What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been

Rating:
Summary: astounding....
Review: This book brought a lot of knowledge of the past that i didn't know...into my sight...and it also explained a lot of things that could of arosed

Rating:
Summary: Lack of Knowledge
Review: The title is very interesting, but difficult to answer, because there a too much possibilities and to much factors which are influencing the making of history. Therefore many expectations will not be fullfill.
But that's not the problem, the book could help to understand that another history could have happened.
Nevertheless I must mistrust the book because the authors have a lack of knowledge.
Examples with ancient age/middle age: the cultural history did not depend on the victory of greek over the persians. Persians were influenced from greek culture long before that. But of course romans would not have respected greeks so much, this is a fact.
The authors thought about if the Greek knew steam power. But they knew and built music instruments with it

The authors consider would would been happened, if the romans had conquered Germany. May the language romanic or would the Roman Empire stayed over the "barbars"? But the germanic peoples which conquered the Empire came from Poland, Ukraine and Russia.
England belonged to the Empire too, but now a germanic language is spoken there and also the romanic part of the Empire was divided into many parts which were in war with each other.
The authors wrote that Luther would have written his theses in Latin if Romans had conquered Germany, but he did nevertheless.
Conclusion: Not profound enough, lack of knowledge.

Rating:
Summary: Makes history both fun and frightening!
Review: Heard the taped version of WHAT IF?: THE WORLD'S FOREMOST
MILITARY HISTORIANS IMAGINE WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, edited
by Robert Cowley . . . I often speculate about lots of things, and so do the contributors to this book--including Stephen E. Ambrose, John Keegan, David McCollough, and James M. McPherson (to name just a few).

For example, what if:
George Washington had never made his miraculous escape
from the British on Long Island in the early dawn of August 29, 1776?

a Confederate aide hadn't accidentally lost General Robert E. Lee's plans for invading the North?

the Allied invasion on D Day had failed?

These and a whole host of other questions are considered . . . the resultant answers are often fun, but at the same time, sometimes frightening . . . as in, Hitler's case . . . had he not attacked Russia when he did, he might have moved into the Middle East and secured the oil supplies the Third Reich so badly needed, thus helping it retain its power in Europe . . . can you just imagine the present-day implications for that scenario?

If you're a history buff, this is a MUST read . . . but methinks
that others will enjoy it and become much more interested
in the subject as a result . . . I know that I'm now looking
forward to Coweley's follow-up effort, WHAT IF? 2.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, well researched and written
Review: I can't recommend this book enough, a wonderful collection of learned essays about history as it might have happened. If you are a fan of history or even the 'alternative history' genre of Science Fiction, this is a must buy !

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I think that What If? is an excellent book with very intresting senarios about various points in military and social history and gives reasonable assesments about what could have been.

If anyone is intrested in history, then What If? is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent speculations on what might have been
Review: While the human race as we know it has only one path to the today, small differences in the life of one person could have had dramatic changes in the time line. In this book, prominent historians assume that an event in history was different from the way it actually happened. From this change, they use their best professional judgement to postulate what the differences would be. It is of course interesting, but there are some essays where the historian strays from the highly likely to the most unlikely.
Speculation of this form is also a movement into the philosophical and religious aspects of the human experience. As we consider the consequences of a change in an event, the overriding question is always, "What affect does one event have on the flow of history?" For example, was Hitler necessary for Nazism to rise to power in Germany or were the consequences of defeat in 1918 so strong that another would have emerged and adopted a similar path to the supposed redemption for the German nation?
Of all the what ifs? postulated in the book, clearly the most plausible is the death of the great Khan of the Mongols in 1242. The Mongol army was poised in the middle of Eastern Europe and ready to move to the Atlantic coast. To me, there is no doubt that they were the strongest army relative to the opposition that has ever existed and they would have had little difficulty in controlling any section of Europe that they wished. Given their antipathy to cities, most of urban Europe would have been destroyed and it most likely would not have become the globally dominant civilization. However, the great Khan died in 1242 and the armies were needed to come back to their base in Mongolia and elect a new leader.
Alternative histories based on the change of a single event are academic exercises that allow us to mentally explore alternatives and better understand how the history of humanity was made. While I do not agree with some of the speculations in this book, I enjoyed them all and recommend that anyone interested in history read them.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven at best
Review: "What If?" has a great thesis: Allow historians to speculate on alternative outcomes to pivotal events in (primarily military) history. While some of the essays are thought provoking: What if the Persians had won at Salamis, making mainland Greece a Persian satrapy?; most are spectactularly uninspiring: Suppose the Confederate States of America won the US Civil War ...Britain had stayed out of World War I, and the Western Allies are defeated in Normandy. The general premise behind the UK staying out of the events of 1914, is completely at odds with Britain's foreign policy since Napoleon-maintaining a balance of power in Europe so no one power/alliance can gain dominance and threaten Britain. The author spends much time on the "scrap of paper" when Belgium is invaded by Germany and next to NO TIME on the strategically unnecessary naval challenge that the Kaiser provoked. Realistically, to keep Britain out of that conflict would have taken a Kaiser very different than Wilhem II.
As for D-Day, naturally the late Stephen Ambrose and his trumpeting of the "most important day in history" would take the position that a failure would cost the war. What he failed to consider would be the rethinking of strategy: Churchill had all along favored a Med strategy and protested over sealift assets being diverted to France. With a failed NW France thrust, his arguments would make sense and a reinvigorated Italian/Balkan strategy might seem advisable. Additionally, he completely ignored Operation Dragoon an invasion in the South of France in August 1944!
Unfortunately, the more famous historians seem to have simply "gotten the publisher of my back" and just put something together that is not fully counterfactual. Disappointing...

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining read
Review: The thing to take away from this book is the perspective that monumental events can turn on split-second decisions and actions, or even sudden changes in weather. No counterfactual history can answer all the possible "what-if" questions, and most of these essays (I think to their credit) don't even try. Remember these are all written by serious historians. It is to be expected that they focus on illustrating how important each event was, and how easily it could've come out differntly, rather than infinitely pursuing speculative outcomes. This is great writing by some of our best historians. If you're a history buff it's also a nice refresher on some of history's big events that you might not have visited in a while.

Rating:
Summary: What if the book was what it's purported to be?
Review: Interesting vignettes of history, but +/- 85% of each essay describes what actually happened, not the alternatives (they were a few exceptions).

Despite that, I'll probably still buy Volume II.

Rating:
Summary: What if ...... they had actually answered the questions?
Review: If you buy this book, don't expect a book full of thorough answers to some rather weak what if questions. The book deals with military history through the ages, but only in the end of each chapter, the what if question comes into play. In most chapters, the answers are only a few lines to one or two paragraphs. And in some chapters, there is no answer at all! For example "What if Hitler died in WW I?" is answered in ONE SENTENCE. While it is called "the most intriguing might-have-been of 1914"!

If your are really looking for counterfactual stories, don't try this book. It will only ask some questions, but will leave the reader searching for a real answer. Moreover, for non-American writers it might be even worse. The whole book is full of American ideas which can be very obnoxious to foreign readers. For example, one chapter is called "Our Midway disaster", well, it wasn't my Midway! And also calling the twentieth Century "the American Century" is not what I expect to read in a truly objective international book.

In other words, this is probably the biggest might have been in books on military history. What if ..... they had actually answered the questions?