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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780451200822
ISBN number: 0451200829
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 1088
Printing Date: June 01, 2000
Publishing house: Signet
Sale Popularity Level: 57769
Studio: Signet
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The Hazards and Mains are wrenched apart by battle and swept together by passion during the searing years of the Civil War. 2 cassettes.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Jakes gets you involved. The characters, despite their foibles in some cases, become members of your own private family. Some nights you will worry for them other nights you will be terrified or enthralled but always engaged. Every emotion is elicited until you near the end and face that dilemna that doesn't happen often enough i.e. do I keep reading and lose my private family or slow it down.
Rated by buyers -
I think everyone has said it best above me, and I don't want to give away the story line, but I do wish I had know this was a sequel when I read it, as I think you should read the North and South first. I will go back and read the very first book soon.
Enjoy another great tale.
Rated by buyers -
My husband got the very first of the trilogy for Xmas, and immediately decided that he wanted the whole trilogy. He is 3/4 of the way through the 2nd book (I think it has over 1,000 pages!) and loves it. He spends more time reading than anything else these days...if you like historical fiction, this trilogy is for you!
Rated by buyers 
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Although I enjoyed the scant references to Sam Grant in this novel and flimsy glimpses of battle warfare and strategy of the American Civil War (almost nonexistent), I absolutely hated the overwhelming focus on Charles Main and disliked the prodigious exhibition of northern corruption and northern barbarity. Yes we get it, northerners are just as bad as southerners if not more in terms of their attitude towards people of colour during this time period. Northerners' collective and indiscriminate zealotry towards all white southerners and colored people makes them worse. As the end of the war nears, the book singles out strained northern white/black relations marked by racism while highlighting improved southern white/black relations (the Mont Royal overseer Philemon Meek and Andy, for example). All of the characters' thoughts (especially George, Orry, Billy and Brett) spew repetitious, preachy drivel as if we didn't get enough of that in NORTH AND SOUTH (***). Don't get me started on Yankee-killing Machine Charles Main, I hated him towards the end of NORTH AND SOUTH (***) and it doesn't get any better here. Despite Charles' losses in this novel, he sure lives a charmed life always flying to everyone's rescue and charging in and out of forays with nary a wound or scrape to show for it. Unfortunately, Billy and Brett's plots here (the only two characters that seemed 'real' to me) involved plenty of preachy moralizing about slavery and racism. The two characters that least needed moral lessons on racism -- Billy and Brett -- received it incessantly. And Charles flying to a worthless Billy's rescue again and again and again and again was ... too much. Want to show off Charles' indestructible talents? Oh let's just have Billy get captured (again) or his love interest in trouble so Charles can save them (again). Billy gets tortured and beat up and wounded while Charles Main rides around like a godlike cowboy killing Yankees, killing villains (Cuffey) and beating everyone up without a scratch to show for it. Mont Royal, Cooper and his family in danger? No problem, here comes Charles to the rescue!
What a horrible book. Detailed? Sure. Wearisomely melodramatic? Absolutely. Although settings were stronger in this novel (compared to NORTH AND SOUTH), I can't say I liked the foggy prose in this one. I'm reading and reading and reading and it just seems like very little happens other than endless preachy moralizing and Charles-to-the-rescue histrionics. Conveniently, all of the antagonists (Ashton, Virgilia, Bent) survive for the subsequent book. I hear HEAVEN AND HELL centers even more on Charles Main. Uhm ya, thanks but no thanks. Let's just say I only read this for references to factual events and people during the war (especially Sam Grant). I also enjoyed the technology noted by the novel: the repeating gun Spencer capable of firing many rounds in a short amount of time, and steam engines.
Clearly a prelude to LOVE AND WAR, the disproportionate focus on Charles Main in NORTH AND SOUTH adumbrates the unmistakable hero of this entire Civil War trilogy including this particular 1,078-page paperback. All well and good if you like the Charles-Main character but I found the imbalanced emphasis on Charles Main and his invulnerability in this bloated book unbearable. Especially since I savored every token passage on Billy and Brett while hoping for more. Billy and Brett seemed like the only realistic characters to me, and all the other fictional characters were larger-than-life and/or way over-the-top. I actually preferred Ashton and Bent's treacherously episodic scheming to the adventures of godlike, indestructible Charles Main. Long, protracted pages from Charles Main's perspective embodies the love and war in this novel while Billy and Brett receive forgettable treatment. Billy writes in his journal mostly about racial issues while Brett learns compassion and affection for colored people. Even when there is plotting with Billy, it's usually interspersed with Charles' goings-on and/or includes Charles in a significant, life-saving manner. The battle at Shiloh is sort of brushed off from Bent's perspective even though it's recognized as one of Grant's ingenious saves while Jakes assiduously details Lee's genius at the battle at Antietam (Sharpsburg) from a day-to-day basis completely from Charles' perspective. I was wondering what Billy was doing during the battle at Sharpsburg the entire time Jakes glorifies Lee, Stonewall Jackson and our fictional hero Charles Main. Following a 20-page account of Antietam exclusively from Charles' perspective we have Billy's 2-page postmortem. Just to fill up space and unable to find any storyline for Billy, the book makes Billy think of Charles "often" (p.426). Similar to Antietam, we have Gettysburg entirely from Charles' perspective which again left me wondering why Jakes couldn't give Billy some meaningful storyline.
I thought Jakes should have stationed ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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Following the families of the Hazards (North) and the Mains (South) established in the very first book of the North and South trilogy, Love and War (the second of three) carries them through the Civil War. The point of Jakes' series is to describe the sociology and psychology of this hugely significant historical era, not to create a great work of literature, poetry, or characterization. In his aim, he is wonderfully successful. He creates not art, but epic. And Civil War fiction needs this balanced and human perspective. Jakes' huge cast of characters defies stereotypes of any sort and personifies almost every perspective imaginable (from anti-war to war mongering, from militant abolitionist to hardcore racist, and everything in-between), while allowing these characters to change and grow as their situations become more and more dramatic. The novel is dramatic, exciting, clever, human (if not too allegorical), and unique (choosing lesser known events and situations rather than the more often covered). The book is very long, but it's a great Civil War fiction with the focus remaining on the country torn apart (as personified by the families). Grade: A-
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