posted April 21, 2003 10:43 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by India Ink:
...Much of what we know about Greece comes from what little was thought so important that it was preserved. We have few plays extant, and only the two Homeric epics extant. Because these things kept getting reprinted (actually re-printed--re-transcribed from aging documents). Some other stuff survives mainly because it was quoted in another work. So from these quoted fragments we can kind of get an idea of the whole story (sort of like trying to figure out the story for "The Will of William Winsom").

And then there was the Dark Ages. In Christendom, learning fell off. Except among the monks, but even those guys had a smallish library (partly because documents burned or decayed, and partly because they were intentionally destroyed as they contradicted Church doctrine). Thank god for the Arabs. While the libraries of Christendom withered, in Islam learning was encouraged.

The Arab world was tolerant of all knowledge and all faiths. Jews were persecuted in Christendom, but enjoyed a certain intellectual freedom in Islam. Many of the great Hebraic scholars of this period come out of the Arab world.

Works of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Herodotus--all stored in the libraries of Islam.

And when Christendom launched their first Crusades on the Arab world, the kings and knights discovered Arab learning. Along with their booty, the Crusaders brought back Plato and other Greek scholars to Christendom. And this burst of learning in the Western world brought about a Rennaisance.

Meanwhile the Arab caravans were engaged in trade with both the West and the Far East. The Arabs brought learning from China, and then transfered that learning to the European world....

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Here are two articles that (somewhat) address some of the points you made.
http://www.bede.org.uk/literature.htm
http://www.cttx.org/qburnbx.html

posted April 21, 2003 10:49 PM            

So much history gone :( :( :(

posted April 22, 2003 12:54 AM               

The Guns of the South is a stand-alone single novel, not part of a series, in which irreconcilable Afrikaner white supremacists in our present get hold of a time machine and start gunrunning AK-47s to Robert E. Lee.
How Few Remain is a single novel that sets the scene for (so far) two more series. It's the story of The Second Mexican War, fought in the 1880s in a world where the Confederacy won its independence in the 1860s. The Confederacy buys two Mexican States so it can have a West Coast. The Union objects.

posted April 22, 2003 06:52 AM               

"A corporate spokesman for Carlo has announced Turtledove titles will be added to his. official WishList offered by Amazon.com. While Carlo is next due to explore the role of women in the context of the War for Southern Independence, highlighted by Mary Chestnut's Diary and other works by George C. Rable, Carlo has recognized the viable insights various 'what if' scenarios may offer. Carlo credits DC message board members as the impetus for this action".

posted April 22, 2003 07:12 AM               

We've had Enemy Ace taking the view point of the Germans in the First World War, Sgt. Rock the Americans in the Second World War....

posted April 22, 2003 08:08 AM            

Civil War comics?
Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, still available from Gemstone I think, had a small number of Civil War themed issues. These issues were supposed to be part of a larger set, but it was never finished.

My knowledge is limited, but I think these (the whole series, not just the civil war stories) are the best war comics ever. There was a black and white hardcover reprint many years ago. More recently, they were published as individual color comics with new letter columns and later bound together into paperback "annuals". In many cases, the cover alone is worth the price.

posted April 22, 2003 08:19 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee Semmens:
Harry Turtledove would have to be just about my favorite current novelist - I think his alternate history books are brilliant.
By the way, I have always been bemused how Americans refer to the AMERICAN Civil War as the Civil War - as though it was the only one that ever took place.
What about the English Civil War, the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, etc., etc.?

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I believe that historians prefer the term "The War between the States".

I've been meaning to read Turtledove myself, but I've got a large backlog I've got to work through first. However, based on what I know about Carlo and Turtledove, James is right.

posted April 22, 2003 11:05 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by vze2:
Civil War comics?
Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, still available from Gemstone I think, had a small number of Civil War themed issues. These issues were supposed to be part of a larger set, but it was never finished.

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Oh I knew about the excellent EC series with the one off stories, and those are brilliant stories. But I was thinking in terms of a continuing series, like Sgt Rock, Unknown Soldier. Surely there must have been something from DC in those early Western titles?

posted April 22, 2003 12:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee Semmens:
Harry Turtledove would have to be just about my favorite current novelist - I think his alternate history books are brilliant.
By the way, I have always been bemused how Americans refer to the AMERICAN Civil War as the Civil War - as though it was the only one that ever took place.
What about the English Civil War, the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, etc., etc.?

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posted April 22, 2003 12:51 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
I can never remember which English Civil War it is that the English consider the English Civil War to be....

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posted April 22, 2003 01:26 PM               

The late '90s miniseries The Kents is set in pre-Civil War Kansas, where the pro- and anti-slavery factions fought a bloody guerilla war in the period leading up to statehood in the 1850s. I'd recommend this if yoiu haven't read it--Tim Truman usually gets his history right.

