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

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Summary: Well Done
Review: A very well done and interesting book. Thoughtfully presented and carefully considered, recommended to those who enjoy alternate history.

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Summary: interesting idea, but done poorly
Review: Interesting ideas, often badly written and apparently with little or no editing.

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Summary: good lessons
Review: Good synopsis of some of the more pivotal moments in history. It provides an appreciation of the importance of chance and seemingly minor actions and events. A little too much emphasis on what did happen with an occasional lapse in transition. Otherwise an excellent read. Good, brief lessons on world history.

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Summary: A treasure-trove of fascinating insights
Review: I read everything I can get my hands on relating to military history. This has been a great year for readers with my interests, with the publication of 'Blackhawk Down', 'The Thin Red Line', 'The Triumph & the Glory', and 'Hart's War' among others. Now the year is topped off with a bang by this intriguing collection put together by Mr. Cowley. The what-ifs are mind-boggling, this book really makes you understand and appreciate the elements that combine to drive historic events, and how everything could have been so very different but for THAT ONE LITTLE THING that determined the outcome.

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Summary: Wonderful
Review: It made my head spin. Bad weather or a split second decision can be as important as guns, germs and steel.

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Summary: Alot of stupidity from reviewers of the book
Review: I see alot of people in this site reviewing this book unfairly, giving it a bad rating only because in the book it stated that Europe would have been better if Moslems would have conquered it. Those people are foolish and at the same time ignorant. It's only an article. Don't people have to the right to say something different and interesting for once? Try to open your mind and think of things in a different way than you usually would. Try to take away your bias and your one-sidedness and look at this book with an outsiders(un-biased) point of view. Only because you disagree with a book doesn't mean it's bad. You may disagree with alot of books but don't look at it that way, rate it on the quality of the book itself, based on the quality of writing dispite your opinion.

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Summary: counterfactual history at its best
Review: History, like everything else, has fads that come and go. It seems that now counterfactual history is the fad of the day. Nevertheless, the exercise presented in What if? is, to say the least, very interesting. But is it useful? I believe it is, but not from the point of view of the historian, because history, no matter how you want to put it, is about things that happened not about things that didn't happen. What if? is useful from the point of view of the decision maker, and to be more specific, from the point of view of the decision making process. Some essays contained in the book base their assumptions on circumstance, or a chance, like the famous "lost orders" that influence the outcome of the US Civil War. Others essays, the ones that are really useful, explore the decisions behind the historical events. Only these essays serve a wider purpose, not only of entertainment, but of greater insight into things that truly could have been different.

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Summary: Garbage
Review: They state Europe would have been better off had we been defeated by moslems? They deny the foundations of our very existence. How can "distinguished" historians write this? Waste of money - Literary trash - leave it on the shelf.

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Summary: A Great Read
Review: This came highly recommended by a friend who is a huge counterfactual history buff. I don't know much about the subject, but am always up for a good read. Well, I was rewarded, as this proved to be one of the most interesting books I have read over the last year. And I read a lot. I think it is the perfect combination of history and fiction, without getting too much into the sci-fi relm, as some of these counterfactual books tend to do. I would recommend it to just about anyone.

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Summary: Too much background needed
Review: Many of the writers presuppose that the reader knows a great deal about each historical situation. I'm all right in this area, but I frequently became confused to some of the references. I'm sure this is heaven for the historical buff, but it all left me a little cold.