What If? 2

First edition

What If? 2, subtitled More What If?: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of twenty-five essays dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 2001, ISBN 0-399-14795-0, and edited by Robert Cowley. It is the successor of What If? It was combined with the original What If? in The Collected What If?

Essays

• "Socrates Dies at Delium, 424 BC" by Victor Davis Hanson
  • What if Socrates had died before his philosophy was written down by Plato?
• "Not By A Nose" by Josiah Ober
  • What if Antony and Cleopatra had won the Battle of Actium?
• "Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus" by Carlos M. N. Eire
  • What if Jesus had not been crucified and instead lived into old age?
• "Repulse at Hastings, October 14, 1066" by Cecelia Holland
  • What if William had not conquered England?
• "The Chinese Discovery of the New World, 15th century" by Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
  • What if Zheng He's expeditions had been allowed to continue?
• "Martin Luther Burns at the Stake, 1521" by Geoffrey Parker
  • What if Martin Luther had been sentenced to death at the Diet of Worms?
• "If Charles I Had Not Left Whitehall, August 1641" by Theodore K. Rabb
  • What if the English king had died from an outbreak of plague in 1641?
• "Napoléon's Invasion of North America" by Thomas Fleming
  • What if yellow fever had not decimated the French forces in Haiti in 1802?
• "If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves" by Tom Wicker
  • What if there was no Emancipation Proclamation?
• "France Turns the Other Cheek, July 1870" by Alistair Horne
  • What if there had been no Franco-Prussian War?
• "The Election of Theodore Roosevelt, 1912" by John Lukacs
  • What if Roosevelt had received the Republican nomination for President in 1912?
• "The Great War Torpedoed" by Robert L. O'Connell
  • What if German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had urged Kaiser Wilhelm II to accept a negotiated settlement in December 1914?
• "No Finland Station" by George Feifer
  • What if Lenin had been stopped before he arrived at Petrograd?
• "The Luck of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" by Geoffrey C. Ward
  • What if FDR's life or circumstances had been different in the 20th century? (Seven counterfactual scenarios are presented here.)
• "The War of 1938" by Williamson Murray
  • What if Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany after the invasion of Czechoslovakia?
• "Prime Minister Halifax" by Andrew Roberts
  • What if Lord Halifax had been Prime Minister instead of Churchill?
• "The Boys Who Saved Australia, 1942" by James Bradley
  • What if the Japanese had won the Kokoda Track campaign?
• "Enigma Uncracked" by David Kahn
  • What if Bletchley Park had failed to crack the Wehrmacht Enigma code?
• "Pius XII Protests The Holocaust" by Robert Katz
  • What if the Vatican had been more forceful against the Nazi regime?
• "VE Day — November 11, 1944" by Caleb Carr
  • What if Patton and Montgomery's armies had been allowed to advance into Germany after D-Day rather than pursue a "broad front" strategy?
• "The Führer in the Dock" by Roger Spiller
  • What if Hitler had lived to stand trial?
• "No Bomb, No End" by Richard B. Frank
  • What if Operation Olympic had proceeded on November 1, 1945?
• "The Presidency of Henry Wallace" by James Chace
  • What if Franklin Roosevelt had not chosen Harry S. Truman as his 1944 running mate?
• "A Tale of Three Congressmen, 1948" by Lance Morrow
  • What if Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy had chosen different paths than they did?
• "What if Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?" by William H. McNeill

Reviews

• "As a mental exercise or from simple curiosity, it is not uncommon to wonder what might have happened if an event had ended other than as history records." --Washington Times^[1]
• "A follow-up to the 1999 book by prominent historians who each examine a key moment in history and theorize how a slight turn of fate at a decisive moment could have changed history. The first book helped give alternate history its "serious" look, and this book should cement that." --USA Today^[2]

References

1. "Playing with alternate history again, Hastings to atom bomb". Washington Times. October 14, 2001. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
2. Squitieri, Tom (December 18, 2001). "Growing book genre gives history a do-over". USA Today. Retrieved 23 June 2012.

See also

• What If? (essays)
• What Ifs? of American History