Robert Cowley first made his mark in the field of historical literature as the founder and editor of the magazine MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. However, most readers here at CTT will probably be more familiar with his work as editor of the three What If? essay anthologies of articles about how key moments  in human history might have turned out differently than they actually did. Of those three anthologies, my personal favorite happens to be the third, What Ifs? Of American History(printed in the UK as What If? America); I’ve been wanting to review it ever since I started writing for CTT but I haven’t had the opportunity to re-read it thoroughly enough for such a review until recently.

Anyhow, I’d like to begin this review by looking at what for my money is the most plausible-- and downright frightening --story in this book, Robert L. O’Connell’s "Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust". In taut, clinically detailed paragraphs O’Connell makes a frighteningly convincing case for how miscalculations on both sides could have combined with inherent defects in American and Soviet nuclear weapons release procedures to plunge the world into global nuclear holocaust; he also illustrates how such a catastrophe could have put Russia on the brink of extinction and made the United States an international pariah.

Another great essay is Andrew Roberts’ "The Whale Against The Wolf", which combines humor with first-rate wargaming as it outlines how a late 1890s territorial dispute over Venezuela’s borders could have triggered a war between the United States and Great Britain in the closing years of the Victorian era. He gets in an especially fun line at the end about "stray (ing) into the realm of counterfactual history".

One of the weaker segments of this book is Caleb Carr’s commentary "William Pitt the Elder and the Avoidance of the American Revolution", which broaches the questionable notion that the world might have been better off if America had stayed under British rule a bit longer than it did in OTL. No disrespect to Messrs. Pitt and Carr, but I seriously doubt Pitt the Elder could have done a whole lot to temper King George III’s more authoritarian tendencies where the original thirteen states were concerned; in fact, one could reasonably argue that it was only a successful American rebellion against Britain which motivated British colonial officials to give the citizens of London’s remaining overseas holdings a freer hand in running their own affairs.

The least plausible of all the alternate history scenarios that are proposed in Cowley’s book is Ted Morgan’s "Joe McCarthy’s Secret Life", a story based on the incredibly far-fetched notion of McCarthy becoming an undercover agent for the KGB in order to pay off a fortune in gambling debts. Anyone who knows the first thing about McCarthy’s rabid anti-Communism could tell you that the chances would have been greater of Abbie Hoffman being invited to address the American Legion than of "Tailgunner Joe" becoming a spy for his ideological archenemy. McCarthy would have sooner cut off his own arm, debts or no debts.

Next to "Second Holocaust", the best article in What Ifs? Of American History is David McCullough’s "What The Fog Wrought: The Revolution’s Dunkirk, August 29^th, 1776". "Fog" examines the role that weather plays in human history and speculates on how the British might have been able to stop the American Revolution dead in its tracks if a thick fog hadn’t come along at just the right moment to shield the Continental Army as it was evacuating from Brooklyn to Manhattan one late summer night in 1776 when the fate of the Revolution was hanging in the balance.

Overall, What Ifs? Of American History is definitely worth your reading time. I definitely recommend it. If you agree or disagree, or if you’ve got your own AH book recommendations, I’ll be glad to hear your feedback; just send me an e-mail at ChrisO_01801@yahoo.com or beacon92@hotmail.com and I’ll answer it the first chance that I get.

The End