In my quest to build up a substantial collection of alternate history books I recently bought Bring the Jubilee through kalahari.com: when it arrived it seemed a little familiar but not distressingly so - I thought perhaps I had borrowed it from the library. When I finished the book and went to shelve it, I discovered I already owned it - not only the same title but the exact same edition!

Never mind, the book is good enough to own two of just for the pleasure of lending it out or giving it away to someone who will appreciate it - in my case, my father: Bring the Jubilee [I don't understand the title] was one of the first Alternate History books. Written in the 1950s before authors started taking liberties with real historical characters, it tells the story of a United States beaten by the 'Southron' States in the 'Southron War of Independence'.

The North is financially crippled; most people indenture themselves and battle all their lives just to keep going. The infrastructure is run down or non-existent, the Ivy League universities mere bush colleges, and the population miserable: son of a blacksmith, Hodge Backmaker considers himself a huge disappointment to his parents because he is exceedingly unhandy and cannot help with the tasks. His only interest is in learning and at 17 he runs away to New York, certain his cold parents will be glad to see the back of him.

The industrial revolution has not occured so there are no aeroplanes or telephones or electric lights and although some form of motorcar does it exist, they are few and far between, and limited to the areas where there are good roads. Hodge is apprenticed by an erudite printer and spends several years reading everything he can get his hands on before writing off to the remaining univiersities asking for a scholarship.

His request is met by an offer from an intellectual community of scholars and Hodge is delighted to start to use his brain seriously for the first time in pursuit of his ambition to be an historian. His field of study is the Civil War and before long he has published a book to great acclaim. The second volume though is causing him misgivings and he jumps at the chance to take a trip in a time machine a college has invented so he can go back and witness the problematic Battle of Gettysburg in person, and ensure his history is accurate.

The results of his expedition are not exactly unexpected as he changed the course of history by an ill-advised action and so finds himself trapped forever in an 'alternate'past, one in which the North won, and his family and friends never existed. An excellent read. ( )

the best of all alternate histories. The South
has won the civil war, It is an exceptional
science fiction novel in having the literary
quality of a coming of age novel, rich and
leisurely and yet a rather brief book.

OK alternative history novel. Gives an idea of what U.S. history would be like if the South had won. ( )

With out a doubt one the best (if not the best) Alternate-History Novel I've read. The reality created through an incredible Ward Moore" narrative is just so believable. This is one book I've never given up after reading and I reread it. ( )

I loved this book; it just got to me on a deep level. Maybe it's how real the dingy alternate New York felt; both horrible and fascinating. The heartbreaking end is unforgetable; a better world created at an unimaginable personal cost. ( )

Better as a short story?

As soon as Hodge Backmacker -- the auto-didact peasant turned pedagogue with a penchant for the history of the American civil war - encounters Barbara Haggerswell -- an iconoclastic physicist and time-machine inventor -- sheltering at the academicist commune of Haggershaven, it is self-evident how the pay-off of to this alternate history novel is going
to be delivered. Despite the fact that this entry in the series is less than 200 pages in length, getting to the stunning final quarter of the book proves something of a slog.

The first quarter of the book is a compressed bildungsroman, detailing Hodge's progress from aspirational hick to man of letters. The middle contains a good deal of redundant exposition regarding Hodge's relationship with Barbara Haggerswell and his salvation of and subsequent marriage to Carrolita, rescued as an adolescent from the scene of a roadside robbery of a member of the Spanish aristocracy and his wife. The final four chapters, in which Hodge ventures back into the past to ratify his theories about the battle of Gettysburg with monumental consequences are quite magnificent, and I'd recommend Bring the Jubilee on this basis alone.

In addition, many appealing aspects of alternate history run through this book: I enjoyed Moore's depiction of the impoverished and struggling 26 states which form the United States in this novel on the basis of the Confederacy having won the American civil war and prospering at the expense of the north. You too may enjoy the minibles and air balloons of a familiar yet strange turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York.

First published on http://sfandfantasymasterworks.blogsp...

Alternate history--the South wins the American Civil War--before it became a cliche. I read the book a long time ago, and remember liking it, but have no further memories.