It's really a shame that, mostly because of lack of competition, Harry Turtledove is the best-selling author of alternate history. In Southern Victory, or TL-191 as it is usually called, he makes all the amateur mistakes that you learn to avoid as you begin to write better alternate history. Even without the presence of RL characters at later dates in his books they are still highly implausible to say the least and ever since the end of the Great War books they have basically been running a course that is exactly parallel to OTL pre-War era. It's hard to imagine a world in which Germany winning WWI does nothing more to the history of Europe then countries changing roles, with France and England replacing Germany and Italy. I've read the entire series though, except for the last book, mostly because it is one of the few Alternate History series out there. I bought his latest book but have yet to read it, I know how it ends and it just holds no appeal for me.
SM Stirling is a better writer than Turtledove however his situations are mostly just molded so he can create a medieval type novel, or a novel of colonization and exploration, or a dystopia, or to explore his wacked out ideas on governance, not to create actual believable AH.
If you really want solid and plausible AH material for the Confederacy, I recommend Roger Ranson's "Confederate States of America". Turtledove is just German history 1918-1945 with names changed.
