What Ifs? of American History

What Ifs? of American History

First edition cover
Editor	Robert Cowley
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	What If?
Genre	Alternate history
Publisher	G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	2003
Media type	Print
ISBN	0-399-15091-9
Preceded by	What If? 2

What Ifs? of American History, subtitled Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of seventeen essays dealing with counterfactual history regarding the United States. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 2003, ISBN 0-399-15091-9, and this book as well as its two predecessors, What If? and What If? 2, were edited by Robert Cowley.

Essays

• "Might the Mayflower Not Have Sailed?" by Theodore K. Rabb
  • What if the Mayflower had not set sail from England in 1620?
• "William Pitt the Elder and the Avoidance of the American Revolution" by Caleb Carr
  • What if Parliament had pursued a more conciliatory policy regarding the Thirteen Colonies' war debts?
• "What the Fog Wrought: The Revolution's Dunkirk, August 29, 1776" by David McCullough
  • What if George Washington's retreat after the Battle of Long Island had not succeeded? (This essay is a reprint from What If?)
• "'His Accidency' John Tyler" by Tom Wicker
  • What if the tenth President of the United States had not assumed the full power of the presidency after the death of his predecessor, William Henry Harrison?
• "Lew Wallace and the Ghosts of the Shunpike" by Victor Davis Hanson
  • What if General Wallace's reinforcement of General Grant at the Battle of Shiloh had been successful?
• "If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost: Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862" by James M. McPherson
  • What if Lee had succeeded in destroying the Army of the Potomac? (This essay is a reprint from What If?)
• "The Northwest Conspiracy" by Thomas Fleming
  • What if the Copperheads in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio had succeeded in inciting protest against the Lincoln administration?
• "Beyond the Wildest Dreams of John Wilkes Booth" by Jay Winik
  • What if Booth's co-conspirators had succeeded in assassinating Johnson and Seward?
• "The Revolution of 1877" by Cecelia Holland
  • What if the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 had turned into a full-blown worker's uprising?
• "The Whale Against the Wolf: The Anglo-American War of 1896" by Andrew Roberts
  • What if the United Kingdom and the United States went to war over the border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana?
• "No Pearl Harbor? FDR Delays the War" by John Lukacs
  • What if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor?
• "If Eisenhower Had Gone to Berlin" by Antony Beevor
  • What if the Allied armies had not stopped at the Elbe?
• "Joe McCarthy's Secret Life" by Ted Morgan
  • What if Senator McCarthy had done more damage than he did?
• "If the U-2 Hadn't Flown" by George Feifer
  • What if there had been no U-2 flight on May 1, 1960?
• "The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust" by Robert L. O'Connell
  • What if the Crisis had spiraled into World War III?
• "JFK Lives" by Robert Dallek
  • What if President Kennedy had not been assassinated in 1963?
• "What if Watergate Were Still Just an Upscale Address?" by Lawrence Malkin and John F. Stacks
  • What if the Watergate break-in had not been discovered?

Reviews

• "Great for history buffs not quite ready for fiction, it is suitable for public libraries and general academic collections."—Library Journal.
• "In this interesting book, the latest in a series using the same gimmick, experts speculate on how things might have worked out differently if some pivotal historical event had not happened." —New York Times.

See also

• What If? (essays)
• What If? 2