Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780345405029
ISBN number: 0345405021
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 221
Printing Date: September 08, 1997
Publishing house: Del Rey
Sale Popularity Level: 248392
Studio: Del Rey
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'[WARD MOORE IS] ONE OF THE BEST AMERICAN WRITERS.'
--Ray Bradbury
The United States never recovered from The War for Southern Independence. While the neighboring Confederacy enjoyed the prosperity of the victor, the U.S. struggled through poverty, violence, and a nationwide depression.
The Industrial Revolution never occurred here, and so, well into the 1950s, the nation remained one of horse-drawn wagons, gaslight, highwaymen, and secret armies. This was home for Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, whose sole desire was the pursuit of knowledge. This, he felt, would spirit him away from the squalour and violence.
Disastrously, Hodgins became embroiled in the clandestine schemes of the outlaw Grand Army, from which he fled in search of a haven. But he was to discover that no place could fully protect him from the world and its dangerous realities. . . .
'The Civil War has been often rethought, most effectively in Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee.'
--Donald E. Westlake
The New York Times
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Rated by buyers -
...but with so depressing an ending, I sort of wish I hadn't read the book.
Rated by buyers 
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Pleasantly, this book has aged well. Even after fifty years it still is vital and reads well. What sets it apart is that it was written so long ago and therefore was far ahead of others of it's time. This is no "War of the Worlds" or "John Carter of Mars". This is a tale with a warning. What also sets it aside is that it is set in an alternate time, from which the "mistake" sets things back on our timeline.
Hodge Backmaker is from Wappinger Falls, New York, where his family our poor dirt farmers, but free men. The North is still reeling from loosing the Civil War and there is no hope that the economy will turn around anytime soon. So Hodge makes his way to New York City where he ends up spending six years working for a printer. By happenstance (it's a little forced) he ends up on an intellectual commune (think Chattequa Society meets Kibbutz). There he spends his time studying the last year of 'his' civil war where the south routed the north at Gettysburg.
There is a genius living at the commune who Hodge has had an affair with. She builds a working time machine and Hodge goes back to see the climactic battle that he has written so much about. Read the book to find out what happens. It's definitely one of those time paradoxes.
Zeb Kantrowitz
Rated by buyers 
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This is an ambitious, often thought-provoking, but ultimately disappointing endeavor to envision what the United States--and the world--would have been like had the Confederacy won our Civil War. It's not done as badly as Turtledove's "Guns of the South," which trivializes the whole conflict, because this author neither invents a silly device by which the South triumphs, nor minimizes the consequences of a Southern victory. No, Moore is dead serious about the consequences to history of a Union loss; perhaps he even goes overboard, because the 20th century he writes about is a lot like a Dickensian 19th, dark and backwards, with horsedrawn wagons, widespread illiteracy and ignorance, indentured servants, voteless women, aliens who cannot be naturalized. Even the advance of science has been halted--the invention of the airplane apparently was not possible in a world without a triumphant Union; nor are there motorcars or even the effective harnessing of electricity. And maybe that's the chief problem with Ward's book: he tries to tell too big a story. He shares one failing with Turtledove: his tale is populated with characters who remain wooden, who never come to life or bring the story to life, despite his clearly earnest efforts. The whole story could have been confined to what I believe is Moore's penultimate chapter, in which the narrator, a historian turned time traveler, hops into a time machine to observe Gettysburg firsthand. What results is tightly written, exciting, emotionally involving, gripping--everything the rest of this book is not. "What if the South had won the Civil War?" continues to be a provocative subject, and I still hope to find it rendered successfully in a book I've yet to read; "Bring the Jubilee" is not that book.
Rated by buyers -
Warning: spoilers below
This is a science fiction novel set in the 1940s and 1950s, supposing the the United States had lost the Civil War, now known as the War of Southron Independence. Hodge Backmaker is a young man who leaves his small Pennsylvania town to live in New York. There, escapes indenture (the fate of most citizens) and works in a used bookstore. There his discovers history and learns about politics. He is later invited to Haggershaven, a reclusive communist community where people study and work. He is in a relationship with the fiery tempered Barbara, who is somewhat neurotic, and also makes a relationship with a young woman who is in a state of semi-catatonia (Catty is her name). He later marries her, and Barbara completes her time travel machine. After some time, Hodge agrees to go back in time to witness the Battle of Gettysburg from a very first hand point of view. He never returns: the South thinks he is covering up for northeners, and the captain is shot dead when his troops mutiny. This father turns out to be the grandfather of Barbara Haggershaven, and so Hodge's inopportune discovery takes him away from the future. He does not go forward in time again. This was an excellent novel, one of the best science fiction novels I have read.
Rated by buyers 
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Occasionally one comes upon a book that has received fulsome praise from literary giants; then one reads the book and wonders what all the hype was about. Bring The Jubilee is that type of book. The writing style is distracting, the proposed alternative world (following a Confederate victory in the Civil War) strains the willingness to suspend disbelief, and the characters are repugnant and unlikable. The main character, Hodge Backmaker, is solely interested in his own pleasure and happiness, and is utterly devoid of morality, compassion, and any other positive personality trait. That the world Mr. Moore creates for Backmaker fits the character perfectly does nothing to endear him to the reader. At very first I found myself longing for the book to finish, then I found myself hoping that Backmaker would come to some suitable bad end. Bring The Jubilee is definitely not a book I would recommend to anyone. There are any number of alternative history books out there that explore the results of a Confederate victory; any one of them would be a better choice than this one.
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