Stay tuned for the third installment: a treatment of WWII (here the “Third Alliance War”).
In an alternative history sequel, King and Bredehoft (Democracy’s Missing Arsenal, 2013) chart the solidification of a Great Power Alliance and envision a subtly different 1914-18 war.
In the authors’ convincing semifictional world, everything stems from a single “point of divergence”: the Confederacy won the Civil War. Key consequences include earlier division into coalitions—France, America, and Russia versus Germany, England, and the Confederacy (the United States is no longer united)—accelerated advances in military technology, and a reversal of the global trend toward abolition. Their version of WWI takes place in 1898, with a “Second Alliance War” spanning 1914 to 1918. However, the historical facts stay the same: Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination sparks the conflict. Sites of clashes in the first book recur here: Canada’s English-speaking west and French-speaking east remain at odds, while Ireland’s Easter 1916 Uprising diverts British attention. Meanwhile, South America becomes a hot spot, with belligerent nations forming unexpected associations and the USA invading Chile—a prime exporter of nitrates needed for explosives. Compared to the previous volume, this is less of a historical sweep; its meticulous level of detail can be wearisome. On the other hand, the narrower time period allows for comprehensive accounts of naval battles and bombing regimes. The aftermath of Paris’ bombardment is particularly vivid: “refugees packed the Jardin des Tuileries, the smoke from their cooking rising to mingle with the denser smoke from a score of fires.” Made-up headlines and fragments of speeches and letters mimic an authentic history text, while the occasional relaxation of the narrator’s language—starting sentences with “But,” rhetorical questions, the conditional mood, and striking turns of phrase (“Nicholas II, willing to swallow virtually any anti-Jewish canard”)—keeps this from being a mere recitation of events. Those intimately familiar with World War I–era history should spot subtler differences. An overall highlight is FDR’s modified first meeting with Churchill in 1918: their instant rapport as naval personnel helps resolve Anglo-American issues. The book ends with Germany and Austria-Hungary inaugurating a new serfdom for Slavs, a chilling prophecy of continued worldwide slavery.
Stay tuned for the third installment: a treatment of WWII (here the “Third Alliance War”).Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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