Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History

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Description

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.

Reviews

Wide-ranging polemic . . . Evans is at his best on questions of historical causation . . . Altered Pasts brings an impressive historical intelligence to bear on what are too often dismissed as parlour games - Sunday Telegraph

Evans is ruthless, forensic and totally convincing in demolishing this pretext, finding instead an even greater determinism, where the autonomous actions of a handful of great men set in motion enormous, immutable forces - Guardian

The place of Richard Evans in modern historiography - a distinguished place - is assured - Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

Sir Richard J. Evans is Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University. His previous books include In Defence of History, Telling Lies about Hitler, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich at War and The Third Reich in Power.