North and South - John Jakes

Posted : 1 year, 7 months ago at May 27 22:46

To avoid confusion this is NOT the North and South as written by Elisabeth Gaskell which dealt with England but rather the first volume in John Jakes' epic trilogy about the Civil War. I first heard about this book through the miniseries and afterwards on a whim I got it and eventually due to boredom I ended up reading it. Just coming out of a rather rigorous class of US history this book added a great dramatic backdrop to my historical knowledge of the time. There's a wide cast of characters and mostly they are either a Hazard or a Main. The Mains are an old southern aristocratic family whose wealth is based on a large plantation run on slave labor. The Hazards have this giant fortune from their Iron factories and in lieu of slave labor they use the alternative labor force of desperat...Read more

Rating : 6/10