Research Catalog

What if? : the world's foremost military historians imagine what might have been : essays

Title
What if? : the world's foremost military historians imagine what might have been : essays / by Stephen E. Ambrose [and others] ; edited by Robert Cowley.
Publication
New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [1999], ©1999.

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TextRequest in advance D25.5 .W44 1999Off-site

Details

Additional Authors
  • Cowley, Robert.
  • Ambrose, Stephen E.
Description
xiv, 395 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
  • "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."--BOOK JACKET.
  • "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."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects
Contents
  • Introduction / Robert Cowley -- Infectious Alternatives: The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C. / William H. McNeill -- A Good Night's Sleep can do Wonders / Barbara N. Porter -- No Glory That Was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B. C. / Victor Davis Hanson -- Conquest Denied: The Premature Death of Alexander the Great / Josiah Ober -- Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg Forest, A.D. 9 / Lewis H. Lapham -- The Dark Ages Made Lighter: The Consequences of Two Defeats / Barry S. Strauss -- The Death That Saved Europe: The Mongols Turn Back, 1242 / Cecelia Holland -- If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer: The Critical Decade of the 1520s / Theodore K. Rabb -- If the Holy League Hadn't Dithered / Peter Pierson -- The Immolation of Hernan Cortes: Tenochtitlan, June 30, 1521 / Ross Hassig -- The Repulse of the English Fireships: The Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588 / Geoffrey Parker --
  • Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution / Thomas Fleming -- George Washington's Gamble / Ira D. Gruber -- What the Fog Wrought: The Revolution's Dunkirk, August 29, 1776 / David McCullough -- Ruler of the World: Napoleon's Missed Opportunities / Alistair Horne -- Napoleon Wins at Waterloo / Caleb Carr -- If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost: Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862 / James M. McPherson -- A Confederate Cannae and Other Scenarios: How the Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently / Stephen W. Sears -- Vietnam in America, 1865 / Tom Wicker -- The What Ifs of 1914: The World War That Should Never Have Been / Robert Cowley -- Bismarck's Empire: Stillborn / James Chace -- Thanks, But no Cigar / David Clay Large -- The Armistice of Desperation / Dennis E. Showalter -- How Hitler Could Have Won the War: The Drive for the Middle East, 1941 / John Keegan -- What a Taxi Driver Wrought / Williamson Murray --
  • Triumph of the Dictators / David Fromkin -- Our Midway Disaster: Japan Springs a Trap, June 4, 1942 / Theodore F. Cook, Jr. -- The Case of the Missing Carriers / Elihu Rose -- D Day Fails: Atomic Alternatives in Europe / Stephen E. Ambrose -- The Soviet Invasion of Japan / Robert Cowley -- Funeral in Berlin: The Cold War Turns Hot / David Clay Large -- China Without Tears: If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn't Gambled in 1946 / Arthur Waldron -- A Quagmire Avoided? / Ted Morgan -- The End / Robert L. O'Connell.
ISBN
0399145761
LCCN
99032215
OCLC
  • 41338197
  • ocm41338197
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries