Book Log 2007 #53: For Want of a Nail by Robert Sobel

Well before Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss tackled the question in The Two Georges, Sobel put forward the question of what would have happened if the rebels lost the American Revolution. In this case, the Revolution is put down pretty quickly thanks to a Burgoyne win in Saratoga. While most of the current US and eastern Canada become a British-centered country, some of the surviving rebels move west and eventually form a country that merges the remaining area of the current US and Canada with Mexico. A third power on the continent is Kramer Associates, which comes to dominate the United States of Mexico economically.

The book is written like a history, which is pretty impressive given the number of fake sources created and cited. Unfortunately it reads like the stereotype of a history, with a dryness that takes away from even the most interesting parts of the narrative. From what I've read this was to some degree intentional; I'm sure there were dozens of historians that appreciated the satire. I found myself drifting quite a bit when reading.

I wasn't also so sure that many of the technical milestones made sense, which seems like a common critique. I also wasn't always convinced as to some of the broad social movements and their political consequences, as they were often introduced and dispensed with in one chapter, making it harder to understand and accept how they developed.

Worth a look for fans of the genre.