What If? 2 (essays)

For the 2022 book by Randall Munroe, see What If? 2 (book).

What If? 2

First edition cover
Editor	Robert Cowley
Language	English
Series	What If?
Genre	Alternate history
Publisher	G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	2001
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
ISBN	0-399-14795-0
Preceded by	What If?
Followed by	What Ifs? of American History

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

See also

• What If? (essays)
• What Ifs? of American History