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    The Guns of the South
    The Guns of the South
    The Guns of the South
    Audiobook24 hours

    The Guns of the South

    Written by Harry Turtledove

    Narrated by Paul Costanzo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    January 1864: General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower.
    Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking-and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantities to the Confederates.
    The name of the weapon is the AK-47 . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 11, 2016
    ISBN9781515977001
    The Guns of the South
    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 The Guns of the South

    4/5

    455 ratings30 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A great read. Even with the inaccuracies of what may happen with time travel, a great read nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      They say never judge a book by its cover. I originally purchased this book in the very early 90s precisely because of this book cover. A sombre Robert E Lee, a face easily recoginisable to this 20 year old Englishman, holding an AK47. I bought the book. It was probably my first alternate fiction book and it's still one of my favourites of the genre. The premise is a desperate confederate army is suddenly provided with a wondrous repeating rifle and this timely intervention changes the course of US history.

      I would have no idea then how problematic a read this would be today. Especially considering the events in the US over the last 5 years. It is still a great read. The battle scenes are brilliant but it's the after events of the Confederate victory that were more interesting to me. Turtledove is an historian first and his conclusions for the new country seem sound.

      Some great characters from soldiers in the CSA, up to Lee, Davis and Lincoln make this a great if sometimes an uncomfortable, problematic read/listen.

      A great narration.
    • 5/5
      For those who think the southern states were filled with a bunch of racists who hated blacks this book will be a shock. There is a lot of truth in this book. General Robert Lee did free the slaves he inherited. There were many southerners who wanted to end slavery. Lincoln was a fanatic who got millions killed over his delusion of the divine purity of the Union who didnt give a damn about the blacks. They were a tool for him. Life for free blacks in the north often was just as bad as it was in the south. Try listening with an open mind.
    • 5/5
      Fairly obsessed with this piece of speculative fiction that ponders what if the South had won the Civil War. Also has time travel and oozies for good measure.
    • 4/5
      This was a far more intelligent book than I was anticipating. The whole summary is "time-traveling racists give the confederacy ak-47's to win the war" sounds like a dumb story but it did a really good job telling a compelling story while also giving an impression on perceptions from that time period. And based on the Praise of and Historical notes section it seems like the author put in a lot of research to get the story as accurately based as possible.
    • 4/5
      Good time travel story about the Civil War and changing history.
    • 2/5
      Gave up on this about halfway through. The first part was good -- battle scenes where the Confederates were using AK-47s, and the course of the war dramatically changed. But then the story got into post-war politics, and that just got too boring for me to continue.
    • 5/5
      Mix sold knowledge of Civil War history with a time travel twist and you've got a wonderful read. Central characters include a rebel infantryman and Robert E. Lee. Lee seems imminently believable as a character although I personally think Robert E. Lee was more firmly Jeffersonian in his attitude towards slavery than given credit by the author...seeing it as a dying practice he nevertheless did not plan to impede. Everything else seems very plausible and the story is immensely entertaining. Highhly recommended.
    • 4/5
      As this was my first venture into the world of Alternate History, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Who better to take this journey with than the master of the genre', Harry Turtledove? I was pleased with my journey and will probably wander down this path again some day. "The Guns of the South" looked at what would have happened to the outcome of the civil war if the South had been equipped with superior firepower - in this case, AK47's. The book begins not long after the South's demoralizing defeat at Gettysburg. General Robert E. Lee, distraught over the loss of thousands of his troops, is approached by a strange man who offers Lee the gift of thousands of the superior weapons. Lee and his generals are impressed with the firepower and ease of use they find when testing the weapons and soon put them in the hands of their soldiers.In the next series of battles and skirmishes, the Confederates soon overpower and devastate their Union rivals and their single-shot Springfield rifles. This pattern continues through the next few months until it's clear to President Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant that a cessation of conflict is needed to save Union lives. The new automatic weapon used by the Rebels is killing Union soldiers by the thousands.From this point, the book moves into a look at the new Confederate States, the election of a new President and the real reason why Lee was given the "gift" by the strange man. The book, though long, never drags and remains as true historically as an alternate history can. As a teacher of the subject matter, I was impressed with Turtledove's research, attention to detail, and ability to keep this from reading like an historical text.If you are a fan of this genre' and/or especially a Civil War buff, then you will enjoy this unique look at a different ending to the War Between the States.
    • 3/5
      A group of apartheid-era Afrikaners time-travels to the American South during our Civil War to arm the Confederate army with AK-47s. The South wins. Lincoln loses the 1864 election and returns to Illinois to practice law. Robert E. Lee wins the Confederate presidency.

      It's too bad the novel had to include the time-travel element, because the sci-fi/action scenes were the least engaging element of the book for me. I was bored when most of a chapter was devoted to how to dissemble and clean an AK-47, and disappointed that the book ended with a big shoot-'em-up with the Afrikaners. Let's just suppose the South won the Civil War. The Confederates still had a lot to reckon with, particularly what to do with the blacks who had already had a taste of freedom with emancipation and the movement of the Union armies. The book looks at these issues, too, and those are the parts of it I enjoyed most. That kind of focus truly makes the book thought-provoking "speculative" fiction--what I like about sci-fi the most.

      Eliminate the time-travel element, and you also are rid of other stumbling blocks. Certainly, any sci-fi requires considerable suspension of disbelief, but my suspension could only go so far--especially when the premises laid out in the story end up contradicting themselves. For instance, when we finally see what serves as the Afrikaners' time portal, it ends up being a platform only 3'x3' square. From that little opening they were able to transport enough Ak-47s to equip the entire Confederate army (as well as mountains of other supplies, too)? Moreover, any time-travel book must deal with the Time Paradox: if the Afrikaners were successful in changing history to make the world more accepting slavery, why would they have felt the need to travel from the 20th century to disrupt the flow of history in the first place?

      In short, the novel could have been better, but for its thoughtful passages, I'll give it three stars.
    • 4/5
      If you like historical fiction with a dash of science fiction yet mostly a history of what the South would be like without losing to the Union, then this book is for you.

      What I appreciated about Turtledove is how he did not make a big issue about 21st century politics from the white racists who stole a time machine and traveled to the waning days of the US Civil War.

      Not only was there a lot of emphasis on life in the trenches, military strategy of Grant and Lee, but also what the parties at Jeff Davis’s house were like, what the slaves thought (not enough on this view) and following the life of Nate Claudell and Molly Bean (a woman who dresses as a man to fight in the war, and parttime “whore”) and what they go through in all this.

      The Afrikaans want a white racist state that will ally itself with Nazi Germany in the future. They settle in to a town called Rivington (fictional) and immediately begin their reign of terror not only on the Union, but their manipulation of the men and women of the South. Pretty intense story here.

      The Afrikaans though are a bit cardboard characters; Turtledove does not build them up to any great degree. There are funny moments as when he introduces the Confederate soldiers to instant coffee and freeze-dried meals.

      The discovery of 20th century books, the way General Lee uses the information of the future to help not only his own political ends but the ends of his country are fascinating. The Afrikaans really shoot their own foot – if they were trying to create a slave state, why were they treating the Black man so badly – worse so than the Confederates were!

      Final Note: Some may bristle a bit in making the South the good guys in this story, but frankly they were really coming of age as a nation, realizing what they were doing not only with demanding slave rights but also state rights, and realizing they were part of a global economy (pretty radical in 1868!).

      The fates of Lincoln, Grant, and even Hayes are revealed. Check it out, not a bad read.


    • 3/5
      Apparently this is HTD's breakthrough hit, and it's fair. The introduction of the alien technology in a less familiar battle (hey! it's not Gettysburg!), is refreshing. Well plotted and may get an eventual reread.
    • 4/5
      My reactions to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.If alternate histories are to be judged by the skill they evoke another world and the rigor and seriousness of their extrapolations, than this is one of the best alternate history I’ve ever read. Even though only the first paragraph of this book (a quote from Robert E. Lee) is from history, I had to remind myself several times that this was not a history of my world, an account of something that really happened. The book had that much verisimilitude. Turtledove makes two excellent choices in viewpoint characters: Robert E. Lee to give us the large scale picture of the political and military matters he is involved in and First Sergeant Nate Caudell to give us the common man’s view of the changes that sweep the South in the wake of the change to history Turtledove postulates. Specifically, Turtledove introduces time travelers in the year 1864. They can only travel back 150 years into their past – no later, no sooner, and they didn’t get a time machine quick enough to help Lee earlier in the war. They are white supremacists from South Africa who think things for their cause begin to go wrong with the defeat of the Confederacy. They propose to arm the Southern army with AK-47s to make up for their smaller numbers and fewer resources. With the aid of the new arms (and a few rifle grenades during the taking of Washington and some nitroglycerin pills for Lee’s heart condition – however, the time travelers aren’t willing to reveal their knowledge of computers or radio), the South wins. Turtledove doesn’t have the time travelers on stage a lot – though their existence looms large in the minds of the leaders of the victorious Confederacy. Turtledove makes a few points about the limited use, out of historic context, of the technology and knowledge of a time traveler. The South has problems manufacturing the cartridges and powders suitable for an AK-47 nor is their metallurgical skill up to duplicating them. The South Africans’ knowledge of Civil War history is only of use in the first stages of the Battle of the Wilderness – the first battle after their intervention. Latter, when they are suppressed, Benny Lang – the most decent of the South Africans – tells the South that they’ll only be able to use their captured computers until they break down. But the South and the South Africans begin to part company after the war. Lee wants to emancipate the slaves. I liked Turtledove’s brief take on whether the Civil War was fought over state’s rights or slavery. One character remarks that the South fought the war to keep the federal government from telling state’s what to do and the specific thing the federal government wanted to tell the states’ was abolish slavery. Too many slaves were freed by Northern occupation or ran away to make it an easy matter to retrieve them. Many are in armed guerilla bands, ruthlessly suppressed by Nathan Bedford Forrest). Morally, if a slave shows the willingness to fight an army for freedom, showed bravery when fighting for the North, capable of learning reading and writing in both Northern and Southern schools, it becomes increasingly hard for thoughtful Southerners to think of blacks as less than fully human. Some already had little pleasure or patience for slavery. Economically, slaves are simply getting very expensive. Some masters rent theirs out. Other people hire freedman. Diplomatically, Britain and many other nations are reluctant to treat with a slave country. Turtledove has Lee using some anachronistic emancipation proposals from the Empire of Brazil as well as emancipation proposals from real American history. Lee comes across as the duty-conscious, honorable man he must have been. His adventures in the complex world of the post-Second American Revolution are interesting be it dealing with the hard-fought Presidential campaign against Afrikaner backed Forrest. Forrest, who in our history was a slave trader and involved in the massacre of surrendering black Northern troops and helped form the Klan, fights a hard, vicious campaign. Yet, when Lee wins, he graciously concedes and when the lies and treachery of the Afrikaners are revealed by their Inauguration Day massacre – including Lee’s wife – Forrest helps brutally quell them. Given the animosity in the novel between the low born Forrest and aristocratic Lee and their respective views on slavery, this change in Forrest’s character seems implausible tell one remembers that in our world Forrest eventually let the Klan after they became too violent for him and, when the pervading social mores changed, spoke in favor of integration. There are disputes with the North over Kentucky and Missouri and Maryland, or the complexities of the post-war world where the North is fighting – a lá Stanton – over Canada with Britain and the Confederacy’s sphere of influence in the West and Mexico. Caudell’s story provides a good slice of changing southern life. I also liked his romance with prostitute Mollie Bean – a real historical character who fought in disguise for the South. The battles, the characterization, the plotting, the pacing, the details of life were all well done without a misstep. There were small bits I liked: the whole plot with Caudell’s friend Henry Pleasants, a Northern prisoner of war at Andersonville that Caudell meets as Pleasants is returning home after the war. Pleasants decides to stay in the South and makes it his home. He even makes a mark when, as a railroad engineer, he comes up with a successful scheme to mine under the Afrikaner fortifications in the final battle. In our time, he tried a similar scheme unsuccessfully at Vicksburg. The theme of race relations runs throughout the book. It’s best illustrated by noting that slave George Ballentine, a soldier for the South and respected by his white comrades, is killed by sadistic (and the worst) Afrikaner Andries Rhoodie. At novel’s end, Rhodie is killed by black. The white soldiers simply remark he had it coming.
    • 4/5
      An excellent alternate history 'what if' novel. What if time travel were possible and could be used to try and alter the history of the Civil War? I won't give anything else away, but this was fun to read. If you enjoy alternate history that is solidly based on real history, you'll enjoy this. Unlike a lot of alternate history, just one thing changes, not the entire nature of the country or the conflict, but how that changes things is the fun of the book.
