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

Description

Essays by respected military historians, including Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough, James McPherson, and John Keegan, consider the consequences if history had turned out differently. Infectious alternatives : the plague that saved Jerusalem, 701B.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 / 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 Hérnan Cortés : Tenochtitlán, 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 / 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.