What Ifs? of American History

At first, I was a little put off by the "What If?" series of books, thinking the essays were probably more like works of science fiction than reliable articles about history. For the most part, I was mistaken, and I recommend this book and its prequels ("What If?" and "What If2?") to anyone seeking a better understanding of some of history's conspicuous turning points.

The essays generally fall into three categories. The first, which I enjoy the most, explain the historical context of a given occurrence and then engage in limited (but very illuminating) speculation about what might have happened if that event hadn't turned out the way it did. Examples of this type include Theodore Rabb's "Might the Mayflower Not Have Sailed" and John Lukac's "No Pearl Harbor?: FDR Delays the War."

Other essays also offer up the historical context but move on to engage in much bolder speculation. An example is Caleb Carr's "William Pitt the Elder and the Avoidance of the American Revolution," which explores a cascade of assumptions about how the 19th and 20th centuries would have been different if Britain had kept the 13 Colonies (the intriguing conclusion being that the world might have been better off). The problem with this approach is that it assumes that events in the rest of the world would have stayed on more or less the same path notwithstanding a dramatic change in the outcome of the American Revolution. This enables Carr to speculate, for example, on a 19th century summit between Disraeli and Bismarck, but I wonder if either of those two persons would have played the same role in history had the events of the late 18th century been much different than what they actually were.

The final type of essay dives right into the counterfactual world without clearly setting out the historical context. Examples are Andrew Roberts "The Whale and the Wolf, " which immediately launches into a history of a hypothetical Anglo-American War of 1896 and Ted Morgan's "Joe McCarthy's Secret Life," a tongue-in-cheek speculation that McCarthy was really a Soviet spy. For my tastes, the problem with these essays is that they do not distinguish carefully between what did and didn't actually happen, which means that the reader is less likely to learn about history than about the author's speculations.

On the whole, "What Ifs? of American History" is a very entertaining and readable book. If you enjoy it, consider getting the other two "What If" books, as well as Victor David Hanson's recent "Ripples of Battle" (which shares many features with the "What If?" series).