The path untrodden, counterfactual reality, or simply alternate history. Twenty-five of the 20th Century’s eminent historians look at what might have been in the essay anthology What If? 2 edited by contributor Robert Cowley.

The twenty-five essays range from 424 B.C. in Ancient Greece to the 1948 Elections in the United States covering a variety of topics though for roughly 300 of the 430 pages covered the time between 1912 and 1948. Unlike the previous volume, many of the essays focused on the actual event than going into an alternative scenario or would briefly speculate about things happening differently in the last two paragraphs. The essays that focused on the assignment that were good were Thomas K. Rabb’s essay on Charles I dying in 1641 of the plague and adverting the English Civil War, Alistair Horne’s fanciful piece on Napoleon III not taking Otto von Bismark’s bait to advert the Franco-Prussian war, George Feifer’s essay on Lenin on influencing the Russian Revolution, and Richard B. Frank’s essay on if the United States hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs.

What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been is an interesting set of essays, a lot are knowledgeable for someone who doesn’t know specific points talked about however the “alternate” aspect was lacking compared to the previous collection. ( )

I was a bit disappointed in this collection, but it was mostly a personal taste. Some of the writers’ styles were not to my liking. But several of the stories seemed to fall short of their promise, focusing more on the history around their chosen event and just suggestions of alternate sequences of events. The history of the potato was very interesting and the author raised some real question about what could have happened if any of a number of events had varied, but he did not write any real alternate stories. I felt this story didn’t deliver what the book promised.

Some of the stories worked very well, exploring Churchill’s politics and his influence on WWII.

Overall, I suspect the scope of speculative fiction doesn’t work well with the short story format. ( )

Að mörgu leyti áhugaverðar pælingar í þessu riti. Virtir fræðimenn og rithöfundar koma með innlegg um hvernig atburðir hefðu getað þróast með öðrum hætti en þeir gerðu í heimssögunni. Flest eiga þessi innlegg sameiginlegt að höfundarnir skoða hvort góðar líkur hafi verið á að atburðir þróuðust á annan veg og koma svo með getgátur um hvernig heimssagan hefði breyst.
Pælingarnar eru mistrúverðugar og áhugaverðar en einna skemmtilegust þótti mér frásögnin af því hversu afdrifarík áhrif kartaflan hafði á þróunina í Evrópu. Spánverjar fundu hana í Suður-Ameríku og kynnu notkun hennar í Evrópu eftir landafundina. En ef þeir hefðu ekki gert það hvað þá? Áhrif hennar eru ótrúlega mikil og bent er á að tilvera Prússlands byggðist til að mynda mikið til upp á kartöflunni því herir Prússlands átu lítið annað en kartöflur. ( )

I like the alternate history genre, but like these essays more for what they tell me about what happened then for any of their speculation about what might have been. Perhaps it's that most seem to come down on the side of Pangloss that this is the best of all possible worlds. ( )

alternative history / counterfactual
(Tufts Course — Winter 2011)
insignificant event — unforeseen consequences
1) Disease — Wild Card! 1918 Influenza
2) Weather — Storms — G.W. crossing Delaware
Always "German Question" — P. 155 — Short rest / good bkft change history choices made By harried man
3) Animosity — Gambles work
Genghis Kahn — Mongols — hated culture / cities / elite —
power by proven abilities not birth
Words — Xenophobic — hatred of foreigners
draconian — evil

Historians and inquisitive laymen alike love to ponder the dramatic what-its of history. In these twenty 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..