Customer Reviews

What If?

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A friend of mine with whom I always discuss history recommended this novel and I glad he did. It was an enthralling read and I finished its' 395 pages over three days. It was a hard book to put down.

One of the topics we often discuss is counterfactual history or "What-if" scenarios. It's just plain fun to imagine what might have been if Custer never had a last stand or the Spanish Conquistadors hadn't have conquered the New World. What if Hitler had won W.W.II? The book explores history from this perspective of imagining how things might have been different if our history didn't occur. Having twenty plus distinguished historians who really know their stuff guide you through "what-if" scenarios makes for a good read. By the way, "counterfactual" is the word that academics prefer to use for "what-if" scenarios.

The book's full title is "What of? The World's Foremost military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been." The title fully describes the book's contents and all of the twenty scenarios describe how history could have taken a different turn had factors as uncontrollable as the weather were different. The twenty scenarios range from ancient history and the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians to the final scenario supposing what if Mao and the Chinese Communists hadn't have defeated Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Nationalists. Every scenario was well written and discussed. The book has already provided my friend and I with great conversational fodder.

The book includes essays by: William H. McNeil, Victor Davis Hanson, Josiah Ober, Lewis H. Lapham, Barry S. Strauss, Cecilia Holland, Theodore K. Rabb, Ross Hassig, Geoffrey Parker, Thomas Fleming, David McCullough, Allistair Horne, James M. McPherson, Stephen W. Sears, Robert Cowley, John Keegan, Theodore F. Cook Jr., Stephen Ambrose, David Clay Large, Arthur Waldron, and others.

The historical distribution of the essays is as follows:

- Four essays cover Ancient History (The Hebrews, Persians, Romans and Greeks).
- Two essays cover the Dark Ages (Islam, Franks, and the Mongols).
- Three essays cover the 16th century (Hernan Cortez, The Spanish Armada, and the Ottoman Muslim Siege of Vienna).
- Five essays cover the 18th and 19th centuries (The American Revolution, Napoleon, and the American Civil War).
- The final six essays cover the modern period (W.W.I, W.W.II, and the Chinese Communist Revolution of Mao).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

The premise is great but most of the items read like lectures and some do not have an alternate. Was not thrilled.