But as for the war itself, no, I don't think it's been done.

posted April 22, 2003 01:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
What I meant, though, is that when I hear the phrase "English Civil War", I usually ask myself "which one?", since what you folks term the Glorious Revolution (no question of whose side the person who named it that was on!) would also qualify, and so of course would any number of earlier domestic conflicts, including the Wars of the Roses.

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From the same site;

History: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/

the Glorious Revolution: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/nations/scotland_jacobites1.shtml

posted April 22, 2003 05:23 PM               

In children's books, popular novels, and movies, the Civil War (this is MUCH shorter that typing "the American Civil War" over and over) was extremely popular in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Besides the blockbuster Gone with the Wind novel (1936) and movie (1939), there were tons of others--Shirley Temple had two "Old South" movies--The Littlest Colonel (during the war) to some other movie set during Reconstruction (I forget that title). Bette Davis gave her version of a headstrong Southern belle in Jezebel (1938)--set in Louisiana in the early 1850s, so it was just an Old South plantation romance, not a Civil War movie. The Song of the South from Disney is based on Joel Chandler Harris's tales of Uncle Remus and set just after Reconstruction. These books and movies vary from children's stories like the Disney and Shirley Temple movies (and tons of others), to women's romances, to action/war plots (like John Wayne and William Holden's The Horse Soldiers and several others).

Why none of the above were translated or copied into comic books, I don't know. I mean, Gone with the Wind just wasn't licensed for comics (whether anyone wanted it, I don't know), but there were certainly plenty of imitators otherwise--why not in comics? MAYBE some of those movie-adaptation comics had issues devoted to some of these movies? Did Disney ever produce a Song of the South or Uncle Remus comic? I don't know.

Incidentally--while these themes became less popular as commercial ventures in the 1950s with the rise of the civil rights movement, there was a very popular 1950s syndicated TV show, "The Gray Ghost," about the exploits of the Conferederate raider Mosby. I haven't seen this, but I think it was basically a Zorro-type horse drama. How much politics or social issues got into it, I don't know. Remember, the centennial of the Civil War (and the events of the '50s leading to the Civil War) produced a ton of commemorations across the nation--newspapers doing special "100 years ago" news reports, TV specials, the re-release of Gone with the Wind to movie theaters, etc.

As to comic books--the closest things I can think of are Jonah Hex, who was a Confederate veteran and went around in a Confederate uniform, and the Haunted Tank, where a WWII tank commander is guided by the ghost of his ancestor, Stonewall Jackson. (And I don't think DC would present such a sympathetic image of a Confederate general today.)

Another comic book is a 1980s independent title very similar in concept to the Harry Turtledove novels. "Captain Confederacy" was set in an alternate world's 1980s, where the South won the Civil War. The Confederate States had annexed Cuba and parts of Mexico, but then they had suffered their own secessions, too, so that Texas was an independent nation in the West (with large swaths of the Southwest and Mexico)and New Orleans a free city. The United States had annexed the British North American provinces to compensate for the loss of the South, but Utah and California had broken away as independent states after the loss of the Civil War. Meanwhile, the Russians had kept Alaska, and when the Bolsheviks took over in Russia, Anastasia had fled to Alaska, where, in this 1980s, a Tsar or Tsarina still ruled.

In this world, the German Empire had won the First World War, and was the major world power. The Union and Confederacy were locked into a bitter cold war. This had made the Confederacy a repressive, paranoid society.

The Confederacy's version of the FBI had created "Captain Confederacy" for propaganda purposes--for strictly staged captures of Union spies, 5th columnists, and so forth. The guy was given a costume (you can image the star-spangled St. Andrew's cross of the Confederate battle flag criss-crossing his torso from shoulders to hips), but he actually was given great strength, too--I don't remember if it was a Captain America-type super soldier formula, or an exo-skeleton suit. Anyway, the guy starts out as official government agent, becomes troubled by the conditions of his government and society, and goes rogue as a real super-hero.

This Confederacy had abolished slavery years earlier, but lived under a South African-type apartheid, more stringent than the 20th century racial segregation in the American South.

While the Confederacy was generally bleak, there were some hopeful signs of change. And the series dealt mostly with the Confederacy, but you got signs that the Union was almost as screwed up--the Union agents were automatically the good guys.

posted April 22, 2003 06:13 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
I can't think of any comics series set in the War Between the States either.

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In the early 50's EC's Kurtzman's war/anti-war comics (Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat) planned a series of, IIRC, seven or eight special Civil War issues, starting with Fort Sumter and moving on throughout the course of the war. (Each EC issue had four stories in it, so the whole project was planned to be about 30 chapters long.) Unfortunately, only two of the Civil War-focused issues were published before Two-Fisted and Frontline rode off into the sunset. (Due primarily to declining sales once the Korean War ended and people weren't as interested in war as they had been.)

Regardless, I recommend the Kurtzman war books -- both the Civl War issues and all the others -- to anyone; it's not tough to get your hands on Russ Cochran's recent reprints.