A Dialogue on The Problem With Alt-History

My friend Bruce Johnson writes: "I guess alt-history is cool if it's just for fun, but here's my problem with taking it seriously. So say we are going back to November 22, 1963, and let's say Oswald's rifle jammed. So alt-history is going to tell us what the next five years would have been like …

Ask Students to Consider 20 What If Questions on US and European History

One way to assess students' knowledge of particular eras or periods of history is to ask "what if" or "think" questions to teach causality and consequences of events, and that history is contingent, not inevitable? They can mull these questions individually or discuss them with a partner or in small groups. Below are 20 examples. …

Pop Culture Embraces Alternative History, Hits the Modern World’s Zeitgeist

On Substack, I've updated a piece I first wrote on this blog in 2015 about how movies, books, TV shows, and even the news are filled with what-if, counter-factual scenarios. Pop Culture Embraces Alternative History, Hits the Modern World's Zeitgeist. I also posted it to the Alternate History group on Facebook and got a few …

Dangers of Too Much ‘What If’ or Historical Thinking, How It Can Destroy the Future

The comments in the NYT on Maureen Dowd's piece, "After 30 years, Gary Hart still wonders what might have been" suggest that many people could become bitter and conspiratorial about an imaginary past that could have been much better but was stolen by some nefarious "them" -- in this case, a set-up against Hart by …

Religion Is 1 of Society’s Foundations, and Yet History Is Fragile. What If…

These 28 short essays examine world religious history since ancient times. The seminal events or potential points of departure I identify are no means all-inclusive or comprehensive but are designed to get readers pondering how religion invisibly shapes their lives, culture, society, and civilizations whether they realize it or not. Depending on your religious perspective, …

Users Guide

http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/109/3/845.full.pdf+html

Necessary Teaching Tool

Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary Teaching Tool Lebow, Richard Ned History Teacher, v40 n2 p153-176 Feb 2007 Counterfactuals are routinely used in physical and biological sciences to develop and evaluate sophisticated, non-linear models. They have been used with telling effect in the study of economic history and American politics. For some historians, counterfactual arguments have …

Using Counter-factuals to Teach History

"Counterfactual history routinely gets a bum rap, mostly from people who haven’t taken time to explore it and reject 'what if' scenarios out of hand," wrote Dr. Mark Grimsley on the Society of Military History website. "When historians explain why things happen they are implicitly employing a form of 'might have been' history, for whenever they …

‘What If’s’ Have Important Lessons to Teach

Robert Cowley: "These books show that history depends on human decisions, human fallibility, accidents. It's not just a dry bunch of dates. It teaches you what was at stake, what was the real turning point where something happened that was different and would have made for a huge change.'' ''What did I learn from 'What …

Who Is This Material For? Identifying Niche Markets 1

Who is the audience for this material? 1) High school students with an interest in history. 2) Instructors of high school students who are interested in new ways to spark interest in history, to make it more interactive, so it doesn't seem so boring and deterministic, helping students develop their critical thinking skills, who want …