If : or History Rewritten

New York: Viking Press. Good+ with no dust jacket. 1931. First US Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Spine darkened, cloth foxing, light tone, 1931 owner's signature, otherwise light wear. Solid hardcover. ; First US Edition, First Printing of this classic pioneering anthology of alternative history by historians examining counterfactual events. First published in England in 1931 as If It Had Happened Otherwise, but few stories were deleted and Van Loon's Nieuw Amsterdam added for the US. The What-If scenarios of the historians have been considered more methodical with their focus largely on outcomes of specific military battles, than the imaginative leaps of the science fiction writers. Robert Reginald; Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist 1700-1974; 13508. Contents: If the Moors in Spain had won / Philip Guedalia; If Don John of Austria had married Mary queen of Scots / G K Chesterton; If the Dutch had kept Nieuw Amsterdam/ H W Van Loon; If Louis XVI had had an atom of firmness / André Maurois; If Drouet's cart had stuck / Hilaire Belloc; If Napoleon had escaped to America / H A L Fisher; If Byron had become king of Greece / Harold Nicolson; If Lee had not won the battle of Gettysburg / Winston S Churchill; If Booth had missed Lincoln / Milton Waldman; If the Emperor Frederick had not had cancer / Emil Ludwig; If it had been discovered in 1930 that Bacon really did write Shakespeare / J C Squire.; (ix), 379 pages .