Historians at Emerging Civil War tackle more of the war’s most enduring questions to help the reader look at what could have happened with a full multitude of choices and clear and objective eyes. To ask What If about great moments of history is to simultaneously unleash imagined possibilities and embrace the rigorous confines of fact. Every armchair general asks What If, but serious students of the war avoid making assumptions when they ask it. They go beyond wishful thinking and use What If as a springboard to explore not only what happened but also their own assumptions about what happened. A serious inquiry sparks rigorous exploration, demands critical thinking, and unlocks important insights. More Great What Ifs of the American Civil War: Historians Tackle More of the Conflict’s Most Intriguing Possibilities picks up where volume one left off: with historians at Emerging Civil War tackling more of the war’s most enduring questions. Each essay focuses on a key event of the war and, much like an army staff ride, examines the options of the moment. To understand what happened, we must look at what could have happened, with the full multitude of choices before us and a clear and objective eye. What if becomes a tool for illumination. This is not a collection of alternate histories or counterfactual scenarios. Rather, it is an invitation to ask, to learn, and to wonder, What if… ?
AUTHOR: Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the online resource Emerging Civil War. A writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, Chris is also historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. The series editor of the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series, he has authored or co-authored a dozen books on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in major Civil War magazines. 70 images, 6 maps
