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Product Description
In a war room in Washington, William Tecumseh Sherman and General Robert E. Lee huddle together and plan their next, joint military operation. In the jungles of Mexico, Ulysses S. Grant is locked in brutal combat with the best of the British Army. And in the heart of the new American South a fragile peace is threatened . . .
In the dazzling alternate history of Harry Harrison, this is the world as it stands in 1863. Just three years before, a titanic Civil War loomed in America. But an incident involving a British ship and two Confederate spies changed everything. As Abraham Lincoln defied Britain's Lord Palmerston, tensions between the two nations boiled overæand Her Majesty's Navy unleashed an attack on American soil aimed at bolstering the Confederate cause. The results were catastrophic. A stunned North and South put aside their differences and a new kind of war erupted, with Americans fighting side by side against the British on two fronts: in the South and on the Canadian border. Now, Britain has been defeated and America is struggling to keep its union togetheræuntil another blow is struck.
It comes from Mexico, where elite units of Her Majesty's Armyæincluding the famed Gurkha fightersæare massing for a possible attack through Texas. Into the gauntlet Lincoln sends his chosen angel of death, General Grant. But the weary president knows that two centuries of British power will not be ended with a single battle. So his top soldiers, including Lee and Sherman, plan the most daring naval invasion ever launched: an assault on British soil itself. And in a secret that must be protected by an underground army of spies and secret agents, the U.S. will invade the Emerald Isleæto set the Irish free at last.
Filled with real characters on both sides of the conflict, Stars and Stripes in Peril is the new masterwork from one of our most provocative authors. Harry Harrison brilliantly examines the machinations that drive our world, the choices that shape the future, and the people and passions that compose nations both great and small. Venturing beyond a fascinating question of what if, Harrison shows how technology and world politics had the power to shape history's first great World Waræhalf a century before it began.
Amazon.com Review
Harry Harrison has been publishing science fiction for half a century; this novel appears in 2000, the year of his 75th birthday. His 1998 Stars and Stripes Forever was a foray into alternative history at the time of the U.S. Civil War. An opportunistic British invasion is so badly bungled that it unites warring Union and Confederate forces against the common enemy, and the course of events is rousingly changed.
Now it's 1863 and perfidious Albion is making a comeback via the Pacific, establishing a Mexican beachhead and planning attacks on united America's "soft underbelly" in the Gulf of Mexico. Gurkha and Sepoy troops build roads while sweaty white officers express nostalgia for England: "I despair of ever seeing her blissfully cold and fog-shrouded shores again." An early coup of misdirection makes the British advance seem unstoppable--but America forges ahead with new guns and naval armor, and General Robert E. Lee devises an audacious counterblow. What better way to disrupt Britain's wicked schemes than to strike at her own rebellious province of Ireland? Harrison, an American, perhaps overdoes the lofty dignity of figures like Abraham Lincoln, while showing British politicians with their full complement of warts. But the breathless, headlong action sweeps you away as the battle is planned and at last joined. Even hardened English patriots will feel a sense of wish-fulfillment at the possibility that America may solve the "Irish Question" for them. This is a rapid-paced, slightly slapdash, and unfailingly energetic adventure in alternate history--all great fun. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
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