare on American soil and shows how an American army of occupation might look from the point of view of the occupied Canadians. With shocking vividness, Turtledove demonstrates the extreme fragility of our modern world, and how much of it has depended on a United States of America. This is state-of-the-art alternate history, nothing less.

Good follow up to How Few Remain. Turtledove is a master at alternative history. ( )

I will admit to having this book and its successor on my shelves at one point in time.

I will not concede to finding anything of value in this book, other than an interesting premise and set-up that includes the idea of "the South won a particular battle in the American Civil War and as a result there are three nations on the Northern American continent: Canada, the United States, and the Confederate States."

I question the pages of continual racial slurs Turtledove writes and his need to continuously mention that African Americans were not seen as fully human at the time of the Great War. Neither were poor white men, or women, or Native peoples, and yet their stories are told with "women get dinner on the table for their menfolk" with no sexist dialogue, inner turmoil, or similar verbal assaults. Page after page of racial slurs unbalanced by any other group's similar slurs is less historical fiction and more racially-charged opinion. ( )

A tedious re-do of the first two books...updated by technology. Use of a 75 year old Gen Custer was unbelievable; I would have enjoyed author's take on early 20th century heroes. Teddy Roosevelt as President of the USA and Woodrow Wilson as President of the CSA. What's up with that? Wilson from New Jersey! So, the characters were not credible, except for the common people...real, as far as I know. A boring rehash, I've had enough of this author. ( )

My reaction to reading this novel in 1999. Spoilers follow.

Turtledove uses his usual technique of a multitude of characters to provide a variety of views in this novel about the American front of an alternate WWI. This technique, with its rapid alternation between viewpoint characters, makes this thick book read fast, but I had a few quibbles.

First, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson, George Armstrong Custer, Theodore Roosevelt (Wilson and Roosevelt are presidents of the Confederacy and USA, respectively), and Leonard Wood – all briefly glimpsed and none viewpoint characters – we see no historical characters, just fictional ones. Some of the internal dialogue of characters verges close, but doesn't cross the line, of excessive folksiness. Also, we get few scenes of combat and then those scenes are not that detailed. Also, we get no viewpoint characters who are combatants from European powers.

Still, Turtledove uses his characters well to show most aspects of the war (including the scenes of Cherokees, solid members of the CSA, fighting with Confederate officers) and not just naval and land and air combat but the various ways civilians react including sabotage, espionage, and collaboration when conquered. But the most powerful and disturbing bits are the visions of a USA, under the influence of its German ally (it’s amusing to hear Roosevelt’s support of German culture given our history), become, since the Second War Between the States, a bureaucratic, paper-laden tyranny. Second is the influence of Marxism in both the US and CSA. In How Few Remain, Lincoln spread the word of Marx and, it’s revealed here, his actions ultimately lead to the socialists splitting off from the Republicans. They have to decide, in typical Marxist fashion, that Britain and France ae more reactionary than the Kaiser. In the CSA, slaves and Southern factory workers in the aristocratic South (the most dislikeable character is a rich Southern belle named Anne Colleton) understandably embrace Marxism, and the novel ends with the beginning of an armed black uprising. ( )