Historians don’t have a lot of fun. Usually, the field requires countless hours of slogging through dusty old archives in search of that magical key to historical truth: a primary source. It’s taken for granted that original, contemporaneous materials are superior to anything that might have been said or written later. But I’m not so sure.
This post was updated on April 8, 2024.
I “practice history without a license,” as my friend Adam Hochschild would say. And I’m convinced that insightful books written much after the fact by such brilliant historians as David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Adam himself are more likely to reveal the essential truth of the past than nearly everything written earlier about the same topics. Admittedly, that may be in part because new primary sources have come to light in the meantime. But it’s also because the passage of time has given us perspective on the lies and misunderstandings reflected in primary materials. And I’d like to think that Adam does have fun researching and writing his books.
A great way to have fun with history
But there’s another way to have fun with history. It’s called alternate history, and it’s been around with us for a very long time. In today’s world, alternate history is most closely associated with science fiction. In a typical work in the field, the author imagines the way history might have been affected if some historical event had turned out differently.
The best-known current example of alternate history may be Philip K. Dick’s iconic novel, The Man in the High Castle. The starting-point in Dick’s tale is a German and Japanese victory in World War II that results in the partition of the United States between the two occupying powers. But Dick was far from alone in indulging such fantasies. The likes of the late Philip Roth ventured into alternate history as well with The Plot Against America (recently adapted into a superb miniseries for HBO). Scores of such novels have been written.
Here I’m listing the alternate history novels I’ve read and reviewed on this site. They appear in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. And each is linked to my review. Further below I’ve added a shorter list of five additional alternate history novels I read in the past but have not reviewed here, since I read them before I launched this blog in January 2010.
Great alternate history novels
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis—Alternate history by a celebrated mainstream author
When you come across the name Kingsley Amis (1922-95) you don’t expect to find it associated with science fiction. A novelist, poet, and literary critic, Amis is probably best known for his first published novel, Lucky Jim, which appeared in 1954. The book won a major literary award and is frequently included on reading lists in English literature classes. His much later novel, The Alteration, published in 1976, is far less likely to be recommended reading for college students. But it has somehow captivated William Gibson, one of our era’s leading lights in science fiction. And, reading it, I can understand why. Read the review.
The Ambassador by Yehuda Avner and Matt Rees—An alternate history of Israel and World War II
Alternate history abounds with stories that picture Nazi Germany winning World War II. Fatherland by Robert Harris. SS-GB by Len Deighton. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. And a great many more. So, it’s refreshing to come across an original what-if scenario on the war such as Yehuda Avner’s alternate history of Israel, The Ambassador. The novel portrays Israel’s founding ten years early. And the Nazis lose the war even earlier than they really did. Although the story stretches credulity, it makes for a great reading experience. Read the review.
The Berlin Project by Gregory Benford—An alternate history of the Manhattan Project
Three-quarters of a century after the conclusion of World War II, debate still rages about the nuclear weapons program that was one of the war’s most shocking aspects. Continuing controversy about the bomb’s first use, of course. Still unresolved questions about the extensive Soviet espionage that delivered the secrets of the American Manhattan Project and British Tube Alloys program to the USSR. But also, it turns out, ongoing disagreements among scientists who grasp the technical issues pivotal in the bomb’s development. And those disagreements are the basis for the dramatic alternate history of the Manhattan Project, The Berlin Project, by Gregory Benford, who is both a physicist and a popular author of hard science fiction. Read the review.
