Download or read book Virtual History Alternatives And Counterfactuals written by Niall Ferguson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there had been no American War of Independence? What if Hitler had invaded Britain? What if Kennedy had lived? What if Russia had won the Cold War? Niall Ferguson, author of the highly acclaimed The Pity of War, leads the charge in this historically rigorous series of separate voyages into “imaginary time” and provides far-reaching answers to these intriguing questions.Ferguson's brilliant 90-page introduction doubles as a manifesto on the methodology of counter-factual history. His equally masterful afterword traces the likely historical ripples that would have proceeded from the maintenance of Stuart rule in England. This breathtaking narrative gives us a convincing, detailed “alternative history” of the West—from the accession of “James III” in 1701, to a Nazi-occupied England, to a U.S. Prime Minister Kennedy who lives to complete his term.
Download or read book Virtual History written by Niall Ferguson and published by MacMillan UK. This book was released on 1998 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? Historians have traditionally refused to ask questions of the past, preferring to assume that whatever happened was inevitable. ButVirtual Historychallenges this complacency as leading historians apply "counterfactual" arguments to decisive moments in modern history.
Download or read book Unmaking the West written by Philip Eyrikson Tetlock and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 9788472457904.txt
Download or read book Virtual History written by Niall Ferguson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculates what may have happened if nine major events did not occur, asking such questions as, "What if there had been no American Revoultion?" and "What if John F. Kennedy had lived?"
Download or read book Telling It Like It Wasn t written by Catherine Gallagher and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-01-26 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inventing counterfactual histories is a common pastime of modern day historians, both amateur and professional. We speculate about an America ruled by Jefferson Davis, a Europe that never threw off Hitler, or a second term for JFK. These narratives are often written off as politically inspired fantasy or as pop culture fodder, but in Telling It Like It Wasn’t, Catherine Gallagher takes the history of counterfactual history seriously, pinning it down as an object of dispassionate study. She doesn’t take a moral or normative stand on the practice, but focuses her attention on how it works and to what ends—a quest that takes readers on a fascinating tour of literary and historical criticism. Gallagher locates the origins of contemporary counterfactual history in eighteenth-century Europe, where the idea of other possible historical worlds first took hold in philosophical disputes about Providence before being repurposed by military theorists as a tool for improving the art of war. In the next century, counterfactualism became a legal device for deciding liability, and lengthy alternate-history fictions appeared, illustrating struggles for historical justice. These early motivations—for philosophical understanding, military improvement, and historical justice—are still evident today in our fondness for counterfactual tales. Alternate histories of the Civil War and WWII abound, but here, Gallagher shows how the counterfactual habit of replaying the recent past often shapes our understanding of the actual events themselves. The counterfactual mode lets us continue to envision our future by reconsidering the range of previous alternatives. Throughout this engaging and eye-opening book, Gallagher encourages readers to ask important questions about our obsession with counterfactual history and the roots of our tendency to ask “What if...?”
Download or read book The Pity of War written by Niall Ferguson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.
Download or read book The Partition of India written by Ian Talbot and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British divided and quit India in 1947. The partition of India and the creation of Pakistan uprooted entire communities and left unspeakable violence in its trail. This volume tells the story of partition through the events that led up to it, the terrors that accompanied it, to migration and resettlement. In a new shift in the understanding of this seminal moment, the book also explores the legacies of partition which continue to resonate today in the fractured lives of individuals and communities, and more broadly in the relationship between India and Pakistan and the ongoing conflict over contested sites. In conclusion, the book reflects on the general implications of partition as a political solution to ethnic and religious conflict. The book, which is accompanied by photographs, maps and a chronology of major events, is intended for students as a portal into the history and politics of the Asian region.
Download or read book Counterfactuals written by David Lewis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds.
Download or read book Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the chain of events that led to the Great War and what could reasonably have been done differently to avoid it, an acclaimed political psychologist creates plausible worlds, some better, some worse, that might have developed.
Download or read book Altered Pasts written by Richard J. Evans and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlour games, war-gaming and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on the subject. Altered Pasts examines the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals. Most importantly, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history.
Download or read book Paper and Iron written by Niall Ferguson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-07 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few economic events have had a more profound or enduring impact than the German hyperinflation of 1923, still remembered popularly as a root cause of Hitler's rise to power. Yet many historians have argued that inflationary policies were, on balance, advantageous to post-1918 Germany, both boosting growth and helping to reduce reparations. The scholarly consensus is that there was no viable alternative to inflation. In Paper and Iron Niall Ferguson takes a different view. He argues that inflation was indeed an economic and political disaster, and further that there were alternative economic policies which could have stabilised the German currency in 1920. To explain why these were not adopted he points to long-term defects in the political institutions of the Reich which went back as far as the 1890s and which persisted beyond 1918. The book therefore reveals the Wilhelmine origins of Weimar's failure, as well as casting light on the origins of the Third Reich.
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.
Download or read book The Years of Rice and Salt written by Kim Stanley Robinson and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2003-06-03 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same unique vision that brought his now classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. In his grandest work yet, the acclaimed storyteller constructs a world vastly different from the one we know. . . . “A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, slaves and scholars, Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is merely a historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold New World. “Exceptional and engrossing.”—New York Post “Ambitious . . . ingenious.”—Newsday
Download or read book Empire written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Niall Ferguson's acclaimed bestseller on the highs and lows of Britain's empire 'A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all' Jan Morris Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. 'The most brilliant British historian of his generation ... Ferguson examines the roles of "pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts" in the creation of history's largest empire ... he writes with splendid panache ... and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit' Andrew Roberts 'Dazzling ... wonderfully readable' New York Review of Books 'Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence' Sunday Times
Download or read book The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-29 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War represents a close and coherent study of developments and discussions concerning the concept of civil war in the late republican and early imperial historiography of the late Republic.
Download or read book Morality written by Luigi Giussani and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Past Futures written by Ged Martin and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Past Futures, Ged Martin advocates examining the decisions that people take, most of which are not the result of a 'process, ' but are reached intuitively.
