You can use your Minuteman Library Network card to borrow titles from these partner libraries:
1 of 1 copy available
In an extraordinary saga of nations locked in war, master storyteller Harry Turtledove examines a very different World War II—one which erupts eleven months earlier, and over Czechoslovakia rather than Poland. Now comes the final installment in this landmark series.
Hitler’s Plan A was to win in a hurry, striking hard and deep into France. There was no Plan B. Now the war grinds on. Countries have been forced into strange alliances. The Nazis fortify thin lines with Hungarian and Romanian troops. England, finding its footing after the suspicious death of Winston Churchill and a coup d’état, fights back in Europe and on the seas of the North Atlantic. Jews fight on both sides of the war—in secret in German uniform, openly in Spain, France, and Russia. Into the standoff come new killing tools, from tanks to bazookas. In the Pacific, Japan prepares bombs filled with macabre biological concoctions to be dropped on Hawaii.
For the U.S., the only enemy is Japan, as there has been no casus belli for America in Europe. Then Hitler becomes desperate and declares war on the United States. But is it too late? His own people are rising up in revolt. The German military may have to put down the violence, even perhaps bomb its own cities.
In this epic drama, real men and women are shaped by the carnage, and their individual acts in turn shape history. Drawing on the gritty, personal reality of war and on a cast of unforgettable characters, Harry Turtledove has written an alternate history that intrigues, fascinates, and astounds.
Praise for Last Orders
“From our perspective seventy years later, we’re accustomed to thinking of WWII’s outcome as being inevitable. Not so, says [Harry] Turtledove. . . . Disdaining broad brush strokes, Turtledove’s focus on the characters serves to fill out the big picture with patient, nitty-gritty detail. It’s all quite plausible. . . . Armchair warriors will have much to ponder.”—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Harry Turtledove
“If you like alternate histories, you’re going to like this series a lot.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Turtledove is the standard-bearer for alternate history.”—USA Today
Coup d’Etat
“This is what alternative history is all about.”—Historical Novel Society
The Big Switch
“The Hugo Award winner continues to delight in exploring the world of ‘what if?’”—Library Journal
West and East
“There’s plenty to satisfy fans of military strategy, tactics, and armaments.”—Publishers Weekly
Hitler’s War
“Turtledove is always good, but this return to World War II . . . is genuinely brilliant. . . . The characterizations in particular bring the book to extraordinary life.”—Booklist
-
Creators
-
Series
-
Publisher
-
Release date
July 15, 2014 -
Formats
-
Kindle Book
-
OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780345524737
-
EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780345524737
- File size: 2876 KB
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
July 1, 2014
Turtledove (Two Fronts, 2013, etc.) delivers the final installment-and there's room for a maybe in there-of his series developing an alternate-history version of World War II. Without aliens interfering.From our perspective 70 years later, we're accustomed to thinking of WWII's outcome as being inevitable. Not so, says Turtledove. What if, for instance, the Spanish Civil War had dragged on? Imagine, then, a 1943 where fascist Nationalists backed by Nazi Germany wage trench warfare against Republican communists assisted by independently operating Americans and Europeans. Further suppose that in 1938, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Britain and France had allied themselves with Nazi Germany to battle the communist Soviet Union. By 1943, however, following an anti-fascist coup, Britain and France now face Germany across a western front entrenched in Belgium, while in the east, the Soviets push the Germans back inch by bloody inch. Avoiding European entanglement, the U.S. tussles with Japan in the Pacific, where, after a quite different Battle of Midway, American paratroopers find themselves stranded, forbidden to leave the island due to Japan's active biological warfare campaign. In Munster, a churchman protests against Nazi treatment of defectives (though not Jews), prompting skeptical, war-weary Germans to revolt against the hated blackshirt overlords. The action switches among frontline soldiers and airmen on the European western and eastern fronts, the mid-Pacific, civilian Americans and German Jews, Ukrainian partisans and Czech snipers, German tank and submarine crews, and a gratuitous cameo from Albert Einstein. Disdaining broad brush strokes, Turtledove's focus on the characters serves to fill out the big picture with patient, nitty-gritty detail. It's all quite plausible, sure, and armchair warriors will have much to ponder.Some readers may find the conclusion messy and unsatisfying, but that's part of Turtledove's argument: War often is.COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
-