November Road by Lou Berney—(A desperate woman, a passel of gangsters and JFK’s assassination
In the five decades since JFK’s murder, many Americans have continued to doubt that the Warren Commission got to the bottom of the story. The lone-assassin hypothesis stretches credulity in a number of ways. Among those who think about such things, the favorite alternative culprits are the CIA, the Mafia, the Russians, the Cubans, and Lyndon Johnson. In my own reading on the subject, I’ve come to believe that the most credible explanation is that men within the CIA are the most likely to have been responsible for the assassination. (See my review of Mary’s Mosaic by Peter Janney, Why did JFK die? The most convincing explanation I’ve ever read.) But for Lou Berney the Mafia clearly makes for a better story. Read the review.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon—A brilliant novel about Jewish cops, Jewish mobsters, and the Messiah
This is mostly a novel about Jewish cops, Jewish mobsters, and the Messiah. But it’s also about the Indians of southeast Alaska, the Tlingit. And there are a few WASPs thrown into the mix as well. They all converge in and around the metropolis of Sitka, Alaska, which has gained a Jewish population of 2.3 million in this fanciful alternate history. Or maybe it’s better to call it an alternate reality. Because only two million Jews died in the Holocaust. World War II ended in 1946 when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Berlin. And Arab armies drove the Jews into the sea in 1948, ending the Israeli War of Independence. The upshot of all is that more than two million Jews have resettled in Alaska . . . and the date is fast approaching when they will be forced to leave. In the midst of all this, a Jewish cop named Meyer Landsman pursues a complicated murder case that leads him into the heart of the criminal enterprise that controls much of the economy in Sitka. Read the review.
1945 by Robert Conroy—What if Japan hadn’t surrendered?
One of the most hotly debated topics in recent American history was Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although many within his administration resisted the action, Truman defended it on the grounds that the bomb would force Japan’s surrender. The likelihood, his military advisers asserted, is that he would save as many as a million US lives that would be lost in an otherwise necessary invasion of the Japanese home islands. Moral qualms aside, Truman proved to have been right. But what if he hadn’t? What if a military coup inside the Japanese leadership had pushed aside Emperor Hirohito and led the country’s already shattered army and navy in a doomed effort to continue the war? What if Japan hadn’t surrendered? That’s the premise of the late Robert Conroy‘s superb alternate WWII history, 1945. Read the review.
Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy—What if the Cold War had turned hot in 1945?
Eisenhower’s legions are steadily pushing their way eastward against collapsing Nazi resistance, while in the east Stalin’s armies are encircling Berlin and bombing it into rubble. Allied generals are pressuring Eisenhower to authorize a move to capture Berlin from the west instead. Although their commander demurs, mindful of the agreements at Yalta, the new American President, Harry Truman, impulsively decides otherwise. Acting against advice to the contrary, he asks Ike to send a token force of two divisions (about 30,000 men) to Berlin’s western reaches to “help” the Soviet forces. Stalin regards it as an opportunity to extend his borders even further into the west. For him, attacking that two-division force is to be the opening salvo into a massive push against the Allied armies to the west, thus engulfing all of Germany in the Soviet sphere of influence. Read the review.
SS-GB by Len Deighton—In an alternate history, the Nazis occupy England
It’s November 1941. World War II ended in Europe on February 19 when Great Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. A puppet Prime Minister has replaced Winston Churchill, who is imprisoned in Germany. King George VI is being held in the Tower of London. Jews have been rounded up and sent “to the notorious concentration camp at Wenlock Edge.” A curfew is in effect in London. Rationing is severe throughout the occupied zone. Thousands of British soldiers are being held in POW camps or in forced labor camps on the Continent.
Everywhere, there are “signs of battle damage unrepaired from the street fighting of the previous winter. Shell craters, and heaped rubble, were marked only by yellow tapes, soiled and drooping between roughly made stakes.” And this is the setting for a high-profile murder mystery that raises the stakes for the resistance to Nazi rule. Read the review.
Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics, JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield—Joy for political junkies in a brilliant alternate history
Here we see one perspective on what might have happened had a little known but all too real would-be-assassin succeeded in killing John F. Kennedy in 1960, after the election but even before the Electoral College met to certify his winning the Presidency. With Lyndon Johnson ascending to the White House three years earlier than in reality, we can ponder how different the 60s might have been.
- Here, too, we can journey with Robert F. Kennedy through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel the night in June 1968 when he won the California primary—as his brother-in-law tackled Sirhan Sirhan, saving the Senator’s life and giving him a powerful boost in his face-off for the presidential nomination against Hubert Humphrey.
- In a third venture into alternate history, we view the changes wrought when President Gerald Ford quickly corrects his historic gaffe denying that Eastern Europe is under Soviet control—and proceeds to win the 1976 election against Jimmy Carter.
