What Might Have Been: Imaginary History From Twelve Leading Historians

Andrew Roberts, ed.

ISBN 10: 0297848771 / ISBN 13: 9780297848776

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 2004

About this Item

Near Fine/Near Fine condition. First edition, first printing. No markings to the text block. No marks of personal identification or prior ownership. Signed by the author on the title page. Two-word inscription on the dedication page.; 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall; Signed by Author(s).

Seller Inventory # 45432

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What Might Have Been: Imaginary History From Twelve Leading Historians
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0297848771
• ISBN 13: 9780297848776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • All
  • International History

About this title

Synopsis

Throughout history, great and terrible events have often hinged upon luck. Tiny changes can produce profoundly different results. We all ask 'what might have been?' about our own lives, now award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has asked a team of 12 leading historians and biographers what might have happened if major world events had gone differently? Each concentrating in the area in which they are a leading authority, historians as distinguished as Antonia Fraser (Gunpowder Plot), Norman Stone (Sarajevo 1914) and Anne Somerset (the Spanish Armada) consider: 'What if ...?' Robert Cowley demonstrates how nearly Britain won the American war of independence. In her first publication since her acclaimed GEORGIANA, Amanda Foreman muses on Lincoln's Northern States of America and Lord Palmerston's Great Britain going to war, as they so nearly did in 1861. Whether it's Stalin fleeing Moscow in 1941(Simon Sebag Montefiore), or Napoleon not being forced to retreat from it in 1812 (Adam Zamoyski), the events covered here are important, world-changing ones. George W. Bush's former White House advisor David Frum considers a President Al Gore's response to 9/11, while Simon Heffer posits a Heseltine premiership had Margaret Thatcher been assassinated by the I.R.A. in Brighton. Conrad Black wonders how the United States might have entered the Second World War if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor. All 12 essays are thought-provoking and scholarly. Here is a fascinating and often horrifying parallel universe - a universe that so easily might have been.

About the Author

Andrew Roberts, 40, might not have got into Cambridge if the head of history at Caius College had not been amused by why he was chucked out of school. His books would not have been written if Roberts had been even half-way competent at his initial career choice, merchant banking. So he would not have won the Wolfson and James Stern Silver Pen prizes, nor would have become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. More troubling to him still, if he had not sat next to the biographer Leonie Frieda in the Poissonerie restaurant in Sloane Avenue, she might not be his girlfriend today.