I glanced through it in a store a few months ago. When I saw it in the library last week I picked it up. It was about what I expected. Some were interesting.
McPherson does Gettysburg over again, with the North charging up the hills and the Confederacy defending, assuming that that could have been what happened if the 'lost orders' of Antietam had stayed lost. It's just absurd.
An invading army has to fight once the resident army shows up. The invading army has to forage for food, which means it must send out foraging parties. When the resident army shows up, no foraging parties are sent out because the resident army will destroy them in detail with it's better local intelligence. So Lee had to fight at Gettysburg, but the Northern general did not. He wasn't hurting for food. He still had locals who would haul food to his army in return for Northern money, unlike Lee. He still had locals who would bring him intelligence on the location of Confederate forces, unlike Lee. He still had a functioning railnet to bring in more troops and supplies to keep his army in being, unlike Lee.
He could just wait a day, or two, or three, or four, as the Confederate army got hungrier and hungrier and closer to defeat, and as the superior Northern armies got larger and larger. He could sit there on one side of Lee and entrench, and then slide around a little and entrench some more, and repeat till Lee was inside a siege works. At least he could if Lee had enough food to just sit there, which he didn't.
If Lee was pinned in one place in the North for a week, he might as well just surrender. Having the Northern general attack up the slope at Gettysburg was equivalent to having the Whermacht suddenly launch a naval invasion of the Normandy beachhead. Yes, it would have been a surprise, but no, it would not have been a success.
Lukacs does a slower start to the war, delaying until May of 1942, instead of December of 1941. He forgets that the Singapore base fell to superior air power and incompetent management. Not surprising, since his interest is in Europe. But when the base fell the Hurricanes that would have had at least a chance against the Zeros were still in their packing cases. Six months later they would have been on the airfields and ready to defend. Because of the time zone difference between Pearl Harbor and Singapore the attack would have had to have been in broad daylight in one or the other. That doesn't mean that the British airforce in Singapore couldn't have been destroyed on the ground in a daylight attack like the airforce in the Phillipines, for instance. The British general at Singapore was every bit as incompetent as MacArthur and could have had his airforce destroyed just as MacArthur did, in a 'surprise' attack half a day after the Pearl Harbor strike.
One important political difference is that Australia was constantly pressing Churchill to send more than token air forces to Singapore. Churchill had repelled the Blitz long since, but was refusing to send aircraft to Australia, or the Indian Ocean territories. No one really knows why. If the Australians had had another six months they would have had much more real military power at Singapore. Enough to prevent the Japanese from launching their naval assault forces on Malaya, or bleeding them enough that they would have been unable to prevail. We know now how narrow that victory was, how close they came to defeat. Without taking Singapore the Japanese tankers would have been under even greater attack and attrition from the Allies and would have been knocked out of the war by fuel shortages even faster that it was in OTL.
The other important political difference is that the US had Japan under embargo. Japan could not get the oil turned back on without backing down from their occupation of Indochina and Thailand. This was not going to happen. The Japanese needed to get their forces in range of Singapore. Without a Japanese withdrawel from Indochina and Thailand there wasn't going to be any more oil. If they withdrew they couldn't take Singapore because they didn't have air bases close enough to support their landings. If they didn't withdraw they would have had six months less oil and the war would have been much more difficult to fight. They would have lost long before they did in OTL.
Cowley has one on a war between the UK and the US in 1895. The UK had huge investments in the US. The UK would have wound up paying for both sides of a war with the US. This is unlikely. Not over some worthless jungle in South America. They also had investments in Canada. They would have been confiscated by the US after the US invaded and annexed Canada. It would just have been too expensive to fight a war.
McPherson does Gettysburg over again, with the North charging up the hills and the Confederacy defending, assuming that that could have been what happened if the 'lost orders' of Antietam had stayed lost. It's just absurd.
An invading army has to fight once the resident army shows up. The invading army has to forage for food, which means it must send out foraging parties. When the resident army shows up, no foraging parties are sent out because the resident army will destroy them in detail with it's better local intelligence. So Lee had to fight at Gettysburg, but the Northern general did not. He wasn't hurting for food. He still had locals who would haul food to his army in return for Northern money, unlike Lee. He still had locals who would bring him intelligence on the location of Confederate forces, unlike Lee. He still had a functioning railnet to bring in more troops and supplies to keep his army in being, unlike Lee.
He could just wait a day, or two, or three, or four, as the Confederate army got hungrier and hungrier and closer to defeat, and as the superior Northern armies got larger and larger. He could sit there on one side of Lee and entrench, and then slide around a little and entrench some more, and repeat till Lee was inside a siege works. At least he could if Lee had enough food to just sit there, which he didn't.
If Lee was pinned in one place in the North for a week, he might as well just surrender. Having the Northern general attack up the slope at Gettysburg was equivalent to having the Whermacht suddenly launch a naval invasion of the Normandy beachhead. Yes, it would have been a surprise, but no, it would not have been a success.
Lukacs does a slower start to the war, delaying until May of 1942, instead of December of 1941. He forgets that the Singapore base fell to superior air power and incompetent management. Not surprising, since his interest is in Europe. But when the base fell the Hurricanes that would have had at least a chance against the Zeros were still in their packing cases. Six months later they would have been on the airfields and ready to defend. Because of the time zone difference between Pearl Harbor and Singapore the attack would have had to have been in broad daylight in one or the other. That doesn't mean that the British airforce in Singapore couldn't have been destroyed on the ground in a daylight attack like the airforce in the Phillipines, for instance. The British general at Singapore was every bit as incompetent as MacArthur and could have had his airforce destroyed just as MacArthur did, in a 'surprise' attack half a day after the Pearl Harbor strike.
One important political difference is that Australia was constantly pressing Churchill to send more than token air forces to Singapore. Churchill had repelled the Blitz long since, but was refusing to send aircraft to Australia, or the Indian Ocean territories. No one really knows why. If the Australians had had another six months they would have had much more real military power at Singapore. Enough to prevent the Japanese from launching their naval assault forces on Malaya, or bleeding them enough that they would have been unable to prevail. We know now how narrow that victory was, how close they came to defeat. Without taking Singapore the Japanese tankers would have been under even greater attack and attrition from the Allies and would have been knocked out of the war by fuel shortages even faster that it was in OTL.
The other important political difference is that the US had Japan under embargo. Japan could not get the oil turned back on without backing down from their occupation of Indochina and Thailand. This was not going to happen. The Japanese needed to get their forces in range of Singapore. Without a Japanese withdrawel from Indochina and Thailand there wasn't going to be any more oil. If they withdrew they couldn't take Singapore because they didn't have air bases close enough to support their landings. If they didn't withdraw they would have had six months less oil and the war would have been much more difficult to fight. They would have lost long before they did in OTL.
Cowley has one on a war between the UK and the US in 1895. The UK had huge investments in the US. The UK would have wound up paying for both sides of a war with the US. This is unlikely. Not over some worthless jungle in South America. They also had investments in Canada. They would have been confiscated by the US after the US invaded and annexed Canada. It would just have been too expensive to fight a war.
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), while O'Connell has Nixon losing in '68, and the succeeding President starts to rebuild bridges with the rest of the world. I think both TLs are valid - O'Connell's is just a little more positive - maybe too much so. And I think Nixon makes a little too convenient scapegoat.