Book 3

Stars and Stripes Triumphant

by Harry Harrison

Published 31 December 1999
In "Stars and Stripes Forever", Harry Harrison began the story of the war that never was, but might so easily have happened: the war of the 1860s between the United States of America and the British Empire. It began with an ill-considered seizure of a British ship, escalated with an ill-considered letter to Abraham Lincoln, and continued with an ill-starred invasion of the territory of the USA by an incensed British government. The first modern war - with iron-clad ships, rapid-firing guns, trenches, mass armies and massive casualties, was taking place, not between the industrial northern states and the agricultural southern ones, but between the two great English-speaking nations, who happened also to be the two most powerful nations on the planet. In the stunning conclusion to this series, the Irish become involved and a most surprising ending is the culmination of the ill-fated war.

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