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What if? : the world's foremost military historians imagine what might have been : essays / by Stephen E. Ambrose ... [et al.] ; edited by Robert Cowley.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780399145766
- ISBN: 9780425176429 (pbk.)
- ISBN: 0399145761
- ISBN: 0425176428 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: xiv, 395 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
- Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c1999.
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| Subject: | Imaginary wars and battles. Imaginary histories. |
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- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
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- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 August 1999
The mysterious subtext of military history, counterfactual suppositions, here parades in full regalia. Among the speculating drum majors are the most popular contemporary names in the field (e.g., James McPherson and John Keegan), but fame should be no prerequisite for delving into the essays of all three dozen authors. They explore the trove of contingent events that could have transformed the Western world into something other than what it developed into. If not for Themistocles, the Athenian admiral who galvanized the Greeks at Salamis, the seed of Western civilization might never have germinated. An Islamic Europe might have evolved from a different result of the Battle of Tours, and had not the Mongols' Khan keeled over in 1242, everything to the Atlantic might have been destroyed, foreclosing capitalism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Nearer in time with better documentation, the revisions seem to hinge on tiny details--like Robert E. Lee's famous "lost order" that actually brought on the Battle of Antietam. Had Lee's courier been less careless, could Lee have induced and won a Battle of Gettysburg in 1862? The speculative scenario spun by historian James McPherson typifies these riveting excursions into the unknowable. For the armchair general musing on the ramifications of an Aztec victory at Tenochtitlan, Napoleon's at Waterloo, Japan's at Midway, or Germany's at Normandy, editor Cowley has assembled a war college faculty nonpareil. ((Reviewed August 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1999 July #2
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. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1999 May #1
What if George Washington hadn't escaped from Long Island? What if Lee's Special Order No. 191 hadn't been lost? How would history be different? Cowley, founding editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, calls on historians like Stephen Ambrose and John Keegan to reconsider history's little quirks. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1999 August #2
Counterfactuals considerations of alternate outcomes make up one of the main provinces of military history. This volume, for which an A&E companion TV documentary is scheduled in November, incorporates two dozen essays and a dozen sidebars on what might have happened by writers of diverse specialties, including generalist Lewis Lapham, novelist Cecelia Holland and historians John Keegan, David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose. Readers willing to be open-minded can consider Europe's fate had the Mongols continued their 13th-century course of conquest. They can speculate on the death in battle of Hernán Cortés and the consequences of an Aztec Empire surviving to present times. Thanks to James McPherson, they can read of a battle of Gettysburg fought in 1862 (instead of 1963) and resulting in a Confederate victory, or the consequences of a Confederate defeat at Chancellorsville courtesy of Steven Sears. Ambrose suggests that Allied defeat on D-Day would have meant nuclear devastation for Germany in the summer of 1945. Arthur Waldron presents a China, and a world, that might have been far different had Chiang Kai-shek not taken the risk of invading Manchuria in 1946. Consistently well drawn, these scenarios open intellectual as well as imaginative doors for anyone willing to walk through them. Maps and photos not seen by PW. Audio rights to Simon & Schuster; foreign rights sold in the U.K. and Germany. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1999 August #3
Counterfactuals considerations of alternate outcomes make up one of the main provinces of military history. This volume, for which an A&E companion TV documentary is scheduled in November, incorporates two dozen essays and a dozen sidebars on what might have happened by writers of diverse specialties, including generalist Lewis Lapham, novelist Cecelia Holland and historians John Keegan, David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose. Readers willing to be open-minded can consider Europe's fate had the Mongols continued their 13th-century course of conquest. They can speculate on the death in battle of Hern n Cort s and the consequences of an Aztec Empire surviving to present times. Thanks to James McPherson, they can read of a battle of Gettysburg fought in 1862 (instead of 1963) and resulting in a Confederate victory, or the consequences of a Confederate defeat at Chancellorsville courtesy of Steven Sears. Ambrose suggests that Allied defeat on D-Day would have meant nuclear devastation for Germany in the summer of 1945. Arthur Waldron presents a China, and a world, that might have been far different had Chiang Kai-shek not taken the risk of invading Manchuria in 1946. Consistently well drawn, these scenarios open intellectual as well as imaginative doors for anyone willing to walk through them. Maps and photos not seen by PW. Audio rights to Simon & Schuster; foreign rights sold in the U.K. and Germany. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