- Ford’s Presidency leads us willy-nilly into the disorienting world of 1980, as Senator Gary Hart jumps into a race against Ronald Reagan . . . and wins.
OK, so as you’ve figured out by now, this doesn’t quite fit in this list of alternate history novels, because it’s not a novel. But it hangs together nonetheless. And, lifelong political junkie that I am, I couldn’t resist it. Read the review.
Fatherland by Robert Harris—A gripping alternate history novel about the world after a Nazi victory
In Robert Harris’ alternate history novel, the Allies’ Normandy Invasion failed, driving Britain out of the war, and Nazi armies occupied all of European Russia. Hitler forced the US to cease fighting by exploding a V-2 rocket over New York City. The USSR is a rump state, with Joseph Stalin’s capital now in the Siberian city of Omsk. The Holocaust is unknown. Everyone is aware that millions of Jews were resettled in the East but no one wonders where they are. The Third Reich is triumphant in Europe. Together with the USA, which won its war with Japan by dropping nuclear weapons, the two superpowers—Germania and the USA—reign supreme over the planet. This is the backdrop for the blockbuster 1992 bestseller, Fatherland. Read the review.
11/22/63 by Stephen King—A new take on the JFK assassination
King’s protagonist, Jake Epping, 35, is a high school English teacher in a small Maine town when an acquaintance named Al tells him about the window or portal in time in the floor of the storage room in his diner. Al persuades him to step through the portal, which leads directly back to September 9, 1958. No matter how long Jake may stay in the past, only two minutes will have elapsed back home in 2011 when he returns. Al is dying and lures Jake into taking up the mission he himself had recently accepted: returning to 1958 and staying in the past for five years until he can track down and kill Lee Harvey Oswald before that watershed day in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Read the review.
The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut #1) by Mary Robinette Kowal—This novel shows just how good hard science fiction can be
The Calculating Stars introduces Dr. Elma Wexler York, a mathematical genius with doctorates in physics and math from Stanford University. Elma had gone to high school at age eleven and to Stanford at fourteen. She’s the anxiety-ridden daughter of a Jewish Army general and works as a computer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. In those days, “computers” were people, not machines, and most of them were women. Using paper, pencil, and adding machines, they wrote the equations for the ballistics calculations used in artillery and, later, in missiles and rockets.
And, yes, you read that right. It’s NACA, not NASA. Because the novel is set in the 1950s in an alternate history of the United States—and the planet. Tom Dewey had defeated Harry Truman in 1948. He has taken advantage of Wernher von Braun and the other former Nazi rocket engineers whisked away to the US. So, Dewey jump-started the space program a decade before John F. Kennedy did so in reality. Read the review.
The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal—An astonishingly good science fiction novel about the first manned mission to Mars
The Fated Sky takes up the Lady Astronaut’s story three years after she has helped build the Moon base. (“I’d made the trip between Earth and the moon about a dozen times.”) She isn’t slated to join the crew of the first manned mission to Mars. But growing opposition to NACA and the enormous sums diverted to fund it cause the agency’s director to reconsider. A movement called Earth First has gathered widespread support and is turning to violence. He needs to tap Elma’s enormous popularity with the public, so he assigns her to the crew after all. The novel explores the personal dimensions of that decision—for her and her engineer husband, and for her relationships with the others in the crew—as the mission unfolds. Read the review.
Wake Up and Dream by Ian R. MacLeod—This thriller is an alternate history of Hollywood
Hollywood, June 1944. Europe is still at war, with England about to fall to Hitler’s legions. In the United States, FDR readies a run for a third term as the fascist Liberty League gains ground across the land. Everywhere, people are flocking to the theaters to take in the newest “feelies,” introduced a dozen years ago. Just as the “talkies” replaced silent films, displacing the stars of the older format, so too has it been with the feelies. Clark Gable, rising to stardom in the early 1930s, has long since faded from memory. He now ekes out an existence as an unlicensed, low-rent private investigator. He spends his time photographing errant husbands and wives in compromising situations. But Clark is about to take on the biggest role of his life, and not at a studio. Which begins the enthralling story in Ian MacLeod’s alternate history of Hollywood, Wake Up and Dream. Read the review.
