Rating: 
Summary: better choices are available...
Review: A few really good choices of classic examples are here, such as "The Lucky Strike," but too many of these stories are either only vaguely altenate history or they lack the credibilty necessary for fiction based on conter-factual speculation. I recommend the collections Roads not Taken and the Way It Wasn't, both more to the point, and of course, the essay collections What If One and Two. And of course, great alternate history novels abound- why not start with Pavane, by Roberts and The Alteration, by Amis? Nothing in this collection ranks in the same category with them.
Rating: 
Summary: Not all Alternate History, but still good
Review: All around, this was a very good collection of short stories. Not all were especially memorable, and some were not even really alternate history: both of the stories "The Death of Captain Future" and "All the Myriad Ways" (which contains one of the best endings I have read) were excellent, but neither was alternate history. I could see how "All the Myriad Ways" made it into this collection, as it dealt with alternate worlds, but there were others which had no place in such an anthology. Don't get me wrong; most of the stories in this collection were enjoyable, some even unforgettable. There were a few poorly written, disappointing stories, but these were by far the minority. One warning: Many if not most of the stories have appeared in other places, so if you hve read many anthologies of alternate history, you may want to just get this title from the library.
Rating:
Summary: A few gems - and one diamond
Review: As a sub-genre of science fiction, alternative history looks at what might have been rather than what might be. As Harry Turtledove points out in the introduction of this book, it is a genre that can trace its origins as far back as the Roman historian Livy, but it is only in the past few decades that it has come into its own, with variations ranging from straightforward "what if" stories to ones where time travelers create (or are transported to) alternate futures through their intervention.
Many readers familiar with alternative history tales might quibble (as some have in the other reviews) with some of the selections that Turtledove and Martin Greenberg made for this collection. Regardless, this book offers a good sampling of tales, ranging from an alternative account of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan (Kim Stanley Robinson's "Lucky Strike") to what might be considered the first cyberpunk alternative history story (Bruce Stirling and Lewis Shiner's "Mozart in Mirrorshades"). What makes this collection worth owning, though, is Ward Moore's classic novella "Bring the Jubilee", one of the first (and possibly still the best) tales based on a Southern victory in the Civil War. Moore's story alone makes this book a must-have for any fan of alternative history, and a good read for anyone who enjoys science fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: The Stories Don't Fit the Title
Review: Don't get me wrong. Most of the fourteen stories contained in this collection ARE good, but all too few of them are really alternative history (AH).Certainly, "Bring the Jubilee" and "Moon of Ice" belong in this collection, being pioneering works in the genre (though long-time readers of SF - like me - will have come across them before). The dated writing style of "Jubilee" (written in 1952) actually adds an air of authenticity to it. One might, however, argue it's not a short story, but a novella - it takes up nearly a quarter of the book. "The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and "Islands in the Sea" are solid entries. "Islands", by Turtledove himself, is possibly the best AH story in the book. "Suppose They Gave a Peace" is refreshingly subtle. "The Undiscovered" is also an interesting little tale that fits well in a collection such as this. And Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" explores an alternate America from the viewpoint of an inter-dimensional traveler in a similar vein to his Time Patrol books. The remaining stories, however, roam farther afield. Greg Bear's "Through Road No Whither" is a great mystical story that contains characters from an alternate history, but is not really an AH tale itself. "Manassas, Again" contains AH references, but they aren't integral to the story. And "The Winterberry", while excellent, might better be classified as a part of the "conspiracy theorist" genre. Three stories, "Dance Band on the Titanic", "Mozart in Mirrorshades" and Larry Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" (the best of the three), are about inter-dimensional travel rather than the histories of those alternate dimensions. And Allen Steele's "The Death of Captain Future" concerns neither alternate history nor timelines, but is a mainstream SF story. I enjoyed the story a great deal, but that doesn't change the fact that it doesn't BELONG in a collection of this kind. I eagerly await a "best of" collection that is more on topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be good, I will never know
Review: I bought this download to read on my pocket pc. First time i tried to download it the stupid thing says I need to have reader in my stupid desktop in order to get it. So, I download stupid ms reader for my desktop and finally download my book. Then I go to put it on my Pocket Pc to read it, when I get it on my pocket pc, it tells me reader can't open the stupid thing! I can't read the book because it is only allowed on one device! I usually read in bed, but reading a book on a desktop while in bed would be mighty uncomfortable to say the least! I am really ticked off at amazon for making it so friggan hard to download a friggan book! I have downloaded books from other sites and never had a problem, I would definately reccomend you go to another site and download your ebooks, because amazon.com is just a pain in the ole' rear!
