Stars and Stripes Triumphant

The reason this book gets four stars is because Harry Harrison did such a good job of building the foundation of the story. He deals not just with the USA and England, but on how the European nations were dealing with the events, past and present. A shot is not fired in anger till about page 128. And even after the war there are chapters and chapters of post-war events to tie it all up. Now if only the events and characters of the conflict were as realistic as the logic he used to set it up. But if you've stayed with the series up to this third and last book you are already use to the grand and sweeping scenes that keep the plot moving. Now I know the reason for the trilogy - Mr. Harrison wanted to find a way to free Ireland and Scotland! The plot drives the book, like the last two, and logic be damned. Fun, but that's all.

Admittedly Harry Harrison has written far more compelling science fiction, but here he succeeds in this admirable conclusion to his "Stars and Stripes" trilogy. Harrison tells a gripping yarn about a blitzkrieg war waged against Queen Victoria's Britain on the streets of London and Liverpool by a United States armed with the world's most advanced weapons from the factories of Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson (in real life, the designer of the USS Monitor). The first half of the book is a compelling cloak and daggar saga featuring General William Tecumseh Sherman as he probes Great Britain's military defenses with the aid of an unusual ally, an Anglophillic Russian nobleman and naval officer. The second half is somewhat less so, but there are memorable battle scenes featuring Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. This is unquestionably a fascinating terse future history which Harry Harrison has wrought and one I strongly recommend to those interested in the American Civil War as well as science fiction.

The uneasy peace between the United States, reunited after England foolishly attacked both parties during the American Civil War, seems destined to be shortlived and Undersecretary Fox and General Sherman take advantage of a Russian aristocrat's offer to spy on the British. Sherman comes up with a plan for invasion--a plan made possible by several wonderful inventions by John Ericsson (inventor of the Monitor in our own history). When the British push too hard on America, trying to forbid cotton exports to France and Germany, and refuse to stop raiding the newly independent Irish, Abraham Lincoln unleashes the U.S. army under Generals Sherman, Lee, and Grant. The best alternate history takes a single decision and reverses it. In the STARS & STRIPES series, author Harry Harrison reverses the British decision not to intervene in the American Civil War, together with the monsterous mistake of attacking both sides. That the two sides could have come together if attacked by a common foe is not beyond conception and makes for an interesting historical alternative. The first half of this novel consists of Sherman's spying venture. Harrison's writing is tight and he throws in enough danger to keep the reader fascinated. The largely militaristic second half is somewhat less interesting depending as it does on Ericsson's invention of the internal combustion engine, the decision to use this engine to drive tanks through England, and on completely ineffectual resistance on the part of the British. Sadly, the British use of concentration camps to hold their possibly disloyal Irish workers sounds possible given the historic contempt that the English held for their Irish cousins. Am I the only one who finds disturbing parallels with current (2003) political discussions and decisions on going to war. Intentional or not, I think that STARS & STRIPES holds some interesting lessons and thoughts for today's world.

Stars & Stripes Triumphant is the third novel in a trilogy about a Civil War that didn't quite happen, following Stars & Stripes in Peril. In the previous volume, the US Navy has established local naval superiority in Irish waters and the US Army has defeated the British troops ashore. Ireland is now free and the Americans help her set up a democratic republican government. This really torques Queen Victoria. In this story, the British have started conducting raids against Ireland and they have gathered up all Irish nationals within English borders and placed them in camps. They have also resumed the practice of impressing American sailors from ships on the high seas. Moreover, they are searching ships at sea for so-called contraband -- American cotton -- destined for Europe, confiscating the ships and imprisoning their crews. The British really cannot believe that they have lost the war. At a European peace conference in Brussels, the President, Abraham Lincoln, is shot at by an angry southern sympathizer, the actor John Wilkes Booth, and General Grant is wounded in the arm. General Sherman meets an interesting Polish count serving in the Russian navy while in Brussels and takes a sea voyage to England on the count's steam yacht, with himself, Gus Fox, and a US Naval officer disguised as Russians. Although they have a couple of close calls, Sherman and Fox return to Washington with some interesting strategic observations. With the help of Ericcson, the shipwright and inventor, and others in the defense industries, General Sherman upgrades the tools of war and devises an innovative plan for the invasion of England. There will be no holding back this time. Another reviewer has mentioned that the author postulated a series of occurrences that did not happen in this timeline rather than a single discrete event. I am not really sure why this is a problem, since any single event MUST significantly effect subsequent events in order to cause any noticeable change in the timeline. Otherwise, the changed event would be buried in the clutter of everyday life and forgotten by posterity. Other reviewers find it hard to believe that the Americans could develop so much new equipment is such a brief time. All right, I acknowledge that the light bulb is unlikely, but the ships are just about dead on. It is little advertised, but the US claimed reparations from England after the Civil War because of the support that country supplied to the Confederacy. England demurred, the US Navy send a squadron of iron ships, with turrets, to English waters as a gentle hint, the English had nothing that could stand against them, and England paid the US claims. If I remember the date correctly, that was in 1879, but it could have been even earlier if the US was forced to fight a naval war with England. All the pieces were there, but nobody had a need for them in 1865. Recommended for Harrison fans and anyone who enjoys well-crafted tales of alternate w

Well, it would have had 5 starts if it had been more than 228 pages...yes, 228 Hardcover pages....Excellent idea, that the Civil War armoes, taken together, could have literally conquered the whole world, if the US had been as Imperialist as the "left-wingers; of the world" have been saying for years..Semi-Modern Technology, such as Armored ironClads Clads, High-Velocity Artillery, Steam Railroad communications and LOCs, Massive numbers of Rifle (Sharpes?) armed infantry + early Machineguns, you name it....The other world's armies would not have stood a chance; it's as if WW II had arrived 100 years early, not in the literal sense, but the enormous disparity in firepower between a WWII German Infantry Division and a French/English WW I Division.I hope Harry reconsiders, and does another one, a sort of spinoff with another "bully" on the block, such as maybe Bismarck's Germany (and war of aggression in 1871...)This is the best in Alternate History, if too short..My Studies have shown me that Queen Victoria, and some of her hanger-on's were as mean-spirited and outright insane as they are depicted in the Book.BUY this, as it is one of the Best of Alternate Fiction, in the Company of Flint/Weber/Drake's 1632/1633 series of novels.Thanks