The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington by Charles Rosenberg—Was George Washington truly the indispensable man?
British Prime Minister Lord North secretly sends Col. Jeremiah Black across the Atlantic with orders to capture George Washington and bring him back to London. There the British will put him on trial for sedition. It’s late fall 1780, and the war is going badly for Britain. The Treasury is not yet bare but is quickly heading in that direction, drained by the twin demands of war with the French and the American debacle. Black’s orders are precise and suspiciously difficult to execute, but the veteran soldier is a resourceful man. And, despite Washington’s several clever attempts to escape, he pulls it off. What follows is the story promised in the book’s title. Read the review.
Dominion by C. J. Sansom—A what-if history of the English Resistance
London. 1952. Twelve years earlier, the United Kingdom had surrendered to Nazi Germany following a brief and humiliating war in Norway. Now, Prime Minister Lord Beaverbrook leads a cabinet that includes the Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, in the critical post of Home Minister. Mosley’s police and his bully-boy Auxiliaries crack down on any sign of dissent. Meanwhile, as the Nzi war against the Soviet Union rages in the East, England is poor and getting poorer. And, under pressure from the enormous German Embassy, the government has adopted ever more restrictive measures against England’s Jews. But none of this sits at all well with former Minister of War Winston Churchill, who leads a growing Resistance to the emerging tyranny. This is the setting for Dominion, historical novelist C. J. Sansom’s award-winning alternate history. It’s a thriller with a propulsive plot. Read the review.
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld—Hillary Rodham before—and after—Bill Clinton
Alternate histories explore the what-ifs of the past. What if the Nazis had defeated Britain before Pearl Harbor triggered the US entry into World War II? What if the British had captured and imprisoned George Washington? Or, as in the case of Curtis Sittenfeld’s intriguing alternate political history, what if Hillary Rodham had never married Bill Clinton? Would either one of them have reached the White House? And how might today’s world be different as a result of the changing trajectories followed by these two exceptional individuals? Read the review.
When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Eric G. Swedin—An alternate history of the Cuban Missile Crisis
When Angels Wept is one of the most remarkable works of alternate history I’ve ever come across. A professional historian wrote this award-winning “What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” and it shows. Author Eric Swedin builds his story soundly on the historical record, which he knows in great detail as an expert on the 1962 missile crisis. His premise: that the distrust and misunderstanding that nearly led the US and the USSR to launch a nuclear war in 1962 actually did so. In effect, the book becomes an alternate history of nuclear war. Read the review.
The Farthing Trilogy by Jo Walton
Farthing (Farthing Trilogy #1)—What if Nazi Germany had won the war?
It’s 1949. Eight years earlier, Rudolf Hess had made his way to the United Kingdom to offer a peace settlement—and a British Cabinet member known as Lord Thirkie followed up with a flight to Berlin to meet Hitler personally. His mission led to a quick agreement in the spring of 1941, before Hitler’s planned invasion of the USSR and nearly a year before the USA would have entered the war. Nazi Germany, now unchallenged in the West, occupies the Continent from Gibraltar to Kiev, as fighting rages on between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union—eight years after the invasion. Read the review.
Ha’penny (Farthing Trilogy #2)—A gripping alternate history of England after World War II
Ha’penny picks up the story shortly after the Farthing Set has settled into 10 Downing Street. The scene shifts from the country home in the village of Farthing where the first book was set to London’s theater district. There, Viola Lark, one of the six notorious Larkin sisters, has achieved stardom on the stage and is set to begin production of a production of Hamlet, with herself in the title role in the theatrical fashion of the age. Viola cares only about the theater. She’s less than indifferent to politics. But the novel tells the fascinating tale of her gradual immersion in a plot to put an end to the fascist Farthing regime that has recently risen to power. Read the review.
