What If? Volume 2
Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
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Narrated by:
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Murphy Guyer
About this listen
These original essays range across the full span of history. Geoffrey Parker describes ramifications that might have included a divided Reformation movement, a strengthened Catholic leadership, and no European settlements in the Americas. And Caleb Carr argues that we could have been spared the horrific last six months of World War II in Europe if Eisenhower had seized his chance to destroy the Nazis in the fall of 1944.
This all-star list of award-winning and best-selling authors includes Lance Morrow, Andrew Roberts, Cecilia Holland, Theodore F. Cook, and Geoffrey C. Ward, and is edited by Robert Cowley.
©2001 American Historical Publications, Alll Rights Reserved (P)2001 Simon & Schuster Inc., AUDIOWORKS Is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Delicious mind candy." (Amazon.com)
"The book of the year for any history lover." (Kirkus Reviews)
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Napoleon Bonaparte's rise from common origins to the pinnacle of power, as well as his defeat at Waterloo, still influences our daily lives, from the map of Europe to the metric system. Here's the fascinating story of the great soldier-statesman.
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modern and cynical history of Napoleon
- By Mavs on 06-21-18
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Napoleon
- Soldier of Destiny
- By: Michael Broers
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 20 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with great energy and authority - and using the newly available personal archives of Napoleon himself - the first volume of a majestic two-part biography of the great French emperor and conqueror.
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Clarity
- By Tad Davis on 03-25-19
By: Michael Broers
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The War That Ended Peace
- The Road to 1914
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 31 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
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Detailed review of 1882 to 1914
- By smarmer on 04-06-14
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History of Germany
- A Captivating Guide to German History, Starting from 1871 through the First World War, Weimar Republic, and World War II to the Present
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Germany is one of the richest and most influential countries in the world, which is amazing when you consider that the nation is only about the size of the US states of Oregon and Washington combined. It’s even more astounding when you consider that at the end of World War II, every major German city (and many minor ones) had been flattened by the Allied bombing campaign. Still more amazing is that the country has gone from international pariah and home of the Holocaust to one of the most well-regarded and humanitarian nations on Earth.
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Concise
- By J Stewart on 04-09-24
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Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
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Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
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Winston Churchill
- By: John Keegan
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The eminent historian John Keegan charts Churchill's career, following his steadfast leadership during the catastrophic events of World War II while England was dangerously poised on the brink of collapse. With wonderful eloquence, Keegan illuminates Churchill's incredible strength during this crucial moment in history and his unshakable belief that democracy would always prevail.
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A good intro/summary
- By Sabrina on 01-07-06
By: John Keegan
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On Grand Strategy
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.
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Interesting, but fails to offer real lessons.
- By Zack on 07-04-18
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Israel
- A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world's attention, aroused its imagination, and, lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel's people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions.
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Excellent, mildly but honestly biased, terrible narration
- By Schaq on 04-01-17
By: Daniel Gordis
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The British Empire
- By: Stephen W. Sears
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 30 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the story of how the English acquired their vast domain; how they ruled, maintained, and exploited it; and how, within decades, they presided over its dissolution. Here are Britain's triumphs and also her stinging defeats, her heroes and her scoundrels. It is a full and fascinating chronicle of the growth of the British Empire and its people and of the impact that empire had on the rest of the world.
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Great presentation of a broad historical narrative
- By MiamiMe on 03-27-18
By: Stephen W. Sears
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire
- By: H. W. Crocker III
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing offends liberals more than Western imperialism—it is racism, sexism, and chauvinism all in one. And of course the epitome of Western imperialism is the British Empire, covering at its height a quarter of the globe’s surface and ruling a quarter of the world’s population. Here, best-selling author H. W. Crocker III exposes how the British Empire was actually one of the greatest establishers and defenders of freedom in history.
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More Propaganda than History
- By Mike on 10-21-19
What listeners say about What If? Volume 2
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Jayson
- 08-24-03
An interesting book tainted by a poor narrator
The introduction to this second What If book promises to go beyond the first volume's war- and conflict-heavy focus on "counter-factual history."
As a genre of history writing, "counter-factual," or "what if" scenarios, are a particularly fun and engaging way of looking at events. The essays contained in this book are written by several different historians, each with their own style and approach.
They seem to work best when the authors truly explore the alternate scenario, providing a fantastical, narrative account - such as the counterfactual "history" of a world where the Chinese became a great seafaring empire, or if Jesus had been spared by Pontius Pilate.
Unfortutnately, the majority of the essays are written by authors who are brilliant historians, but hardly great writers. Military history, despite the promise of the introduction, still dominates the book. The final essay, a speculation on a world where the potato was never introduced to Europe, carries on for ages about facts and figures, and dwindles off in a weak afterthought, committing only the last very few seconds to the idea of a Europe without potatoes. It is as if the author of that final piece had been reminded right at the end what the thesis of this book was.
The most disappointing aspect of the audiobook, however, is the narrator himself. With a flat, dispassionate voice and mediocre sense of timing, Murphy Guyer comes across more like a high school teacher than a professional reader. His mangled pronunciation of Chinese names takes one of the best essays in the book down from gripping to merely bearable.
A shame, since the narrators of Volume I had done such a good job.
Worth the free download, but not up to the usual standards of Simon & Schuster Audio.
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Overall
- Tyler
- 07-21-04
Surprisingly amateurish, grating, and curmudgeonly
There is no such thing as "counterfactual history": rather there is fiction that uses history as the grist for its mill. It is thus as fiction that one should judge "What If?," and as fiction it sucks. The volume starts with a curmudgeonly gripe about the professionalization of history in the academy. The first effort in the collection is an eye-rolling fantasy about Jesus and the crucifiction. The writer meanders through a muddle of gross characterizations about religion (it is "about" interpretation, we are told), then wanders through some cardboard set-pieces about Pontius Pilot. I found myself baffled and bored. I like history and attempts to think through the challenges of writing stories about a past from an available archive. I also like historical fiction: self-conscious novelizations of sometimes familiar and often unfamiliar characters that mean to illuminate another time, place, and people. I stopped listening about 45 minutes into the volume. I deleted the selection and plan to add something better written, or at least intellectually interesting, or both. Churlish defenses of the value of this type of enterprise are unconvincing, especially if the authors are unwilling to be explicit about how it is that the fiction that spins out of the phrase "What if?" might help us to understand "what was" and, ultimately, what could be.
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7 people found this helpful