The central argument of this book, authored by neo-confederates Benson and Kennedy (who argue between themselves over whether the US Civil War should be called the "War of Southern Independence" or the "War of Northern Aggression") rests upon the presence of various foreign- and American-born communists and socialists (including a number of veterans of the European rebellions of 1848) in the years prior to and during the Civil War, some of whom fought on the Union side of the war when hostilities broke out. Their support for the Union cause and the support of certain prominent figures outside of the country, such as Karl Marx--support which of course is hardly surprising given the socialists' largely shared, albeit not identical, views about the nature of the economic system of the southern slave plantation (e.g. feudal and pre-capitalist)--is conflated with the Northern capitalist arguments about the nature of the war, arguments that also condemned slavery (if perhaps a bit more insincerely in a number of cases, Lincoln being a notable example among them, than the socialists) and thereby to conflate the socialism of the Forty-Eighters and others with Lincoln Republicanism and subsequently with the totalitarianism of Stalin and Mao, the Nazism of Adolf Hitler, and (as one might expect) with today's "big government" liberals in the United States. They of course issue the occasional caveat about not arguing the various movements are "identical," but it remains an argument from conflation of identity and likely to not be taken very seriously outside of neo-confederate and tea-party circles. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)