What do You think about What If? The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (2000)?
I enjoyed this book greatly. In some parts the book was a recap of history I had already read, with a very nice emphasis on pivotal points. In other parts it was an introduction to key historical events that I was not as familiar with. Some of the what-if scenarios were hard to handle in a kind of emotional way. As a modern American it is literally painful to imagine suffering damaging losses at the hands of the Germans or Japanese in WWII, or losing to the South in the Civil War, or even worse, being subjugated by England in the Revolutionary War. The contra-factual (or alternate history) scenarios are painful in a different way. Many involve a correction to a mistake or a pattern of behaviors that results in a more favorable outcome for the factual losers. The postulates then proceed along lines of 'rational' behavior on a go-forward basis resulting in some sort of alternative utopian outcome. I suspect that real contra-factual historical progressions would be just as sloppy as the pre-event and pos-event factual world. Unfortunately, to create those scenarios requires such chains of assumptions that they become alternate-reality fictions rather than postulated contra-factual progressions. But, I believe that the challenges of my personal pain in some of the scenarios, and the impossibility of building realistically chaotic forward-looking scenarios, are endemic to this sort of exercise. All in all, I really enjoyed the book, and would give it a 4.5 if fractional grades were allowed. I can't give it a 5 though, but I recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys history.
—Champagr
An interesting proposition at first, even for someone like me who usually has a strong aversion to "military history", looking at how the world may have turned out if a battle or war had taken a different turn. It is somewhat let down by the very mixed quality of each contributor's efforts.Some of the essays are fascinating and riveting, though rather a lot of them barely even bother to embrace the counterfactual aspect and just regurgitate what did happen rather than what might have happened, kind of defeating the whole point of the book.Another thing that lets it down is the fact that it determines to view history from a very USA-centred, 'beware the beast from the east' standpoint, almost in a "hark at just how technologically retarded we would have been had the Ottomans/Persians/ any other non-white empire defeated those glorious Europeans" way.This is on top of a very heavy preoccupation with events of the American war of independence and civil war - together contributing at least half a dozen long chapters - which I personally have little or no interest in.An interesting idea and an okay read but I wouldn't advise anyone to go out looking for this or to hunt it down.
—Paul
Enh. A bit of a disappointment, for all that it took me more than four years to get to it. I skimmed a lot of the essays dealing with earlier history, as there was much moaning about how if such-and-such battle had been lost or so-and-so had died earlier or later then GREEK CIVILIZATION NEVER WOULD HAVE DEVELOPED AND WE'D ALL BE RIDING HORSES OR WEARING VEILS AND LIVING IN POLICE STATES AND SPEAKING ASSYRIAN/PERSIAN/SOME GOD-AWFUL ORIENTAL LANGUAGE OH NOES!!!!11!!Right, *cough* color me unimpressed. When there was some "what if" speculation, it was usually pretty grim and/or racist. Many of the historians seemed to think that things have turned pretty well, and that things going otherwise would have meant doom and despair for all civilization. As I'm fairly sure not everybody is happy with how history turned out, how about a little speculation on how we could have done better? For example, China might want a do-over for the past 200 years...or say, the Middle East for the past 3000.The later essays were better, though a better grasp of history than mine is recommended. I'll be checking out the sequel, if only because it's sitting right here. I do, however, recommend that if you're going to only read one essay out of this book, that it be the one about the Mongol horde.
—Mauri
