CSA - Confederate States of America [Hardcover]

Howard Means (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 1998

From the ashes of a divided nation came the Confederate States of America -- and all that remains of the Union as we knew it is a disaster area called the Industrial Zone. The capital is Richmond, and the races are equal but very, very separate. That's the premise of Howard Means's fascinating, provocative, sophisticated new thriller.

For President Spencer Jefferson Lee -- the great-great-grandson of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee -- it's politics as usual. He's about to cut the ribbon on the greatest public-works project in history, but of course there's a political price to pay. On one side, the lily-white Senate wants its quid pro quo; on the other, the all-black House has an agenda of its own. But whatever their differences, the powers-that-be in this alternative America do agree on one thing: Utter separation between the races is the key to peace and prosperity. To love someone of the opposite race is to court disaster; to act on that love is to become officially nonexistent.

But what Spencer Lee and his black friend, Vice President Nathan Winston, are about to learn is that love is beyond the law. And underneath the facade of civil order lies dissent in the form of DRAGO, a protest group made up of the "losers" of this "ideal" society cross-racial lovers and their children, social and environmental idealists led by a mysterious mocha-skinned woman known only as Cara. When two bodies are found in the grim ruins of Washington, D.C., each with a bullet in the head and all their fingers removed so that their identities can be put out on short-term loan, the stage is set for the fastest-paced, most intriguing novel of the year -- a tense, breathtaking tale of a pivotal moment in a history that might have been our own.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Senior editor at the Washingtonian and author of Colin Powell, Means here proposes that the South won the Civil War, leaving blacks and whites sharply divided into two separate but equal societies. This precarious balance is shaken by an underclass of idealists who are soon targeted for murder.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

HOWARD MEANS is Senior editor of The Washingtonian and the author of the acclaimed biography Colin Powell. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (November 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688161871
• ISBN-13: 978-0688161873
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,300,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a former schoolteacher (Deerfield Academy, St. Albans School) who segued into journalism (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Washingtonian Magazine as senior writer, the Orlando Sentinel and King Features Syndicate, and back to the Washingtonian as senior editor) and from there into books as editor, collaborator, and author. My interests are broad, but increasingly, they seem to be focusing on a constellation of interrelated subjects: American eccentricity and self-reliance, the Civil War as the primal act of American history (an event we are still not over), religious fundamentalism and utopianism, and Manifest Destiny as the great engine of our national story. In my new biography, JOHNNY APPLESEED, all those forces except the Civil War (and that, too, if we project forward) come together in, I hope, fascinating ways. Born and raised in Lancaster, PA, I live now in Millwood, VA, in the northern Shenandoah Valley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover, December 30, 2002

By 

Patrick A. Hayden (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: CSA - Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

When I first saw the title "CSA" and read the summary of the plot, I felt I had to own this book. Alternative History is a fascinating subject, and I have always enjoyed this kind of speculative fiction. However, the premise for the creation of the Confederate States and the destruction of the North is so flimsy and historically unsound that the entire novel fell apart around it.

Means starts the book with the assumption that the South won the war after 1865. Any historian can tell you that this would have been impossible. By 1864 the Cause of the Confederacy was lost, and no final, great display by Jefferson Davis in Richmond could have saved it. Lee's Army had crumbled to less than a quarter of Grant's by 1865, with desertions winnowing the number down every day. There is no concieveable way that the Army of Northern Virginia could have ressurected itself and conqured the North. If the setting for the Southern victory had taken place after a Lee victory at Gettysburg, the premise could have been kept up, but assuming the destruction of the USA after 1865? Please. Suspension of disbelief is one thing. Being asked to swallow this tripe is absurd. Based solely on that, I would recommend never picking up this book, but the story itself is just as awful.

The CSA Means envisions seperates the races but makes them truly equal. But freedom in the South is a tenuous thing, and if you're bad, you're sent to the "badlands" of the industrial wassteland that is the North. The Vice-President's son(a mixed-up kid cliche), is kidnapped by an SLA-like northern group and taken to the former USA, where he learns that things like the mixing of the races and secular humanisim are all great things that the South has denied itself. No arguments from me about the positive aspects of TRUE racial equality and whatnot, but he becomes a Patty Hearst type, falling in with his kidnappers. The book offers no real insight into the workings of the CSA, except for a few token paragraphs about how the President is always white, the Veep always black, and how the two chambers of Congress are one white and one black. Also, the University of Virginia built an identical campus just for blacks, and it can be assumed that these Jim Crow-esque rules apply accross this nation. It's all rather sad, as the opportunity to explore what a real victorious South would be like are lost. Why would the North, with all it's resources, be turned into a wasteland by the South? Why would everyone be so happy with segregation? Means seems to think that race relations in the South would be better than our current state of affairs because seperate but equal is truly achieved. But come on! Assuming that the South won, wouldn't slavery, although logically eventually abolished, last longer, and wouldn't the kind of seperation depicted in the novel be impossible in a South that would have been slave-free for such a short amount of time? CSA paints the Confederate cause as flawed but right, which is downright stupid. The book insulted my intelligence again and again. For a good review of what a victorious South would look like, see Harry Turtledove's "Great War" series, which starts with the excellent "How Few Remain". He paints a much more realistic portrait of Southern victory, which results in a CSA and USA, which is what the South wanted, anyway. Read that series, which paints vivid portraits of historical and fictional charachters, not this mess of a novel that had me itching for my $4.99 back.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor History, Poor Premise, Worse Execution, January 20, 2000

By 

M. Evan Brooks (Gainesvile, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: CSA - Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

A descendant of the SS-GB genre, this book is flawed by the lack of historical versimilitude coupled with pedestrian writing.

To have the CSA win the war in 1865 because it was "renewed" by Jefferson Davis' heroic sacrifice was a stretch. To then add a black House and a white Senate only stretches credibility beyond comprehension. In effect, the author's approval of Plessy vs. Ferguson {1896, "separate but equal") is taken to ridiculous heights/depths.

European history still has a Nazi Germany, but Britain is a virtual sinecure of the CSA. History between 1865 and 2000 is slapdash and more than unlikely.

The "detective" novel has a plot which is somewhat reminiscent of GUNS OF THE SOUTH in terms of race relations and GORKY PARK in terms of plot line, but it is handled so poorly that no one really cares.

To top it off, the protagonist police detective Clark Haddon's mere name is insulting (the author, located in the DC metro area, has to be aware that Haddon Clark is a local serial killer). But then again, this novel is bad in so many different aspects that this is only one of the lesser faults.

Poor historical development, poor plotline, poor writing -- and these are its strengths. I have probably read worse books, but it is difficult to say when.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I have a review, but I didn't finish the book., July 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: CSA - Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

As an avid, amateur, Civil War historian, I was anxious to read this book. Now mind you, I consider myself a flexible person and I can be entertained by a suppostion or opinion that contradicts my own. But in the opening pages of this book I'm asked to believe that Robert Edward Lee, upon winning the Civil War, would sack and burn New York! In addition, I'm asked to believe that military governer Lee would threaten Mary Todd Lincoln's *children and grandchildren* with death if the under-house-arrest Abe Lincoln ever left Springfield.

Even a cursory study of Lee's life indicates that these suppositions are so impossible as to be ludicrous. Now sure, someone else in the CSA could have done the above--Nathan Bedford Forrest springs to mind--but not Lee, and not most of the Confederate Army Commanders. I think the author, Howard Means, has Lee doing this because it's convienant for the plot that such events happen. Unfortunately, he's disregarding everything known about Lee the man.

I put the book down after reading ten pages. I recommend you don't even bother to pick it up.