Book Review: American War by Omar El Akkad
It is approximately half a century in our future. Climate change has altered the coasts of the United States, wiping out much of Florida and Louisiana. Amid these changes, the Second American Civil War breaks out. While the issue of slavery drove the original Civil War, southern state refusal to accept a federal ban on fossil fuels stokes the fires of the second. Yet, the issues are more complex beyond any single cause. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi form a core of secession, Texas becomes reabsorbed by Mexico, and South Carolina suffers as ground zero in the release of a plague engineered by the North, leaving the state quarantined. Fracturing, the South becomes desperate, fueled by hatred. With an urge to end the last remnants of resistance as quickly as possible, the North retaliates with equal hate and ferocity.
