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    How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States
    How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States
    How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States
    Audiobook24 hours

    How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States

    Written by Harry Turtledove

    Narrated by George Guidall

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. …

    1881: A generation after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America in 1881.

    But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other but the Apache, the outlaw, the French, and the English. As Confederate General Stonewall Jackson again demonstrated his military expertise, the North struggled to find a leader who could prove his equal.

    In the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed—and so would history …
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 28, 2010
    ISBN9781449832117
    How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States
    Author

    Harry Turtledove

    Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for How Few Remain

    3.5/5

    257 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Good book. Just know this isn’t an action story. It’s a political book with the war serving as the backdrop. There is combat in it, but it is not all combat
    • 4/5
      A highly-enjoyable and thoroughly-researched alt history jaunt that explores the repercussions of a Confederate victory during the Civil War. The book jumps between perspectives on both sides of the conflict, and is wonderfully nuanced. People are people, and are complex creatures... though Custer is the easiest one to hate, no question. I do wish there had been some female perspectives as well, but I understand why there were not because of the tight military and political focus, mostly on men who survived the previous conflict--or on rising stars, such as Theodore Roosevelt. Since I wrote about Roosevelt in my own alt-history series, I especially enjoyed Turtledove's take on the impetuous young civilian using his wealth and charisma to gather a volunteer troop almost twenty years in advance of when he actually assembled his Rough Riders.
    • 3/5
      Would have been four stars, but took away half a star in revenge for sex It was a near miss for the Confederacy when General Robert E. Lee's aide recovered a document he'd lost, that detailed Lee's entire plan for the invasion of the Union in 1862. Just imagine the disaster that would have befallen those brave Southern boys had that document fallen into Yankee hands! Mercy!

      Oh wait, that's not how it happened? Pardon me. I'm from Wyoming. Our school system teaches Wyoming history, to which accounts of the War Between the States are merely an ancillary in that they explain why a lot of members of the U.S. Calvary charged with protecting Manifest Destiny-enacting white settlers against Red Indians in the West had fewer than their original compliment of digits or limbs, or raging cases of PTSD. I'm hazy on details.

      No, not really. But the Civil War still isn't something I've studied too terribly closely, which may be a shame, but then again may not be, as far as my ability to appreciate what Harry Turtledove has achieved in this founding document of his sprawling alternate history of North America, the departure point for which is the aforementioned recovery of Lee's invasion plan. Without that vital intelligence, Turtledove says, the Union might not have won at Antietam, which means President Lincoln would not have had that victory announcement to serve as his springboard for announcing Emancipation, which means Great Britain and France don't have a clear moral choice in deciding whether or not to continue supporting the Confederacy, which means the Confederacy winds up winning the War and North America winds up with four internationally recognized nation states instead of three (well, okay, three nation states and one Dominion).

      That premise established, the action proper of this novel starts up about 20 years later. The Confederacy is buying the provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico in order to acquire a Pacific port and the land access to extend its railroads to it. The USA has elected its first Republican President since Abraham Lincoln's one and only term ended in the disgrace of losing the War; this new President needs to look tough and declares war (Lincoln has taken to the railways to travel the diminished United States of America as a quasi-Marxist labor agitator*). Frederick Douglass is an old man, still hopeful that someday, someone is going to give a crap about the countless slaves still in bondage in the Confederacy. Old Yellowhair, George Armstrong Custer, is charged with containing a Mormon rebellion in Utah. Samuel Clemens (whom real history knows better as Mark Twain) reports and editorializes on events in the pages of the San Francisco Call and has uxorious sex with his wife (yeah, I could have done without that mental image too, guys). Jeb Stuart is in charge of moving Confederate troops into the newly-purchased territories as a first step towards colonizing them for the C.S.A. Teddy Roosevelt, Montana rancher, watches events unfolding and hopes the new President will hold fast, but decides his own help is needed to do it and forms up his own Unauthorized Regiment. Etc.

      It's always fun to play "What If" over a few beers or whatever, but who else has taken that game to such lengths? Turtledove went on to write ten more novels in this universe he created. Ten. Am I going to read the rest of them?

      Well, I'm not sure. This was my first Harry Turtledove, and I did find it diverting and moderately absorbing, chiefly because it was fun to imagine these historical figures in circumstances so radically different from what they're famous for, but, well, those reviewers who have described How Few Remain as historical fan fiction are kind of right. I'm told subsequent books in the series are much, much better than this first book, which news I always greet with irritation; I've just endured 596 pages of this solely so that I understand what's going on in better future books? I'd say that if those future books were solely about Turtledove's own characters, I'd be disinclined to continue, but I can't help but be curious about, e.g. Lincoln, Twain, Roosevelt and Custer** in this alternate timeline. Especially after enjoying the mental spectacle of Custer with Gatling guns. And Lincoln delivering stonking Marxist rants. And Douglass...

