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What If...? Volume 3: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been » (Abridged)

Book cover image of What If...? Volume 3: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley

Authors: Robert Cowley, Robert Cowley (Editor), Murphy Guyer
ISBN-13: 9780743561358, ISBN-10: 074356135X
Format: MP3 Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Date Published: June 2000
Edition: Abridged

Author Biography: Robert Cowley

Book Synopsis

Historians and inquisitive laymen alike love to ponder the dramatic what-ifs of history. In these never-before-published essays, some of the keenest minds of our time ask the big, tantalizing questions: Where might we be if history had not unfolded the way it did? Why, how, and when was our fortune made real? The answers are surprising, sometimes frightening, and always entertaining.

This provocative collection of essays features today's foremost historians speculating on these "what ifs", providing a fascinating new perspective on history's most pivotal events. The essays include:

Infectious Alternatives: The Plague that Saved Jerusalem

by William H. McNeil

No Glory That Was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis

by Victor Davis Hanson

Conquest Denied: Alexander the Great's Premature Death

by Josiah Ober

Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg

by Lewis Lapham

The Dark Ages Made Lighter: The Consequences of Two Defeats

by Barry S. Strauss

The Death that Saved Europe: The Mongols Turn Back

by Cecilia Holland

If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer

by Theodore K. Rabb

The Immolation of Hernán Cortés

by Ross Hassig

Chronicles of High Education

If rain, wind, and fog had not aided the Continental Army's desperate escape across the East River one night in August 1776, would we now be singing "God Save the Queen" at ball games?

For Robert Cowley thinks that "counterfactuals," scenarios of how the course of history might have changed if some key event had unfolded differently. So he enticed 34 historians to contribute to a new book of essays: What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.

	List of Illustrations
	Introduction
	Infectious Alternatives: The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C.	1
	A Good Night's Sleep can do Wonders
	No Glory That Was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B. C.	15
	Conquest Denied: The Premature Death of Alexander the Great	37
	Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg Forest, A.D. 9	57
	The Dark Ages Made Lighter: The Consequences of Two Defeats	71
	The Death That Saved Europe: The Mongols Turn Back, 1242	93
	If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer: The Critical Decade of the 1520s	107
	If the Holy League Hadn't Dithered
	The Immolation of Hernan Cortes: Tenochtitlan, June 30, 1521	121
	The Repulse of the English Fireships: The Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588	139
	Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution	155
	George Washington's Gamble
	What the Fog Wrought: The Revolution's Dunkirk, August 29, 1776	189
	Ruler of the World: Napoleon's Missed Opportunities	201
	Napoleon Wins at Waterloo
	If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost: Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862	223
	A Confederate Cannae and Other Scenarios: How the Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently	239
	Vietnam in America, 1865
	The What Ifs of 1914: The World War That Should Never Have Been	261
	Bismarck's Empire: Stillborn
	Thanks, But no Cigar
	The Armistice of Desperation
	How Hitler Could Have Won the War: The Drive for the Middle East, 1941	295
	What a Taxi Driver Wrought
	Triumph of the Dictators
	Our Midway Disaster: Japan Springs a Trap, June 4, 1942	311
	The Case of the Missing Carriers
	D Day Fails: Atomic Alternatives in Europe	341
	The Soviet Invasion of Japan
	Funeral in Berlin: The Cold War Turns Hot	351
	China Without Tears: If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn't Gambled in 1946	377
	A Quagmire Avoided?
	The End