WHAT IF?

Expanded from the tenth-anniversary issue of Military History Quarterly, this anthology gathers an all-star cast of 34 historians to answer the question “what if?” about a variety of events in world history that could have gone differently. Among the gems of —counterfactual history— (to use the currently trendy academic term) assembled by MHQ editor Cowley are: Josiah Ober’s speculation on the results of an even more premature death for Alexander the Great (the ideals of the Greek city-state lost to a greater Persian influence on world civilization, as well as different lines of historical development for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam); Thomas Fleming’s outstanding essay on 13 ways the colonies might have lost the American Revolution; Alastair Horne on Napoleon’s missed opportunities (including the speculation that a Europe unified by Napoleon might have forestalled German unification and, by extension, WWI and the rise of Hitler); and James McPherson’s startling piece on a lost Confederate order discovered by a Union officer that resulted in the narrow Union victory at Antietam. (Had the South won there, evidence suggests that both Britain and France would have openly supported and even backed the Confederacy.) Best of all is Theodore Rabb’s speculation that if a heavy summer of rain hadn’t kept the sultan of the Ottoman empire from bringing cannon, his siege of Vienna would have succeeded, in which case Martin Luther would have had a different life, Henry VIII would have been permitted to divorce his Hapsburg wife, and Europe would be a very different place. Other contributors include John Keegan, Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough, and David Clay Large. A superb introduction by Cowley prefaces each essay. Taken individually, all are small gems of history; brought together in a single book, they offer an oustanding overview of the fragile happenstances on which history turns. The book of the year for any history lover.