What If?

Table Of Contents

List of illustrations
Introduction by Robert Cowley

Infectious Alternatives – William H. McNeil
The Plague that Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C.
A Good Night’s Sleep Can Do Wonders – Barbara N. Porter

No Glory That Was Greece – Victor Davis Hanson
The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B.C.

Conquest Denied – Josiah Ober
The Premature Death of Alexander the Great

Furor Teutonicus – The Teutoburg
Forest, A.D. 9 – Lewis H. Lapham

The Dark Ages Made Lighter – Barry S. Strauss
The Consequences of Two Defeats

The Death That Saved Europe – Cecelia Holland
The Mongols Turn Back, 1242

If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer – Theodore K. Rabb
The Critical Decade of the 1520s
If the Holy League Hadn’t Dithered – Peter Pierson

The Immolation of Hernán Cortés – Ross Hassig
Tenochtitlán, June 30, 1521

The Repulse of the English Fireships – Geoffrey Parker
The Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588

Unlikely Victory – Thomas Fleming
Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution
George Washington’s Gamble – Ira D. Gruber

What the Fog Wrought – David McCullough
The Revolution’s Dunkirk, August 29, 1776

Ruler of the World – Alistair Horne
Napoleon’s Missed Opportunities
Napoleon Wins at Waterloo – Caleb Carr

If the Lost Order Hadn’t Been Lost – James M. McPherson
Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862

A Confederate Cannae and Other Scenarios – Stephen W. Sears
How the Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently
Vietnam in America, 1865 – Tom Wicker

The What Ifs of 1914 – Robert Cowley
The World War That Should Have Never Been
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 – John Keegan
The Drive for the Middle East, 1941
What a Taxi Driver Wrought – Williamson Murray
Triumph of the Dictators – David Fromkin

Our Midway Disaster – Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
Japan Springs a Trap, June 4, 1942
The Case of the Missing Carriers – Elihu Rose

D Day Fails – Stephen A. Ambrose
Atomic Alternatives in Europe
The Soviet Invasion of Japan – Robert Cowley

Funeral in Berlin – David Clay Large
The Cold War Turns Hot

China Without Tears – Arthur Waldron
If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn’t Gambled in 1946
A Quagmire Avoided? – Ted Morgan
The End – Robert L. O’Connell