Book description
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.. "In addition to the essays, fifteen sidebars by such authors as Caleb Carr, Tom Wicker, David Fromkin, and Ted Morgan illuminate in brief other world-changing episodes.
Since chance, error, and the weather deserve as much credit as humans for the mess known as history, its fair to ask historians for a retake. What If? Imagine the narrowly missed possibilities of a Muslim Europe, a Mongol Europe, a permanently Confederate South, a 20th century in which names Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao mean nothing, or a triumphant Nazi Reich or Japanese Empire. You’ll have the vertigo-inducing sense that everything, you and me included, could have been very, very different.
