!!Fridge Brilliance:
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* Although some people criticize Nellie Semproch's death from mishandling raw chicken as a seemingly random event, it was extremely common during that time period in RealLife. Food poisoning, and poor food handling practices generally, contributed to a much shorter lifespan for most Americans. However, the Second Great War brought improvements in health and sanitation practices generally, just as UsefulNotes/WorldWarII did in our timeline. By the end of the war, Cassius Madison is being admonished to clean his mess kit regularly and to wash after meals whenever possible to prevent food poisoning. So rather than writing random events, Turtledove is engaging in a seemingly minor (but actually very significant) act of world-building in the narrative.
* Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers and the writings of George Washington can see their influence on this book. Specifically, Washington and the other Federalists examine the consequences of the United States being divided into smaller republics. First, the smaller republics, in competition with each other, would require larger armies and higher taxes. Second, the smaller republics would be unable to resist getting entangled into European affairs and would become dependent on the European powers. Third, the smaller republics would be more subject to majoritarian tyrannies and be less free than a united Union.\\
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All of these things happen in this series. First, the Union and the Confederacy both have larger armies and (presumably) higher taxes. Second, the Europeans exercise more power over both sides. In the Second Mexican War, France and Britain are able to force the South to abolish slavery (at least facially), and they can walk all over the Union with impunity. Additionally, when the Great War starts, both the Union and the Confederacy are drawn into the war immediately, by virtue of being members of the OTL Triple Alliance and Triple Entente, respectively; instead of — as IOTL — the U.S. staying out of things before being drawn in due to the Kaiser's stupidity. Third, both sides are less free and vulnerable to majoritarian tyranny. The South is easily taken over by Fetherston and his Freedom Party, while the North is much more structured and regimented than IOTL.\\
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Clearly, the author has [[ShownTheirWork shown his work]].
* Showing Ulysses S. Grant as a drunk is criticized as false histories as Grant's reputation as a drunk is generally accepted as being exaggerated. However, real-life Grant did have issues with alcohol, but was able to keep them under control and avoid drinking when he needed to be sober. In this timeline, he basically took the blame for losing the Civil War, leaving him unemployed, widely denigrated, and directionless. It's hardly inconceivable that such circumstances would see his drinking becoming worse.
* The fact that the United States has to direct so much of its warmaking capacity and effort to a three-front struggle in the First Great War and an all-out battle for survival in the Second Great War means that it cannot concentrate enough force against Japan to defeat it in either war, with the result that - for instance - the Battle of Midway, which was a decisive American triumph in real history, is at best a draw in TL-191. When the Second Great War ends, several characters acknowledge that Japan is one of the unambiguous winners - possibly the only truly unambiguous one - as she has been able to achieve most of her war aims and keep the United States from advancing far enough west across the Pacific to become a serious threat to the Home Islands. It seems certain, as the series ends, that the remainder of the Twentieth Century will be dominated by a Cold War between America and Japan, with the former alliance of the U.S. and Germany an iffy proposition now that Britain, France and Russia have all been taken down for the count.
* Operation Blackbeard and its real-life analogue Operation Barbarossa both bear the names of (in)famous pirates, although the latter operation was actually named for the medieval German king Frederick Barbarossa.
!!Fridge Logic:
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* In Timeline-191, Henry Halleck is not at all mentioned in spite of directing the US Civil War at the point where it was lost. Granted, perhaps he was too much of a cipher, but he should have been an obvious scapegoat worth mentioning.
* The United States promotes William Rosecrans to General-in-Chief simply because he was one of the few generals who didn't get cashiered since he had [[DamnedByFaintPraise the least opportunity to fail]], yet UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant is relegated to a drunken tramp and his victories receive next-to-no mention as far as Remembrance ideology is concerned even though Grant was already a national hero for bagging an entire army and forcing the Confederates to abandon southern Kentucky and western Tennessee (including the crucial industrial hub of Nashville), while Rosecrans was merely Grant's ''subordinate'' until more than a month after the series' point of divergence. Moreover, many bedevilments of Grant's reputation trace back to the jealousy of Henry Halleck, who (as noted above) should probably have been discredited for losing the war in this timeline. So why promote a subordinate rather than a victor?
* During the First Great War, U.S. troops name several of their "barrels" (i.e., tanks) after female celebrities of the day. Naming vehicles after Lillian Russell, one of the most famous American stage stars of the period, and the legendary American opera diva Geraldine Farrar, makes sense (notwithstanding the ButterflyEffect), but why would a barrel be named after Sarah Bernhardt, a ''French'' superstar (bearing in mind that the U.S. is inveterately hostile to both Great Britain and France)?
* The choice of Special Order 191 as the point of divergence is interesting but upon reflection is rather improbable, since the order merely showed that Lee had placed his army is a precarious position by dispersing it, offering Union forces a chance to defeat Lee in detail which commander George B. [=McClellan=] actually immediately squandered by waiting 18 hours, giving Lee time to assemble most of his army for battle. Simply depriving [=McClellan=] of this insight might've slowed him down but would've changed little about Lee's precarious position or the odds of his 38,000 exhausted men--the smallest and most ragged his army would ever get until the very end of the war--fending off, never mind ''destroying'', the 87,000-strong Army of the Potomac and capturing Philadelphia, a feat unparalleled by either side in RealLife except by surrender after a siege. As it was, in real history, Lee's army barely escaped destruction at the Battle of Antietam due to, firstly, the spectacular forced march A. P. Hill's "Light Division" undertook from Harper's Ferry, 18 miles away, arriving on the field literally in the nick of time, and secondly, [=McClellan's=] unpardonable slowness in not sending the elements of the Army of the Potomac that hadn't taken part in the battle to corner Lee and finish the job. The latter was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for Lincoln, leading to his dismissal of [=McClellan=].
* In ''In at the Death'', Flora Blackford looks over plans to rebuild her war-battered district, and is pleased to note that they include much more green space than the district has had before. Um, Flora, you're in the middle of a major city. Where is this green space coming from? Does it mean there will be less room in your district for housing? Will some of your constituents have to move out?
!! Fridge Horror:
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* Timeline-191 has had two major world wars and the need to pay for them with a far smaller basis to do so. The second of these wars witnesses multiple nuclear strikes affecting all of the Great Powers involved except Japan.
** Unlike the original timeline, where to this very day the atomic bomb has "only" been used in combat on [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki two cities within a single nation in the entire world]], Timeline-191 features no fewer than ''nine'' bombings across six different nations: Petrograd (OTL St. Petersburg/Leningrad) in Russia; Paris in France; Philadelphia in the US; Newport News and Charleston in the Confederacy; Hamburg in Germany; and London, Norwich, and Brighton in the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly millions more killed, as well as untold architectural, cultural, and infrastructural devastation.
* In most European countries affected by the Holocaust, Jews were a distinct minority, not numbering more than 10-15% of the population and usually much less than that. In some Southern states in the timeframe, blacks were a ''majority'' of the population and even in states with fewer blacks they made up on average about 20-30%. Not only did Featherston fatally cripple his own war effort by killing off his laboring class, there are wide stretches of the postwar South that will have been completely depopulated. 'Population Reduction' ''indeed''...