American Front (The Great War, Book 1) - Hardcover

Turtledove, Harry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 034540615X ISBN 13: 9780345406156

Publisher: Del Rey, 1998

Synopsis

In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his stunning
alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American
Front,
he carries this towering epic into the early twentieth century in a bold
re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern
age.  
Envision a divided America--one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other
by Woodrow Wilson--in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen,
where
global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the
first time in history.
When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the
Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered
the
fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong
Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain
and
France.  But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be
different--that war itself would never be the same again.  For this was to
be a protracted, global conflict waged with new and chillingly efficient
innovations--the machine gun, the airplane, poison gas, and trench warfare.
In the Americas, the fighting spread like wildfire on multiple and
far-flung fronts.  The U.S. Army invaded the South, striking in Virginia,
Kentucky, and the West and assaulted Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.  As
President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the
northern states--Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews--Confederate
President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a Confederacy still
beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions.  And as the war raged
on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, are fatefully drawn into a
climactic confrontation.
In The Great War: American Front, Harry Turtledove creates a vast,
vibrant
canvas that blends actual events and players with a history as it might
have been.  This unforgettable, deeply moving, and superbly original novel
is a triumph of the creative imagination.

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: Del Rey
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 034540615X
• ISBN 13: 9780345406156
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 503