What Might Have Been Leading Historians On Twelve 'What Ifs' Of History Book

Another disappointing collection of counterfactuals, the cover image doesn't even relate to any of the tales and that would be interesting.

What works here are the essays by Historians, most of which tend to give you what happened as well as how they think it would've worked out. This is very helpful if you don't know the period very well. Even the editor Roberts, who is so right wing he chooses to write about Wellington, Churchill and exonerate WWI generals, is okay here. If one of the weaker essays.

What is awful are the various polemics penned by right wing journalists. Conrad Black's is a flat and uninteresting account of Pearl Harbour not being attacked by the Japanese, where he ignores the evidence of pre-warning which reputable history accepts. Worse still is Heffer's deconstruction of a Heseltine premiership after Thatcher dies in the Brighton bomb. Essentially an excuse to attack one nation Conservatism. The worst,however, by a country mile is the final tale where President Gore is portrayed as a ridiculously cartoonish wooly Liberal who makes a hash of handling 9/11. The portrayal of Gore and the words he and many of his associates are made to say is so unlike the man and presumably his associates that you would not recognise Gore if you were not told it was him. Plus there is the assumption that 9/11 would have still happened (despite Bush abandoning Clinton's anti-terrorism methods), the notion that only invading Afghanistan would have been stupid (because Iraq was the right war) and the unsubtle implication that Bush handled 9/11 marvellously. Total neo-con fantasyland, not worthy of a serious counterfactual.