Underground airlines review7/6/2023 Abolitionist Mexicans essentially retake Texas and the Black Panthers thrive as a revolutionary organization. must import cars from Pakistan and South Africa. In a dramatic reversal, slavery begins to stunt the nation’s growth. In Underground Airlines, modern-day America suffers the international community’s righteous scorn and is subject to economic sanctions and trade embargoes. They accept that slavery will be profitable enough with mild regulatory oversight.Īs Winters imagines an America that has preserved the worst of its traditions, he also imagines that this prevents the nation from ever claiming a role as the world’s primary moral authority. This violence emboldens slaveowners, but never to the point that they consider negotiations to be a zero sum game. Winters’ characters inhabit a world in which assassinations have the effect of cowing those politicians who would oppose slavery into softening their positions. The novel requires that readers imagine a Confederacy that responds to the 1861 assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln by abandoning its rebellion and seeking a compromise that would place hard limits on the legality of slavery. This is counterintuitive, to say the least. In the novel, a long series of political compromises between North and South allow slavery to continue to the present day. Ben Winters’ latest mystery/thriller, Underground Airlines, is set in an America that never fought its Civil War.
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