# What If? 2 (essays)

What If? 2, subtitled More What If?: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is an anthology of twenty-five essays dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 2001, ISBN 0-399-14795-0, and edited by Robert Cowley. It is the successor of What If? It was combined with the original What If? in The Collected What If?

## Essays

* "Socrates Dies at Delium, 424 BC" by Victor Davis Hanson
** What if Socrates had died before his philosophy was written down by Plato?
* "Not by a Nose" by Josiah Ober
** What if Antony and Cleopatra had won the Battle of Actium?
* "Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus" by Carlos M. N. Eire
** What if Jesus had not been crucified and instead lived into old age?
* "Repulse at Hastings, October 14, 1066" by Cecelia Holland
** What if William had not conquered England?
* "The Chinese Discovery of the New World, 15th century" by Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
** What if Zheng He's expeditions had been allowed to continue?
* "Martin Luther Burns at the Stake, 1521" by Geoffrey Parker
** What if Martin Luther had been sentenced to death at the Diet of Worms?
* "If Charles I Had Not Left Whitehall, August 1641" by Theodore K. Rabb
** What if the English king had died from an outbreak of plague in 1641?
* "Napoléon's Invasion of North America" by Thomas Fleming
** What if yellow fever had not decimated the French forces in Haiti in 1802?
* "If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves" by Tom Wicker
** What if there was no Emancipation Proclamation?
* "France Turns the Other Cheek, July 1870" by Alistair Horne
** What if there had been no Franco-Prussian War?
* "The Election of Theodore Roosevelt, 1912" by John Lukacs
** What if Roosevelt had received the Republican nomination for President over incumbent William Howard Taft in 1912?
* "The Great War Torpedoed" by Robert L. O'Connell
** What if German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had not prevented the Imperial German Navy from continuing unrestricted submarine warfare after the Sinking of the RMS Lusitania?
* "No Finland Station" by George Feifer
** What if Lenin had been stopped before he arrived at Petrograd?
* "The Luck of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" by Geoffrey C. Ward
** What if FDR's life or circumstances had been different in the 20th century? (Seven counterfactual scenarios are presented here.)
* "The War of 1938" by Williamson Murray
** What if Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany after the invasion of Czechoslovakia?
* "Prime Minister Halifax" by Andrew Roberts
** What if Lord Halifax had been Prime Minister instead of Churchill?
* "The Boys Who Saved Australia, 1942" by James Bradley
** What if the Japanese had won the Kokoda Track campaign?
* "Enigma Uncracked" by David Kahn
** What if Bletchley Park had failed to crack the Wehrmacht Enigma code?
* "Pius XII Protests The Holocaust" by Robert Katz
** What if the Vatican had been more forceful against the Nazi regime?
* "VE Day—November 11, 1944" by Caleb Carr
** What if Patton and Montgomery's armies had been allowed to advance into Germany after D-Day rather than pursue a "broad front" strategy?
* "The Führer in the Dock" by Roger Spiller
** What if Hitler had lived to stand trial?
* "No Bomb, No End" by Richard B. Frank
** What if Operation Olympic had proceeded on November 1, 1945?
* "The Presidency of Henry Wallace" by James Chace
** What if Franklin Roosevelt had not chosen Harry S. Truman as his 1944 running mate?
* "A Tale of Three Congressmen, 1948" by Lance Morrow
** What if Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy had chosen different paths than they did?
* "What if Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?" by William H. McNeill

## Reviews

* "As a mental exercise or from simple curiosity, it is not uncommon to wonder what might have happened if an event had ended other than as history records." —Washington Times
* "A follow-up to the 1999 book by prominent historians who each examine a key moment in history and theorize how a slight turn of fate at a decisive moment could have changed history. The first book helped give alternate history its 'serious' look, and this book should cement that." —USA Today