The Great War American Front - Softcover

Harry Turtledove

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340715464 ISBN 13: 9780340715468

Publisher: New English Library Ltd, 1999

Synopsis

Harry has picked a monster topic for his new alternate history epic. The world of HOW FEW REMAIN - where the American South won the civil war - has moved on to 1914. Maybe Europe is overshadowed by the thunder-clouds of war, but it is not only Europe that suffers the reign of blood. The US decides to support Germany, whilst the Confederacy falls in with her old allies, France and Britain, and it is America that becomes the new battlefield for their old antagonisms. Once again brother fights brother, friend against friend and the New World is ravaged by all the horrors of modern warfare. This is the first of a four book series on the first global conflict by the modern day master of alternate history. This is THE GREAT WAR...

About this title

Review

Harry Turtledove's second multivolume saga of 20th-century "alternative history," How Few Remain, takes place in a world in which the Confederate States win the Civil War and in 1914, allied with England and France, go to war against the United States once more. All the horrors of World War I, such as trench warfare and mustard gas, are present, only this time they're situated in a North American theater of operations where the U.S. fights enemies on both its northern and southern borders while Confederate blacks, studying up on left-wing radicals Karl Marx and Abe Lincoln, prepare for the revolution. As in Turtledove's earlier Worldwar series, the majority of attention is paid to an assortment of people at the battlefields and home fronts, their stories unfolding in gradual increments that, at least so far, only intermittently connect with each other. And there's not as much in the way of "real" historical figures popping up in this first volume of The Great War series, save for cameo appearances by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, Confederate president Woodrow Wilson, an aging General Custer, and a handful of others. It remains to be seen whether future entries in the series will feature such obvious candidates for inclusion as the young Ernest Hemingway, and how they'll appear in this strange new world. --Ron Hogan

From the Publisher

Prof. Jack Hammersmith taught college history as though it was an adventure. People and places sprang alive, wars swept across the land, nations rose and fell. For the first time I really got the picture: this was adventure--and action, and excitement. All I could do was pity the folks who didn't get it.

When I began to work with Harry Turtledove, I arrived at another wonderful realization. The raw material of history can be fashioned into the adventure of a lifetime. HOW FEW REMAIN set a stage that had me drooling: the South, allied with Britain and France; the North, developing ties with Germany. All I could think of was, what about 1911.

You see, World War I really was "over there." Here in the USA, no one really saw the suffering, the death. But in THE GREAT WAR: AMERICAN FRONT, the action does bloody our land: the barbed wire, the mustard gas, the brand-spanking-new war in the sky. The North is in a really bad spot: Canada and the Confederacy are Allies. The USA is surrounded. War is over here. And in the course this four-book epic, people and places will once again spring to life (and die), war will sweep across the land, and the adventure will come alive.

                        --Steve Saffel, Senior Editor

About this edition

• Publisher: New English Library Ltd
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0340715464
• ISBN 13: 9780340715468
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672