Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Synopsis What if Britain had stayed out of World War I? What if Germany had won World War II? These are just a couple of the questions answered in this book. The text is a collection of pieces exploring what could have happened if nine events had turned out differently.

From the Publisher Revolutionary book challenging history's inevitability What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? Historians have traditionally refused to ask questions of the past, preferring to assume that whatever happened was inevitable. But Virtual History challenges this complacency as leading historians apply 'counterfactual' arguments to decisive moments in modern history. "Ferguson...constructs an entire scenario starting with Charles I's defeat of the Covenanters, running through three revolutions that did not happen and climaxing with the collapse of the West, ruled by an Anglo-American empire, in the face of a mighty transcontinental, tsarist Russian imperium...A welcome, optimistic assault on an intellectual heresy that has done much, much more harm than good" Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times; "Quite brilliant, inspiring for the layman and an enviable tour de force for the informed reader...A wonderful book...lucid, exciting and easy to read" Claus von Bulow, Literary Review; "Sizzling essays hot from the academic griddle" Piers Brendon, Mail on Sunday