Rating:
Summary: Could have been MUCH better . . .
Review: I guess I'm too avid a reader of "alternate history" to expect to find anything in an anthology of previously-published stories I haven't read several times before, and that's the case here. But are these the "best"? Yeah, some of them. Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike" certainly is, and so is "Moon of Ice" by Brad Linaweaver, and Jack Chalker's "Dance Band on the Titanic" is one of my favorites. But Susan Schwartz's "Suppose They Gave a Peace," while it's a pretty good story, was published less than a year before this book was compiled, which simply isn't enough time for any story to become a classic. Others really don't seem to fit the theme: Larry Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" is an exercise in philosophy/psychology in which alternate history plays only a small, background role. "Mozart in Mirrorshades," by Bruce Sterling and Lew Shiner, while also a good story, is time travel, not alternate history, and Allan Steele's "The Death of Captain Future" has nothing to do with it at all. I think Harry also made a mistake by including Ward Moore's truly classic "Bring the Jubilee," which is a novella, not a short story, and takes up a quarter of the book; that space would have been better allocated to one of the pieces from _What If_, or some other story from earlier in the century, since Moore's is the only story that predates the late 1960s, and most of these were published only in the 1980s or later.
Rating:
Summary: Too Many Alternatives, Not Enough History
Review: If the title of "The Best Alternative History Stories of the 20th Century" is truly accurate, then there must be a shortage of great stories in this particular subgenre. To start with, there are a total of only 14 stories in the 415 pages of text. Two of them, Ward Just's Civil War time travel saga "Bring the Jubilee" and Brad Linaweaver's Nazi nuclear victory space exploration story "Moon of Ice" take up close to half of the book. The rest are a mixed bag. Allen Steele's entertaining, "The Death of Captain Future" was my personal favorite, but it read like straight science fiction to me, I couldn't detect any "alternative history" in it. Most of the others feature history changes that are trivial (Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," Susan Shwartz's "Suppose They Gave a Peace") or just not enough of a twist to be truly interesting. My overall impression was that the stories in the book are just not as compelling as the many recent collections of speculative historical essays (the "What If" books, for example).
Rating:
Summary: Too Many Alternatives, Not Enough History
Review: If the title of "The Best Alternative History Stories of the 20th Century" is truly accurate, then there must be a shortage of great stories in this particular subgenre. To start with, there are a total of only 14 stories in the 415 pages of text. Two of them, Ward Just's Civil War time travel saga "Bring the Jubilee" and Brad Linaweaver's Nazi nuclear victory space exploration story "Moon of Ice" take up close to half of the book. The rest are a mixed bag. Allen Steele's entertaining, "The Death of Captain Future" was my personal favorite, but it read like straight science fiction to me, I couldn't detect any "alternative history" in it. Most of the others feature history changes that are trivial (Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," Susan Shwartz's "Suppose They Gave a Peace") or just not enough of a twist to be truly interesting. My overall impression was that the stories in the book are just not as compelling as the many recent collections of speculative historical essays (the "What If" books, for example).
Rating:
Summary: twisted thoughts
Review: It is a very good book.
Some of it may not be exactly A/H but it's close enough interesting enough and certainly written well enough by all of the authors to be called Very Good A/H.
I won't go into detail about all of the story's because there is enough on the books page that describes it well, however I will say that I found Niven's "All The Myriad Ways " a disturbing but new way for me to look at parallel universes and good enough for me to say it is the best story in the book (to me).
Rating:
Summary: twisted thoughts
Review: It is a very good book.
Some of it may not be exactly A/H but it's close enough interesting enough and certainly written well enough by all of the authors to be called Very Good A/H.
I won't go into detail about all of the story's because there is enough on the books page that describes it well, however I will say that I found Niven's "All The Myriad Ways " a disturbing but new way for me to look at parallel universes and good enough for me to say it is the best story in the book (to me).
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