    • 5/5
      Thought it was a great use of alternate history. The vivid portrayal of Robert E Lee and Bedford Forrest from their real journals added a touch of realism -- loved the future antagonists
    • 4/5
      It's always amusing to see what twists and turns alter-history writers can come up with, If Only....
    • 5/5
      Alternative history at its best. Turtledove is a master at what he does. ak47s in the civil war is brilliant. I HIGHLY recommend this book
    • 5/5
      Turtledove is the master of alternate history and has a seemingly infinite number of variations on that theme. This is possibly his most popular book though, and the first of his I ever read--recommended to me by a history teacher of my acquaintance. In this novel, supporters of apartheid in South Africa go back in time to try to change the outcome of the American Civil War in the hopes they'd have allies in the future that could change the course of their own history. The military parts are well-done--enough to keep my interest, and I'm not particularly drawn to the genre. The pivotal character in all this is Robert E. Lee--and it's a thought-provoking and historically literate portrait of the man and his times.
    • 4/5
      A great example of alternative history. As most readers can tell from the cover it is about the Cival War (the not so obvious fact)and AK-47's( the obvious part) how they are conected I wont spoil that for the reader.Very dry at parts with alot of political discusions and less gun shooting you would expect from a civil war book. Recomended the reader has some decent knowledge of the cival war and events that fallowed before reading.
    • 5/5
      I bought this book after hearing parts of it read aloud on NPR. It's the first novel my husband has sat down and read in over a year. I am always encouraging him to take a book when he travels, but usually he just watches TV or plays videogames to relax. Harry Turtledove struck a chord. He devoured this book, diving into it at every opportunity, and is looking forward to reading more Turtledove.
    • 3/5
      Good story of attempt to change the outcome of the Civil War with time travel and modern weapons.
    • 3/5
      Harry Turtledove is a writer's, writer, who has learned his trade from the classics. In fact, he learned it so well that all he cares about is telling a good story. He rarely engages in broader speculations or deeper moral and ethical dilemmas that his unusual yarns can so well produce. Learning from Tolstoy the art of telling stories on a huge canvass, Harry forgot that Tolstoy also had a philosophy and a reason for drawing those tableaux. While Tolstoy tells us the story of human fate as part of gigantic flow that sweeps everthing in its way, Harry lets us stitch whatever we like on the canvass of his novels. Counting on the fact that the historical gimmicks he throws in the mix (in this case the historical teleportation of AK-47s to the Civil War battlefields) and the novelty of seeing the same history we have known from a totally different perspective (Lincoln gives his impromptu address to the Confederate armies gathered at the bottom of the White House stairs), Harry forgets to push us a little harder and muse deeper about the meaning of history.
    • 2/5
      Not what I was expecting. A bit dull in the middle.
    • 5/5
      Quite enjoyable through and through. Robert E. Lee and Nate Caudell were both wonderful main characters, and each worth their part in the story. Turtledove did indeed do his research, as he often does, quite well. The only turn down was a chapter worth of a battle scene, however does more to accentuate some of the more illustrious and riveting scenes later on.
    • 5/5
      In some ways, the novel that "started it all" for Harry. I read this way back when it first came out, and then kind of forgot about Turtledove until about 2000. At that point I realized that I had a lot of catching up to do!A note of warning to prospective readers - this novel has absolutely nothing (except its Civil War backdrop) with Turtledove's latter epic Civil War series.
    • 4/5
      I really have very little interest in alternate history books, but a friend recommended this one to me, and so I eventually (ten years later) read it. Honestly, it surprised me in its thoughtfulness and realism.Its depiction of Robert E. Lee is particularly good and, I think, accurate. Those who think he was an evil man simply because he sided with the South during the war (which means he must have been a back-woods hillbilly who just wanted to whip black people all day) would do well to read more about him. He was opposed to slavery, and the book depicts his compassion and personality very well.I think I would have rather read a book in which the South wins by slight changes in the war rather than the time-travelling aspects of the book, but the "Rivington men" play an important role in the story, so I cannot blame Turtledove for writing a different novel that he did rather than the one I was expecting, but I would still like to read the novel I described.That is a wish that does not really have any bearing on this review though, and I recommend this novel highly, especially to those who do not fully understand the South's position in the war. Turtledove represents it accurately, good and bad.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good. Nothing to write home to Mama about. The time-travel angle struck me then, and strikes me now, as a cheat.
    • 3/5
      Hardly great literature; Turtledove is a plodding writer a little too fond of the cliche for my tastes. However the essential point of the exercise, a way to learn about the US Civil War through counterfactuals, by assuming through some time travel hocus pocus that the AWB gives the South AK-47s to allow them to win the war, is valid; I did get a feel for the war, or at least one viewpoint into it.
    • 4/5
      This book made me a fan of alternative history novels. A fascinating premise and entertaining read.
    • 3/5
      Turtledove's regular convention of asking a "what-if" about history, then carrying it through, is entertaining. The idea of the South winning the war, and then dealing with the ramifications of that, is really interesting.What I found more interesting, though, as a history and government teacher, were the discussions about the states' rights point of view of the Southern States. There were some really interesting points about the danger of letting the Federal government become too strong, which led to a lot of reflection during these times when a lot of those same questions are raised by those who object to the actions of our National government now.