Blood and Iron

Harry Turtledove

Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 2001 - Fiction - 656 pages

AMERICAN EMPIRE: BOOK ONE

Twice in the last century, brutal war erupted between the United States and the Confederacy. Then, after a generation of relative peace, The Great War exploded worldwide. As the conflict engulfed Europe, the C.S.A. backed the Allies, while the U.S. found its own ally in Imperial Germany. The Confederate States, France, and England all fell. Russia self-destructed, and the Japanese, seeing that the cause was lost, retired to fight another day.

The Great War has ended, and an uneasy peace reigns around most of the world. But nowhere is the peace more fragile than on the continent of North America, where bitter enemies share a single landmass and two long, bloody borders.

In the North, proud Canadian nationalists try to resist the colonial power of the United States. In the South, the once-mighty Confederate States have been pounded into poverty and merciless inflation. U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt refuses to return to pre-war borders. The scars of the past will not soon be healed. The time is right for madmen, demagogues, and terrorists.

At this crucial moment in history, with Socialists rising to power in the U.S. under the leadership of presidential candidate Upton Sinclair, a dangerous fanatic is on the rise in the Confederacy, preaching a message of hate. And in Canada another man--a simple farmer--has a nefarious plan: to assassinate the greatest U.S. war hero, General George Armstrong Custer.

With tension on the seas high, and an army of Marxist Negroes lurking in the swamplands of the Deep South, more than enough people are eager to return the world to war. Harry Turtledove sends his sprawling cast of men and women--wielding their own faiths, persuasions, and private demons--into the troubled times between the wars.


From the Hardcover edition.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - DinadansFriend - LibraryThing

After the WWI, North American Round, the world moves up to the 1924 election in the USA-CSA, Nazis have their setback, and pledge to do better.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - RandyStafford - LibraryThing

My reactions to reading this novel in 2002. Spoilers follow. This novel exhibits the sometimes, by their repetition, annoying stylistic tics of Turtledove, especially when it comes to characterization ...

About the author

Harry Turtledove was born in Los Angeles in 1949. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle, as well as several scholarly articles. He is also an award-winning full-time writer of science fiction and fantasy. His alternate history works have included several short stories and novels, including The Guns of the South, How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel), the Great War epics: American Front and Walk in Hell, and the Colonization books: Second Contact and Down to Earth. He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Blood and Iron; American Empire - book 1; Volume 1 of American empire, Harry Turtledove; Volume 1 of Southern Victory: American Empire Series
• Author: Harry Turtledove
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 2001
• ISBN: 0345405668, 9780345405661
• Length: 656 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / General