Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... What Ifs? Of American History (original 2003; edition 2004)by Robert Cowley (Editor)
Work InformationWhat Ifs? of American History : Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley (Editor) (2003)
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  gmillar | Apr 27, 2022 |   Focusing solely on the United States, this third book lacks some of the richness and variety of the two eon-spanning volumes that preceded it, but the short history of the American republic has been one so eventful that there is still much fruitful what-if territory to be explored in this bounteous land of opportunity. (  ) MikeFutcher | Mar 22, 2019 |  )1  BenKline | May 14, 2017 | The real events are often excitingly told (David McCullough in fine form, narrating Washington's desperate nighttime escape after the Battle of Long Island), little known (guerrilla warfare after Appomatox), or unexpectedly significant (the debate over VP John Tyler's right to ascend to the presidency after William Henry Harrison died in office). Fans of alternate history may, however, find themselves wishing that the authors had saved it for a book of straight historical essays, and gotten on with the good bits. I'm with them. The two best pieces in the book are (no surprise) written from viewpoints within their counter-factual worlds: One on the Anglo-American War of 1895 and one on the nuclear war that resulted from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. They're well worth the time of even a casual alternate history fan . . . or anyone interested in war and diplomacy in the 20th century. ( )1 ABVR | Nov 4, 2008 | ) ablueidol | Jan 2, 2008 |
This volume is a companion piece to What If? and More What If?. This book concentrates mainly on the history of the US. So we have:- The Mayflower landing in Virginia instead of Massachusetts and so less religious influence on the US. Pitt the Elder avoiding the American Revolution. George Washington being trapped by British troops in Brooklyn before the War of Independence gets fully into stride. No incorporation of Texas into the Union - and no Vice Presidents automatically succeeding on a President’s death. No loss of Lee’s cigar-wrapped orders before Antietam and hence a Union defeat in the Civil War. No (possibly unjust) blaming of a certain Civil War Union general for a near catastrophe. (That circumstance eventually gave us Ben-Hur and all the cultural efflorescences that followed from it.) A second secession (of Mid-West States) during the Civil War. Andrew Johnson being assassinated along with Lincoln. A class war in the 1870s. A US-Britain war in 1896 (over a border dispute in South America!) FDR delaying the Pacific War. Eisenhower taking Berlin before Zhukov and Konev get there. Joe McCarthy as a Soviet agent. (Not too big a leap for the imagination if you apply the old saying “cui bono” to that Senator’s activities.) A thawing of the Cold War because Gary Powers’s U-2 mission is cancelled. The Cuban missile crisis is not resolved safely. An unassassinated JFK reconciling with Cuba (and resisting embroilment in Vietnam.) Watergate as only a minor scandal. All fascinating stuff – if perhaps sometimes the historians assume nothing too much would change thereby. Belongs to SeriesWhat if (4)
A collection of essays on pivotal moments in American history includes Caleb Carr on America had there been no Revolution, and Robert Dallek on what might have happened if JFK had not been assassinated. No library descriptions found. 
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973History and Geography North America United StatesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.28)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (5)
4
I struggled to finish it and still found it unsatisfying. The histories visited were, admittedly, well presented. But if a reader was to believe the salesmanship of the book's title, he or she would be sadly disappointed. Naively, I was hoping for an historian's opine of "This is what I believe could have happened given all my investigation into the times addressed." I wished for that and didn't get it. All I got was a good brief history and a question: "What if?"
Apparently, this was not the book for me. I looked in the wrong section of the bookstore. I'm off to the fiction section and will look for Harry Turtledove. (