STARS & STRIPES TRIUMPHANT

Final installment of Harrison's trilogy (Stars and Stripes Forever, 1998, etc.) wherein a newly re-United States stands up to an oppressive, dinosaurian British Empire. In 1865, the Civil War factions united to repel a British invasion, then went on to liberate downtrodden Ireland. A year later, in England, people of Irish descent are being herded into ghastly concentration camps. The British, their domination of the world cotton trade imperiled, seize US merchant ships. Still smarting, unable to think twice, Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Queen Victoria reject every diplomatic overture. At a peace conference in Brussels, President Lincoln gets a taste of British intransigence in person—right before assassin John Wilkes Booth attempts to shoot him. General Grant bravely takes the bullet (in the arm, fortunately) meant to kill Lincoln. Meanwhile, Count Korzhenevski of Russian naval intelligence, still fuming over the British invasion of the Crimea, approaches the American delegation with a proposition: on his next voyage into British waters, he'll take aboard a couple of spies—General Sherman and Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, disguised as Russians. Back in the US, genius inventor John Ericsson designs and builds, seemingly in a matter of months, a steady stream of innovative and irresistible ships, guns, tanks, and other weapons. Lincoln and his advisors are agreed: the British must be defeated and their monarchy toppled.

Take a double dose, throw logic out of the window, and wave that flag.