Allow me to tell you a short story about one of my experiences with non-Turtledove alternate history books.Back in January of 2017, with a bit of Christmas money still in my pocket, I went about buying a few books on Amazon relating to alternate history. One that appealed to me was a book with the somewhat unwieldy title of Clopton's Short History of The Confederate States of America, 1861-1925 . I suppose that for what it is, it's abook, but on my sliding scale of alternate history where 1 is hard () and 5 is soft (), I place it at a good 3. See, the book does a good deal of romanticizing the CSA, which makes sense for the book's point of view, ostensibly being written by ITTL authors, "Professors Clopton and Scott", who came from the CSA and as a consequence would have bought into a somewhat mythologized history of their own nation and what it had "accomplished". Before the history is discussed, the POD appears to be when Lincoln has some kind of altercation with Confederate sympathizers before his inauguration, possibly falling down the stairs of a hotel on his own or by being thrown down it by (who else) John Wilkes Booth. Hannibal Hamlin is thus sworn in, meanwhile Howell Cobb becomes President of the CSA. Hilarity ensues.In terms of the alternate history itself, it's got some things that I totally see happening. For example, in the 1880s a Confederate filibuster headed south and successfully overthrew Nicaragua's government, which then petitioned for and was successful in obtaining annexation by the CSA. This ties back into the sordid history of American filibusters doing the same thing, among the more successful being William Walker (who also overthrew the Nicaraguan government, although he was later arrested and executed). Interestingly, there's a parallel to be drawn with the OTL background of the United States annexing Hawaii, a pretty shitty move that the islands have arguably never recovered from. Then there's the standard stuff, like the CSA annexing Cuba and going on little "adventures" in Mexico.Buuuuuuuuuut, then there are other bits, like the United States signing away the city of Washington D.C. Then there's the point a ways down the line where Japan annexes Hawaii in 1905 (not unreasonable), and then proceeds to goad Mexico into invading the United States (entirely unreasonable) butthe Confederate States with whom they shared a much longer border. Unsurprisingly, the US goes on to win that war, and then World War I ends in 1917 with something approaching a stalemate (where both the German Empire and British Empires survive, not that hard to imagine).History aside, the one thing that I could not stand above anything else in this book is the degree to which it bent over backwards to preform loving fellatio on the Confederacy every chance it got. Of course Hamlin was a tyrant, Confederate soldiers were gentlemen who had support of loving wives and were a father to their slaves, the CSA trumpets the Bible as a justification for slavery and its moral position every chance it got (actually, on second thought, that might be one of the more realistic parts of this book...) And then I really paid attention to the author's note in the front and the little blurb on the back. From the back cover, the woman who wrote the book is described as "...accepting the conclusion of her fellow economic historians...that slavery in the South was profitable. Therefore, it was not doomed to have very soon succumbed to the 'natural' death of an unprofitable investment."Okay, #1. Slavery being profitable or not is. The point of the economic argument against slavery is that slavery wasprofitable than paying free workers a salary to take care of themselves, whereas slaveowners had to pay to maintain the health of a slave by clothing, housing, and feeding them. Ofslavery was profitable, it had only survived that long because it was profitable. They somehow managed to miss the point entirely. And #2, it was at that point that it really, truly hit me. This book was written from the perspective of a southerner who bought into the "Lost Cause" narrative wholesale. Suddenly, everything in the book made sense. And ironically, that made it all theauthentic as a book that absolutely glorifies Confederate values and causes. This book practicallywritten by a Confederate professor.My final opinion is that this book is a decent alternate history but terrible for how it goes about it all. I would recommend passing it up in favor of something else, unless you really wanted to read it.