      Ah me, Douglass. Despite his advanced age, he dons his journalist hat*** and accompanies a Union flanking attack that brings him onto Confederate soil for the first time (he doesn't count his years as a slave because it was still part of the United States then), and when he sees that the little structures he sees burning all over the place are slave shanties, it's impossible not to share his rage. "May they all burn, and all the big houses with them."

      Which is to say that, where most of the other historical figures and characters come off as tremendously unpleasant, if not outright assholes, Lincoln and Douglass (ha ha) shine as the novel's only real heroes, both of them old men, generally despised if not outright hated, bowed but not broken, sad but not embittered by the Union's defeat in the first war, only sort of hopeful that a second might change anything but doing their damndest to bring about the changes they hope for regardless of what happens on the battlefields. They make up for any number of disappointments (Turtledove succumbs to a failing that is one of my great pets peeve as a reader, the impulse to use "amber liquid" as a synonym for beer or scotch. Why do you do that, writers? Why do you always pick that beverage as a point to vary your vocabulary, and why must you always invoke the image of body fluids when you do? WHY, WRITERS, WHY?) and ick moments (for some reason, sex scenes involving Mark Twain and his wife, and George Custer and not-his-wife, have scarred me for life). They might even lead me to look into more of this series.

      *A lot of people are nonplussed by Turtledove's version of Lincoln, but I think it makes a lot of sense, provided one never forgets that this Lincoln is one who not only did not get assassinated but lived to a ripe old age in a world in which the institution of slavery persisted in North America, and no one in the defeated North gave much of a damn about them (and many blamed the war on them, as alt-Frederick Douglass' story illustrates). So, as Lincoln observes to himself as he prepares to address a fairly unreceptive crowd in Great Falls, Montana: "Without more than a handful of Negroes to exploit, it [the country] battened off the sweat of the poor and the ignorant and the newly arrived and the unlucky." Which is to say that those people wound up having it even worse in Turtledove's alt USA than they did in ours, with no newly-freed slaves to soak up the really dirty jobs. Potentially, this could even have retarded the development of the middle class whose interests and abilities so characterized the 20th century in our world. So yeah, I buy Lincoln as a golden years Marxist under these circumstances. For great justice.

      **Though I've got to say that Ol' Yellowhair -- and a lot of other Union military leaders -- comes off as a considerable jerk, even before he gets to Utah, where he's hell-bent on stringing up all the leaders of the Mormon Church ostensibly for inciting the Territory to rebel while the Union wages its second war with the Confederacy, but, one suspects, really over polygamy. Everyone is really obsessed with polygamy in this novel, and perhaps that's true for the times, but man, did the multiple wives jokes get old after a few hundred pages. Also: I didn't think anything could ever really make me hate Teddy Roosevelt, but this book did. I had to keep gritting my teeth and reminding myself this is just a character kind of loosely based on Roosevelt. As were all of the historical figures, of course, even the ones who kept their pants on.

      ***But somehow never encounters, say, Matthew Brady, whose absence from this novel is glaring. I would have accepted at least a passing reference to how he had died or something, you know?
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this alternate history about what would have happened if the South had won the American Civil War. It seemed like a good idea to read How Few Remain, because I know very little about the Civil War (or, if you're a Southerner, the War Between the States), and so wouldn't get too ticked off if the author got something egregiously wrong. So while the history resonated true to me, there was too much to keep up with. And a very anti-climactic ending.Using the incident of lost plans that could have won the war for the South, How Few Remain instead imagines a reality in which the South did win. This causes what we now know as the United States to be split into two countries, the United States and the Confederate States, where slavery is still legal and encouraged.10 years after the War of Secession, the CSA buys Sonora and Chihuahua from the Empire of Mexico for a trifling amount and the government of the USA loses its mind and declares war ... again. Soon, the entire continent is enmeshed in wars and skirmishes involving Britain, France, and Canada supporting the CSA. The USA just stands on principle, and a perverse hope that being anti-slavery will be enough to win the war, this time for sure. Which, you know, that trick never works.So Sam Clemens never becomes Mark Twain and stays in San Francisco as editor of a newspaper so he can report on the idiocy of the US government, and the British warships in the bay bent on blowing San Francisco to smithereens. Abe Lincoln survived his time in office but was not re-elected since now, everyone blames him for the loss of a war which has torn the country in two. Abe tours the North and its territories lecturing to any audience that will listen that labor is akin to slavery, and workers need to stand up for better working conditions. Frederick Douglass lives in Rochester, NY with his wife and son and writes stirring articles and speeches for the freeing of the slaves. Theodore Roosevelt owns a ranch in Montana territory and pays the expenses to form a regiment of volunteers ready to serve their country by beating the Canadians back across the border. The Mormons are up to no good in Utah Territory, taking advantage of the war to insist on living by their religious laws which allow polygamy, against US law. And ... oh right, I don't remember which general winds up in the newest states in the Confederacy working with the Apaches and Mexicans against the US incursion. And then the Apaches and Mexicans have a good ol' time killing each other.What the heck any of this had to do with this war was really sort of beyond me. And as time went on, and I kept reading to see how Turtledove was going to resolve this mess, it became clear that nothing was going to be resolved ... ever. Was the point of the book that war is pointless? Or that the Civil War, in any history, was stupid? Or ... I don't know ...Too many characters, too many subplots, salacious incidents which don't really drive the story and, my pet peeve, incorrect history about Christmas trees. I don't recommend this to anyone.
    • 4/5
      Alternate history--what if the South had won the Civil War/War of Secession? Another war...20 years later...and the continent continually separated. The characters are those we might remember: Longstreet as President of CSA, J.E.B. Stuart & George Custer as cavalry commanders, Teddy Roosevelt as a shiny new leader. It all comes together and the reader wonders if it could have happened?
    • 4/5
      Good book over all because the CSA won but its dragged out longer than it needs to be.
    • 4/5
      One of HT's best books. Few Americans of the Libertarian stamp think of Lincoln as the primitive Socialist that he was. To an outsider, it was this that gave him the inner resources that led to the Emancipation Proclaimation, and his private belief in the abolition of slavery. See "Lies My Teacher Told Me", or "Team of Rivals", if you want to see how people attempt to manipulate the real Lincoln for relatively right wing purposes. To HT's credit, he visits the real man for some moments. The further career of Nathan Bedford Forrest is also interesting.
    • 4/5
      My reaction to reading this novel in 1997. Spoilers follow.Not a sequel to Turtledove’s Guns of the South, this alternate history uses as its hinge the non-loss of Confederate battle plans at Antietam. (In our world, the plans were lost but General McClellan didn’t use them to full extent.) The Confederacy gains a substantial victory, and the French and British intervene in the war, and a peace is forced with the Confederacy gaining independence. The book jumps forward to 1881 when a Second War Between the States breaks out after the Confederacy purchases Sonora from Emperor Maxmillan of Mexico. The USA doesn’t want the CSA having access to two oceans. Turtledove does an adequate job with the battle scenes (though not as good as his Worldwar series) and the setup competent but not real inventive. It was with this book that I realized that Turtledove’s true talent in alternate history lies not in creating his initial scenarios or the details of his worlds (though he does a good job with these) but in piling detail up on detail, interior monologue upon dialogue and action to create very vivid, well-realized alternate versions of historical personages. He did this with Robert E. Lee in Guns of the South and here with Abraham Lincoln who seems utterly convincing as a Marxist labor agitator. He also does a good job with Count Alfred von Schlieffen, military observer who is appalled at the lack of planning and sophistication in the US military.
    • 1/5
      I wanted to like this book, (thought the premise was brilliant,) but his writing style did not work at all with my brain. Every page was a struggle. Too bad.
    • 4/5
      An alternate history about the war that inevitably follows a generation after the rebels win the american civil war. I wish I knew more about the actual history/figures so that I could determine whether or not this alternate reality is feasible. But knowing little, it seems probable enough. Sweet insight into another time period with striking similarities to our own in the labor/capitalist struggle. Interesting to see the balance of military might and common sense between the two american armies and their european contemporaries. Must adjust and evolve with the technology, man. Gotta love Abe Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, and the German military minister.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating alternative timeline...Turtledove pays good attention to the details of language and writes in the same style as his characters would have spoken. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't real!
