"American War" by Omar El Akkad

Above: "American War" - Omar El Akkad - 413 pages. I completed reading the above book today.

Speculating about whether a divided nation can survive, El Akkad tells an audacious but credible tale of America's coming apart. Recommend.

I picked up this book a couple of weeks ago while browsing at Weller Books, Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, UT. There is little rhyme or reason to my book reading priorities. I have at least a hundred books sitting at home in my reading queue, and yet, on a whim, I start reading this one. My reading selection priority MO is likely as simple as this: this book: "top of mind." One hundred book queue: "out of sight, out of mind." Incidentally, I am so happy that "kindle" et al hasn't driven away paper copy books and the stores that sell them out of business. Two of my real joys are browsing bookstores and reading real books. Subconsciously, seeing the piles of unread books stacked up in my den makes me feel smarter.

Nonetheless, I am not averse to considering technology as a way to absorb information. If kindle is a technology that I reject, a technical method of absorbing information that I could get into is the "download" function used by the red pill humans in the movie "The Matrix," where Neo learns karate and Trinity learns to fly a helicopter in only seconds. Sadly, that won't happen to me in this life. And, maybe not in the next one. Captain Jean Luc Picard reads real paper books in his cabin on the starship Enterprise, star date 3021.

"American War" is a post-apocalyptic novel in the fashion of "The Road," which I read just recently. See my review of "The Road," here:

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy | Stephen DeWitt Taylor

The year is 2075. Five southern states have ceded from the American union having rejected a US government dictate banning all fossil fuels. The effect of global warming on the US mainland has been devastating. Florida is under water as is much of the urban east coast. The US capital has been moved to Columbus, OH. Mexico has regained most of the territory it lost in the Mexican War in1848. Atlanta is the capital of the new southern nation made up of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. Texas an original secessionist state has been taken over by Mexico. South Carolina, also an original secessionist state, has been quarantined by the north and the south to hold in its citizens, who are affected by "the slow," a virus which impairs human performance, which was introduced there by the north. The southern states have allies who supply them with staples and war making materiel: China and the Bouazizi Empire, an assemblage of Middle Eastern and African states headquartered in Cairo.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. Louisiana is half underwater. Solar powered, weaponized drones from the north fill the secession states' sky. Sarat's father is killed by a suicide bomb in Baton Rouge while seeking a way north to find work. Sarat and her family are sent to a refugee camp, Camp Patience, on the Tennessee/Mississippi state line. During six years at Camp Patience, Sarat meets a mysterious southern functionary and is turned, under his tutelage, into a deadly instrument of war. She assassinates a US general with a high-powered, sniper rifle and is apprehended during an all-out, scorched earth round-up of rebels and anti-north miscreants. That she was the general's assassin, however, was never discovered. Otherwise, she would have been executed. Notwithstanding, as a rebel Sarat was imprisoned on an island, in what was once central Florida, for seven years. Post imprisonment, Sarat meets with Joe, a prior contact from the Bouazizi Empire, who gives her a deadly virus to be introduced in Columbus at the impending reunification ceremony of the ascendant north and the capitulating south. The virus insertion into the ceremony is successful and results in the death of one hundred ten million people.

Sarat's story is told by her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during the war and now an old man, living in Alaska, some fifty years after the reunification ceremony virus conflagration. Benjamin confronts the dark secret of his past, his family's role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others.

The story is well written in page turning prose. The premise is daring. The author plays to the fears of many Americans who believe the effects of anthropogenic global warming are imminent and that man has the ability to reverse its effect. Talk, mostly by conservative Americans, of a "second American civil war" is not far from the surface today as the country seems divided not only by different energy philosophies but also by a seemingly intractable culture war. Speculating about whether a divided nation can survive, El Akkad tells an audacious but credible tale of America's coming apart. Caveat. I personally believe future sea levels are not likely to rise as much as is assumed by the author, particularly considering the ongoing growth of Antarctica's ice sheet. Still, it is not implausible that America comes apart due to growing culture war fault lines and egregious financial miscues easily discernable today. In the event of a split up, red states should take over Rocky Point to secure a Pacific Ocean port.

Recommend.