Possible Histories?

Johnson, Hal.  Impossible Histories: The Soviet Republic of Alaska, the United States of Hudsonia, 

        President Charlemagne, and Other Pivotal Moments of History That Never Happened.  New

       York: Odd  Dot, 2023.  ISBN: 97812250809674

Alternate histories (AH) are interesting.  The premise of all AH is that something or some moment happened differently than we know happened.  From that premise has grown a whole genre of SFF tales postulating what would have happened if Caesar had not been assassinated or if Columbus had not gotten his ships or if the black plague had not wiped out Europe.  Related to that genre is scholars and historians speculating what might have happened if such and such even was changed based on the choices available at that time.  In Impossible Histories, Hal Johnson takes the reader on a series of What Ifs through a number of eras in history.

Hal Johnson opens with a philosophical prelude (What does it mean for something not to have happened?) and follows that with 20 What Ifs and ends with s philosophical postlude (How do you make things that did not happen happen?).  In each of those 20 What Ifs, Johnson lays out what actually happened  and they brings out the change and how that change would have reshaped the world.  For example #2 Vikings in North America: What if Leif Erikson had Tarried in Vinland - Johnson discusses why Erikson ends up in Greenland and then Vinland and provides a brief history of what happened in our world.  Then he postulates what the outcome would be if the Vikings had stayed longer, brought horses and their diseases with them?  Would the Spanish faced armored horseman when they came later?  The What Ifs Johnson looks into cover war (World War I, World War II, World War III, Vietnam War), ancient history (Socrates dies, Julian the Apostate, 1st and 3rd Crusade, Rome and the dangers of bathing!, and Ethiopia vs Yemen), individuals (William Morgan and Freemasonry; Sigmund Freud reading Sophocles; Vice President Henry Wallace; Samuel Taylor Coleridge in America; Harriet Beecher Stowe vs Aaron Burr; and Seward assassinated), and odds & ends (British Navy and fresh fruit).   

Hal Johnson provides very readable Wat If scenarios that the reader can easily follow with sources that back up his historical renderings.  Some of the What Ifs are more plausible than others, but all make for interesting reading. 

North versus South in England!

Rose, Alexander.  The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a 

        Confederate Navy.  New York: Mariner Books, 2022.  ISBN: 9780358393252

 

The American Civil War is filled with stories.  There are battles, there are personalities, and then there are the less well-known tales.  These tales tend to be small stories, but not always and Alexander Rose is providing one of those tales in The Lion and the Fox.  Thomas Dudley, a Union  consul, was trying to catch and/or thwart James Bulloch, a Confederate agent, in Liverpool England.  Their struggle in England helped shape the conflict in America. 
 

Captain James Bulloch left the service of the New York and Alabama Steam Ship Company in April 1861 to become an agent of the Confederate States of America.  His job - hire and/or have built blockade runners, commerce raiders and warships in Liverpool using smuggled funds, subterfuge and the promise of cotton.  He enlisted several shipbuilders in Liverpool in his endeavors and skirted the British neutrality act by arming the ships after they left English waters.  

Thomas Dudley arrived in Liverpool as American consul on 19 November 1861 with his family after turning down the job as ambassador to Japan.  When he accepted the job, he did not realize the massive job ahead in trying to curb Confederate influence peddling and shipbuilding activity.  It took him time to realize how the Confederate side has enlisted folks in blockade running as a lucrative business that then financed the building of commerce raiders.  But once he realized the scope of the job, Dudley was relentless in getting agents to spy on shipbuilding, bring lawsuits, and ultimately thwart Bulloch's scheme to build ironclad dreadnoughts that would break the Union blockade once and for all.

Alexander Rose in The Lion and the Fox has written an exciting tale of intrigue, lawsuits, espionage, and diplomacy that shaped the war in America involving lesser known figures of American history.  Then he adds an interesting twist at the end the shows how entwined Americans are with Civil War history.  Read The Lion and the Fox to be entertained and enlightened!