Table of Contents

What If? 2 - Edited by Robert Cowley List of Maps and Illustrations
Introduction by Robert Cowley
Socrates Dies at Delium, 424 B.C. - Victor Davis Hanson
The consequences of a single battle casualty
Not by a Nose - Josiah Ober
The triumph of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, 31 B.C.
Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus - Carlos M. N. Eire
Christianity without the Crucifixion
Repulse at Hastings, October 14, 1066 - Cecelia Holland
William does not conquer England
The Chinese Discovery of the New World, 15th Century - Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
What the expeditions of a eunuch admiral might have led to
Martin Luther Burns at the Stake, 1521 - Geoffrey Parker
"O God, is Luther dead?"
If Charles I Had Not Left Whitehall, August 1641 - Theodore K. Rabb
As a starter, no English civil war
Napoleon's Invasion of North America - Thomas Fleming
Aedes aegypti takes a holiday, 1802
If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves - Tom Wicker
The inevitable results of no Emancipation Proclamation
France Turns the Other Cheek, July 1870 - Alistair Horne
The needless war with Prussia
The Election of Theodore Roosevelt, 1912 - John Lukacs
Brokering an earlier end to World War I
The Great War Torpedoed - Robert L. O'Connell
The weapon that could have won the war for Germany in 1915
No Finland Station - George Feifer
A Russian Revolution without Lenin?
The Luck of Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Geoffrey C. Ward
Seven might-not-have-beens on the road to the presidency
The War of 1938 - Williamson Murray
Chamberlain fails to sway Hitler at Munich
Prime Minister Halifax - Andrew Roberts
Great Britain makes peace with Germany, 1940
The Boys Who Saved Australia, 1942 - James Bradley
Small events can have large results
Enigma Uncracked - David Kahn
The Allies fail to break the German cipher machine
Pius XII Protests the Holocaust - Robert Katz
VE Day - November 11, 1944 - Caleb Carr
The unleashing of Patton and Montgomery
The Führer in the Dock - Roger Spiller
A speculation on the banality of evil
No Bomb: No End - Richard B. Frank
The Operation Olympic disaster, Japan 1945
The Presidency of Henry Wallace - James Chace
If FDR had not dumped his vice president in 1944
A Tale of Three Congressmen, 1948 - Lance Morrow
America without Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy
What If Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru? - William H. McNeil
The humble roots of history

About the Author

Robert Cowley is the founding editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Cowley has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing.

Reviews

Like its predecessor (also edited by Cowley), this is an engrossing collection of essays on counterfactual history. Each contributor examines a pivotal event, then considers the ramifications had the event come out differently. In some cases the ramifications are so monumental that their effects are more obvious than intriguing. For example, if Socrates had died in battle during the Peloponnesian War, Victor Davis Hanson suggests, democracy, Christianity and Western thought as a whole would be radically different. Similarly, had Pontius Pilate pardoned Jesus the book's most fascinating premise Christianity would have developed in entirely new directions, according to Carlos M.N. Eire. Other essays depend, to diminished effect, on nonevents, such as Theodore F. Cook Jr. explaining what the incredible Chinese navy would have accomplished in the Atlantic and the New World had the Ming emperors not turned inwards. Most authors, however, have teased out some incredibly tiny detail in history and demonstrated how that one stitch holds the whole fabric together. Most notably, Robert L. O'Connell explains how one bureaucrat may have kept Germany from winning WWI by hindering a program of unrestricted submarine warfare. James Bradley writes about a ragtag group of Australian soldiers during WWII who held back thousands of well-trained Japanese forces on the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea and by this Thermopylae-like action prevented the enemy from taking Port Moresby and, thus, Australia; had the defenders failed, "the entire calculus of the Pacific War" would have changed. And Robert Katz explores what would have happened had Pius XII protested the Holocaust, which he twice had a chance to do. Cowley has put together another fun book, although his introductions to each essay give away too much of the game. Illus. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.