Re: If the Confederates had won.....!
Reply #15 –
My favorite remains Harry Turtledove. But many others had interesting takes...
Turtledove is considered a classic, or maybe rather pioneer, in alternative history. Never read, almost certainly never will.
If I had been local, it might be different, but the US doesn't score
that high up on civil wars in history. The US civil war is interesting and important mind you, but not enough to gobble up several massive Turtletomes. Maybe HBO could segue from Game of Thrones (War of Roses) to the US Civil war. It would certainly be more exciting if we add more sex and dragons. (Of course this is
already in the works.)
Twitter is more my form for history, now I follow the first
European civil war, the
#Thirty Years War that started here in Prague 400 years and a fortnight ago, with
the second defenestration of Prague. It will end May 2048, with the Tweets of Westphalia, assuming Twitter as a platform will last that long.
Scenarios is probably the most productive way of doing alternative histories, and many historians do that. Scenarios are collections of best guesses, both of mechanisms and outcomes. And they are usually short enough that I would read them.