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Fixed and Unfixed Points
Dec. 31st, 2018 03:21 pmBook Review: More What If? - Eminent historians imagine what might have been, edited by Robert Cowley
Rounding off my books of 2018, this has been on the to-read list for ages; I read the first volume in 2011. There's a subtle change in emphasis, with the historians being eminent rather than military, although in fact most of the scenarios under consideration have at least a military element. This volume does feel more global in scope, with plenty of examples from Europe and Asia, as well as the USA.
Ironically, in most of the essays, considerable space is given to what did happen; the counterfactual is sometimes little more than a footnote, though some are more expansive on the alternatives. There are some cases where the author really feels that an individual was so significant that major history turns on the fate of one person; in other cases, it seems likely that someone would have done or thought much the same thing, at more or less the same time. My favourite essays from this collection were Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus, despite the sensational "no Christmas or Easter" offered in its introduction, rather overlooking both as pre-Christian seasonal festivals that would probably have survived in one form or another; an alternative balance of European power following Repulse at Hastings; a more conservative interpretation than Gavin Menzies in The Chinese Discovery of the New World; The Führer in the Dock (spoiler: trials in Moscow, rather than Nuremberg); and the final, more light-hearted but significant What If Pizzaro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?
Rounding off my books of 2018, this has been on the to-read list for ages; I read the first volume in 2011. There's a subtle change in emphasis, with the historians being eminent rather than military, although in fact most of the scenarios under consideration have at least a military element. This volume does feel more global in scope, with plenty of examples from Europe and Asia, as well as the USA.
Ironically, in most of the essays, considerable space is given to what did happen; the counterfactual is sometimes little more than a footnote, though some are more expansive on the alternatives. There are some cases where the author really feels that an individual was so significant that major history turns on the fate of one person; in other cases, it seems likely that someone would have done or thought much the same thing, at more or less the same time. My favourite essays from this collection were Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus, despite the sensational "no Christmas or Easter" offered in its introduction, rather overlooking both as pre-Christian seasonal festivals that would probably have survived in one form or another; an alternative balance of European power following Repulse at Hastings; a more conservative interpretation than Gavin Menzies in The Chinese Discovery of the New World; The Führer in the Dock (spoiler: trials in Moscow, rather than Nuremberg); and the final, more light-hearted but significant What If Pizzaro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?