Half a Crown (Farthing Trilogy #3)—Jo Walton finds the present in an alternate history of the past
What is most engaging about the Farthing Trilogy is its portrayal of the ease with which England slips into fascism, anti-Semitism, and official brutality. Given the rise of anti-immigrant movements in England (and all across the Continent), and the emergence of a rigid and intolerant Right in the US, it’s not difficult to imagine how this might have come about. When democracy comes under pressure, government creates scapegoats for its failures (Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, immigrants), begins the march toward totalitarianism (mass surveillance in the US, ubiquitous CCTV cameras in England), and edges ever closer to a complete rejection of the values on which its Constitution is based. Read the review.
Beat the Devils by Josh Weiss—A gripping alternate history thriller
Alternate history typically answers a what-if question about a single pivotal event or decision. What if Nazi Germany won World War II. What if Japan hadn’t surrendered. And so forth. But Josh Weiss’ unconventional alternate history thriller, Beat the Devils, hinges on a much broader assumption. The hysterical “anti-Communist” movement after World War II has gained the ascendancy. Joe McCarthy is now in his second term as President, and agents of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), known as Hueys, are hunting “Communists” and homosexuals all across the country. An American Expeditionary Force has crushed Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba. In the absence of US support, Israel is about to surrender to the Arabs. And except for Disney, the government runs all of Hollywood’s movie studios merged into one. And it’s there, in Hollywood, that the action unfolds. Read the review.
Surrounded by Enemies by Bryce Zabel—What if JFK had survived Dallas?
Anyone who followed the news in the early 1960s is well aware that President John F. Kennedy was, indeed, “surrounded by enemies.” Bryce Zabel chose well when he used the phrase as the title of his 2015 alternate history thriller. JFK’s enemies included the belligerent members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who hated him for seeking peace with the Soviet Union. The CIA loathed him for compromising their invasion of Cuba and firing Allen Dulles. And the Mob was incandescent with rage because of his and his brother Bobby’s campaign against organized crime. So it is not far-fetched to imagine that one or more of these forces might have conspired to assassinate him in Dallas on November 22, 1963. In fact, there is considerable evidence pointing in that direction. But Zabel hasn’t written about what happened. Surrounded by Enemies is a story of what might have happened if JFK survived Dallas. Read the review.
Great alternate history novels I read before starting this blog
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
“It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.This harrowing, Hugo Award–winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.” (Amazon)
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
“When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but upon taking office as the thirty-third president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial ‘understanding’ with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and virulent anti-Semitic policies he appeared to accept without difficulty.” (Amazon)
And I have to mention two more alternate history novels that I hated.
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
When authors fall in love with their own writing, watch out. Far too often, the books they single out as their favorites are among those least liked by readers. And this seems to be the case, at least for coauthor William Gibson, with The Difference Engine, the alternate computer history he co-wrote with fellow science fiction author Bruce Sterling. As Gibson writes in their joint afterword, “It’s the only novel with my name on it that I return to for reading pleasure.” God help us! The novel is a mess.
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
When it appeared in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here was a runaway bestseller in the United States. Fascism was on the upswing in Europe, and demagoguery was rampant at home. Louisiana Senator Huey Long was on the verge of running against President Roosevelt from the Left, and the anti-Semitic firebrand Father Charles Coughlin was heating up the airways with his hysterical rhetoric. So, Lewis’s novel found a ready audience.
Unfortunately, though I bought a copy of the book and tried to read it, I was unable to get very far. I’ll let the professor of English who wrote the introduction to the Kindle edition of this novel explain why. Recognizing its popularity and propagandistic importance, he noted “the novel’s loose melodramatic plot, flat and even corny characters, weak clichéd dialogue, padded political discourse, awkward sentimentality, and heavy-handed satire and irony.” Lewis had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. I’m surprised they didn’t take it away from him after this debacle.
For related reading
For an unsuccessful but bestselling alternate history novel, see Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (This android doesn’t dream of sheep). And for an alternate history detective story that’s fascinating but poorly written, see Amerikan Eagle: The Special Edition by Brendan DuBois (If FDR had never served as President).
You might also be interested in a more straightforward approach to history. You’ll find it at:
- 20 most enlightening historical novels
- 20 top nonfiction books about history
- Top 20 popular books for understanding American history
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
