American Empire: Blood and Iron
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Blood and Iron is the first book of the American Empire trilogy of alternate history fiction novels by Harry Turtledove. It is a sequel to the novel How Few Remain and the Great War trilogy, and is part of the Timeline-191 series.
Blood & Iron covers events directly following the closing events of The Great War: Breakthroughs. It takes the Timeline-191 world from 1917 to 1924.
[edit] Plot summary
The victorious United States of America stands over the fallen Confederate States of America, victim to its own nationalist-ego and myth after three years of bloody trench fighting. In the CSA, an ex-noncom named Jake Featherston joins the Freedom Party and uses it as his platform for taking over the Confederate government and exacting revenge on both the USA and the groups he perceives as having stabbed the CSA in the back: blacks, the Southern aristocracy, and the Whig Party.
He soon takes over as de facto leader of the Party and unleashes angry veterans on his enemies. He almost becomes president in 1921, but setbacks at the polls and elsewhere force him and the Party to wait longer to accomplish their ruthless goals.
The USA's conservative government, meanwhile, had been voted out of office by the party of the masses: the Socialists. Ignoring the looming threat to the south, the Socialists focus on improving the lives of its citizenry - at the cost of trimming down its defenses and the military. The Socialists also have no better notion about what to do with the blacks in North America, and ignore the plight of those in the Confederacy.
