Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Introduction by Robert Cowley
Infectious Alternatives - William H. McNeil
The Plague that Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C.
A Good Night's Sleep Can Do Wonders - Barbara N. Porter
No Glory That Was Greece - Victor Davis Hanson
The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B.C.
Conquest Denied - Josiah Ober
The Premature Death of Alexander the Great
Furor Teutonicus - The Teutoburg
Forest, A.D. 9 - Lewis H. Lapham
The Dark Ages Made Lighter - Barry S. Strauss
The Consequences of Two Defeats
The Death That Saved Europe - Cecelia Holland
The Mongols Turn Back, 1242
If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer - Theodore K. Rabb
The Critical Decade of the 1520s
If the Holy League Hadn't Dithered - Peter Pierson
The Immolation of Hernán Cortés - Ross Hassig
Tenochtitlán, June 30, 1521
The Repulse of the English Fireships - Geoffrey Parker
The Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588
Unlikely Victory - Thomas Fleming
Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution
George Washington's Gamble - Ira D. Gruber
What the Fog Wrought - David McCullough
The Revolution's Dunkirk, August 29, 1776
Ruler of the World - Alistair Horne
Napoleon's Missed Opportunities
Napoleon Wins at Waterloo - Caleb Carr
If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost - James M. McPherson
Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862
A Confederate Cannae and Other Scenarios - Stephen W. Sears
How the Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently
Vietnam in America, 1865 - Tom Wicker
The What Ifs of 1914 - Robert Cowley
The World War That Should Have Never Been
Bismarck's Empire: Stillborn - James Chace
Thanks, But No Cigar - David Clay Large
The Armistice of Desperation - Dennis E. Showalter
How Hitler Could Have Won the War - John Keegan
The Drive for the Middle East, 1941
What a Taxi Driver Wrought - Williamson Murray
Triumph of the Dictators - David Fromkin
Our Midway Disaster - Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
Japan Springs a Trap, June 4, 1942
The Case of the Missing Carriers - Elihu Rose
D Day Fails - Stephen A. Ambrose
Atomic Alternatives in Europe
The Soviet Invasion of Japan - Robert Cowley
Funeral in Berlin - David Clay Large
The Cold War Turns Hot
China Without Tears - Arthur Waldron
If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn't Gambled in 1946
A Quagmire Avoided? - Ted Morgan
The End - Robert L. O'Connell