What If? Abridged Audio Download. About The Book. About The Readers. John Cunningham. Janet Zarish. Mark Mazower. The Anatomy of Revolution. Crane Brinton. The Middle Sea. John Julius Norwich. The American Civil War. Give Me a Fast Ship. The Age of Capital. Eric Hobsbawm. The Fall of the Roman Republic. Independence Lost. Kathleen DuVal. The Portable John Adams. Plain, Honest Men. Richard Beeman. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism.
Perry Anderson. Related Articles. Assuming Christianity to be false, and Pilate spares the historical Jesus, then I think his counterfactual account of a different form of Judaism taking over the Empire is plausible. William loses Hastings- Cecelia Holland- Good. China discovers new world- Theo Cook- Good, I think this is more plausible than commonly assumed without going full Gavin Menzies and arguing it acc happened.
Martin Luther burned at sake- Geoffrey Parker- Spent too much time on the 'what' and only a page on the 'what if'. Another 'individuals matter' case study, but in this case we have no civil war but a Germanic occupation of the throne 73 years before it took place As Elisabeth of Bohemia and her German brood accede. Napoleon invades North America- Thomas Fleming- A few technical faults Jefferson became President in , not , and had cooled on the French Revolution under the Directory, not Napoleon but still a good essay in 'diseases matter'.
Tad reaching that Napoleons invasion of North America in would bifurcate the country, end slavery and racial animosity sixty years early and all sorts of other things. Lincoln doesn't free slaves- Tom Wicker. Not convinced the Europeans would have intervened in the Civil War had the Emancipation Proclomaton been issued, there was more going on there. Obviously a monumental text in American racial history, whose absence would have widespreading affects.
Napoleon III doesn't declare war- Alastair Horne- Come across this essay thinking, based on his behaviour with the Elms telegram, Bizzy would have manipulated the situation at some point anyway, esp if Napoleon III died in and France became even weaker. Not sure Napoleon III is the 'individual' who matters. Not so sure about Grant getting involved in all this.
TR wins in John Luckas- Same domestic policies as Wilson, and a similiar foreign policy of strength in the western hemisphere, and late entry to WW1 in But millitary buildup from , not from , makes the US a stronger partner which causes the war to end in May Germany and Russia remain constitutional monarchies.
TR dies in , and Theodorian realpolitik is replaced by Wilsonian idealism through the backdoor anyway by Herbert Hoover?? Luckas writes well as a 2nd order counterfactual, but am not convinced by some of the details. But he is apt at pointing out the weakness of the US in this time, a point which reinforces Robert O'Connell's essay on what could have happened if the Germans had continued unrestricted submarine warfare after the Lusitania Incident German victory.
George Feifer- No Lenin. Measured essay, concluding that if the Germans denied Lenin passage in , or if he'd been arrested after the July Days 'that Russia would still be a mess, but a different kind of mess'.
Doubt it's a definitive interpretation, and more could have been said about the strategic reality of the USSR and Germany being de-facto on the same side.
PM Halifax- Andrew Roberts. Did not realise how plausible this what if was, and how it would have led to a dramatically different world assuming Halifax then makes peace towards the end of May and leaves the whole of Europe to the USSR. Caleb Carr on VE Day Teases out good indirect epistimological point that just because the Allies won, doesn't mean they couldn't have won sooner, but our heuristics can obscure asking questions along these lines after the fact.
Good thing to discuss when the historians inevitibly look at vaccine rollout. James Chace on Wallace becoming prez- Measured conclusion that the Cold War would have happened anyway, in a different form.
The presidency, even after FDR, is not all-powerful as some may imagine it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Overall a reasonable and interesting read. They will provide all the background concerning the scenario but there will just be a couple of paragraphs on what could have happened differently.
Definitely better than the first volume — less military focused. Jun 08, Trevar rated it liked it. A good history read, but every essayist has their own styles - which means they do not particularly mesh well together. Some are really interesting, some start out interesting and then lose momentum But the book still has a subject matter worth paying attention to, with hypothetical ideas of what might have happened if things were different, and that at least provides a solid platform to pay attention to.
Jan 11, Tim rated it it was ok Shelves: fiction. Hardly any alternate history. Mostly nuggets of information about a specific incident in history. Even so, much of that seems too flippant, not really considering the thing unbiasedly. Some things to think about, if not trust without further research.
May 09, Susanna - Censored by GoodReads rated it liked it Recommends it for: alternate history fans. Shelves: history , alternate-history. A fun collection of short essays of alternate history. Nov 05, Clay Davis rated it it was amazing. A great collection of some of the best historians and their take on past events and people. Jul 10, Tom Baikin-O'hayon rated it it was ok. Another proof that historians are not writers. Jul 31, Marcus rated it liked it Shelves: alternative-history. The first essay in this book is a perfect example — if Jesus of Nazareth managed to live to an old age, is it even possible to provide a credible speculation about how it would affect what today is one of major religions of the world?
And finally there was a couple of essays about topics which I personally question deserve to be analyzed from counter-factual perspective. And while I found the essay about effect of introduction of potatoes to European society to be one of the most interesting in this collection, it was because it mostly discussed those effects who would have thought history of potato was so fascinating? But the premise of that particular essay — that Pizarro failed to find potatoes to be begin with — how was that supposed to happen?
It was the major crop of the area after all! They are universally pointless. They have serious potential to ruffle some feathers. But if the point of contention is selected wisely and argued cleverly, they can also be a lot of fun. Essays in this collection completely validated my first point, confirmed to certain degree the second one, but failed to entertain me in the way that I expect from this type of book. Little counterfactuals involving single decisions in single lives that would probably have had vast effects on the present world.
Needed this book because, at my school, the big historical cliches - Hastings - were divorced from their effects. Had Socrates died before meeting Plato, two thousand years of persuasive anti-democratic thought might have been prevented; had Zheng He just kept going, a Confucian America without a divine mandate to convert and subjugate, and an overwhelmed, boxed-in Little counterfactuals involving single decisions in single lives that would probably have had vast effects on the present world.
Had Socrates died before meeting Plato, two thousand years of persuasive anti-democratic thought might have been prevented; had Zheng He just kept going, a Confucian America without a divine mandate to convert and subjugate, and an overwhelmed, boxed-in and thus united pre-colonial Europe might have resulted. It may be coincidental, but it is suggestive nonetheless that the interest among serious historians in counterfactual analysis basically corresponds with the rise of a dramatically new way of looking at the physics of complex systems, known popularly as chaos theory.
They are also just great stories, cf. Adam Gopnik's It is the aim of all academic historians in our time to drain as much drama from history as is consistent with the facts; and it is the goal of popular historians to add as much drama to history as is consistent with the facts, or can be made to seem so. This is the former people doing the latter work. Damn good fun, and maybe valuable in the absence of proper modelling.
Another excellent collection of counterfactual historical essays edited by Robert Cowley. All are well-written and well-argued some, naturally, more than others ; the topics are all well-chosen and the book is certainly not a waste of your time.
Counterfactual history exercises are often sniffed at, but Cowley successfully argues for the legitimacy of the approach: "There is no better way of understanding what did happen in history than to contemplate what very well might have happened.
Counter Another excellent collection of counterfactual historical essays edited by Robert Cowley. Counterfactual history has a way of making the stakes of a confrontation stand out in relief" pg. Some features of the site may not work correctly.
Corpus ID: What if? Focusing on some of the most intriguing military history turning points of the last years, 20 historians have conspired to produce a group of essays that should enhance our understanding of these events. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Methods Citations. Citation Type.
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