    • 4/5
      (Warning: I go into description of the book's plot here.)Finished reading HOW FEW REMAIN today. It took me a while but that wasn't because I wasn't enjoying it. Quite the contrary. This is the second of Harry Turtledove's alternate history novels that I've read (the first also being Civil War based, THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH) and I love just how historically authentic feeling... Turtledove is able to make the various characters and period settings while at the same time spinning them off into completely different directions from what actually occured in "real life".HOW FEW REMAIN is about (another) alternate history in which the Confederate States won the Civil War. The "point of divergence" (as alternate history fans call the exact historical point at which the work diverges from actual history) is covered briefly in the book's prelude, which shows a Confederate courier *not* accidentally losing General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191 which detailed Lee's plans for the invasion of the North. In reality, this order was recovered by Union forces allowing them to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam. In HOW FEW, the order is not compromised and Lee's forces succeed in capturing Philadelphia, which convinces Britain and France to side with the Confederate States and effectively ended the war.Aside from the prelude (which takes place in 1862), the novel takes place entirely in 1881. After nearly twenty years of having to share the North American continent with the Confederate States of America (and also twenty years of Democratic presidents following Abraham Lincoln's electoral defeat in 1864), the United States of America, at the order of Republican President James G. Blaine, launches a second war with the CSA after the Confederate States purchase from Mexico two key territories (Sonora and Chihuahua) which expands the CSA's overall territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean.Turtledove's novels are especially rich in the amount of characters he includes. In this one we have Lincoln, much older than he lived in real life and now a man general disdained or outright hated by most as the man largely responsible for the USA's losing the "War of Secession". Lincoln by this point has turned the focus of his attention to crusading for the working man against the powers of big business.Military figures include U.S. Lt. General George Armstrong Custer, Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (head of the Confederate General Staff), General John Pope (commander of U.S. forces in Utah), Confederate General James Ewell "Jeb" Stuart, and a young Theodore Roosevelt, who leads a U.S. volunteer cavalry unit (Roosevelt and Samuel Clemens are especially fun characters in this novel).Other key characters include the President of the Confederate States James Longstreet, Frederick Douglass, Geronimo (who first works with Jeb Stuart's forces to ambush U.S. troops in Mexico but after which Stuart must somehow keep from waging war with the local Mexican people in what is now Confederate territory), Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen (here, the German military attache to the U.S.), Mormon leader John Taylor (the Mormons decide to take advantage of the war between the USA and CSA to attempt to break away from the U.S.; Custer and his men are sent into Utah to put down the Mormon rebellion), and Samuel Clemens (who never went on to write under the pen name, Mark Twain; instead, Clemens is a San Francisco newspaper editor).HOW FEW REMAIN is a stand alone novel but it establishes what fans have come to refer to as the "Timeline-191" series, of which Turtledove went on to write nine more novels (three separate trilogies) in. Following HOW FEW REMAIN is THE GREAT WAR: AMERICAN FRONT, which picks up in 1914 and the start of World War I (which, in this timeline, will include the additional plot element of there still being *two* American nations in existence: the United States of America and the Confederate States of America).
    • 5/5
      I'm afraid I read this one out of order. Back last year, I happened to stumble across The Great War: American Front, which tells a tale of World War I in a world where the Confederate States of America is an actuality. The characters in the book referred, from time to time, about a second War between the States that had occurred in the 1880s and had served to create deeper divisions between the North and the South. I found myself wishing that I could also read that tale, foolishly unaware that it had already been written. How Few Remain is that tale, an enjoyable read in its own right. The year is 1881 and after almost 20 years of Democrats in the White House, the president is once again a Republican. He's itching to regain some lost glory, and when the Confederate States of America expand their territory by purchasing the states of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico, President Blaine considers it sufficient cause to start military action. The resulting war is told from the viewpoint of various characters. It's the same technique Mr. Turtledove uses in The Great War, but in this case, the featured characters are all famous characters from our own history--Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Clemens and a disgraced ex-president, Abraham Lincoln, among others. Mr. Turtledove does a good job breathing life into these characters, sending me to the Wikipedia to scope out what these people were really like. And, of course, also sending me to the bookstore to hunt down the subsequent titles in this alternate history epic.--J.
    • 3/5
      ==Minor spoilers ahead==I've always liked stories where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad -- Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Nantucket, etc. I've recently grown to love stories in which we see things from all perspectives -- A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind, with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to a lesser extent. How Few Remain is neither of these: the Confederate POVs were forgiving, but everyone else came across as unlikeable or simply unimportant. Lincoln, Douglass, von Schlieffen, and Clemens have little effect on the actual war effort, and serve primarily as our eyes on the real figures in the war. The actual story peters out about halfway through the book, as everyone pretty much sits and waits for the war to come to its inevitable conclusion.I still give the novel three stars for two reasons: first, except for Lincoln, I find all events and characters to be historically consistent. Second, this book sets up some great possibilities for following books in the timeline. I only hope that these sequels make use of the potential, as I haven't yet read them.