DWD's Reviews

Published in 2016 by Tom Doherty Associates (A Tor Book) Harry Turtledove specializes in alternate histories. Usually, he has a big twist - what if the South won the Civil War? What if Atlantis were a real continent? What if the Colonies lost the Revolutionary War? What if MacArthur actually dropped atomic bombs during the Korean War? The House of Daniel is a different kind of story, with a twist. To be perfectly honest, I read the description of this book, with its references to The Great Depression, baseball, "hotshot wizards" and zombies and missed the fact that it was actually referring to actual wizards and zombies, not metaphorical wizards (the whiz kid experts that FDR hired) and zombies (the unemployed masses who are desperate for work). I really thought that Turtledove had just written a straight book about semipro baseball in the Great Depression. And, basically he has. 85% of this story is about baseball. Jack Spivey does odd jobs, plays semipro baseball for a few...

Audiobook Edition Published in 2009 by Tantor Audio Published in hardback in 2006. Read by John Allen Nelson Duration: 11 hours, 13 minutes Unabridged The massacre at Fort Pillow truly stands out in a bloody Civil War in which hundreds of thousands of men and women died. Even though the American Civil War had so many casualties, the war itself was remarkable in that the two sides were often quite civil with one another off of the battlefield. There are numerous stories of local truces to trade coffee for tobacco and the like. My favorite is the story of Confederate and Union pickets (perimeter guards) who co-built a cabin in stages during the winter and agreed to share it in shifts as the day went along. Prisoners of War were generally cared for (there were exceptions, but they stick out as exceptions), the enemy wounded were treated by the doctors (the care was bad, but the best that was available), and so on. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) The battle at Fort Pillo...

Published in 2010 by Tantor audio Read by Todd McLaren Duration: 14 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Called a “Master of Alternate History” by Publishers Weekly, Harry Turtledove continues on that track in Atlantis and Other Places with a set of 12 short stories. Topics and eras range from pre-history to the Peloponnesian War to the Byzantine Empire to World War II and two stories set in modern times. All of these stories have appeared in other publications. This collection begins and ends with two stories about Atlantis, a topic he has explored more deeply in a trilogy. “Audubon in Atlantis” is the first story that Turtledove published about Atlantis. The famed 19 th century naturalist John James Audubon has traveled to Atlantis to catalog some of its unique wildlife. Turtledove introduces his alternate world, including basics of the history of Atlantis and he introduces the House of Universal Devotion, a religion that is most analogous to the Mormon Church in regular histor...

So, what do you get when Oscar Award Winner and a Hugo Award Winner get together? Published in 1996 by Tor Books What you get is a pretty good book, actually. The premise of The Two Georges is that the United States was never formed. The British government dealt fairly with the colonies in the 1760s and the independence movement was stillborn. Instead, what are now the USA and Canada is called the North American Union and are an integral part of the United Kingdom. The UK is a vast world-wide empire led by the King-Emperor. This union is symbolized by the painting "The Two Georges" which depicts colonial representative George Washington bowing before King George III before an assembly of British and American dignitaries. This moment encapsulates the agreements that kept the American colonies a part of the British Empire. At the beginning of the book the painting is stolen in 1996 by The Sons of Liberty, a North American pro-independence movement. The story follows two de...