Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World without World War I Hardcover – January 7, 2014

While some reviewers thought this a dry read, I found it to be interesting in that the author made no "great leaps"; rather, each variant history was well thought out and supported not only by facts, but the support of continuing threads of historical trends in existence at that time. These popular movements and beliefs really underlie more history than most writers take into account. Much superior to the "who conquered who," variety of. "what if" titles on the market....

Nearly one hundred years ago a man and woman were shot dead in Sarajevo. Because the man was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and the woman was his wife Sophie, their assassinations set into motion a series of events that culminated in the outbreak of World War I, thus affecting the lives of every person on earth, including those yet to be born. It's a pleasant pastime to study the past and ponder what might have happened if something hadn't happened, or if something else happened instead. We call these ponderings counterfactuals, and there's value in them in that they can help us better understand what really happened. Richard Ned Lebow, a political scientist at King's College London and Dartmouth, has come up with some intriguing scenarios for what might have happened had 19 year old Gavrilo Princip missed when he fired those shots back on June 28, 1914.There are four major counterfactuals, two postulating a better world and two a far worse one. The more positive ones focus on gradual democratization, economic expansion, and declining armaments, while those predicting more negative consequences foresee authoritarianism, extended cold war, and eventually nuclear conflict. The details are plausible and the scenarios seem likely to have played out the way Lebow predicts they would. I found it interesting that even in Lebow's more positive counterfactuals there is still plenty of room for improvement: a world without World War I might feature more racism, less opportunity, less globalism, and far less technological development. I also enjoyed Lebow's predictions for the way well known figures in our world, like Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, and even Barack Obama might have seen their career trajectories play out in his counterfactuals.Perhaps it's an unavoidable complication when writing counterfactuals, but when predictions are piled on top of other predictions they start seeming more and more unlikely. Lebow tends to get bogged down in some inconsequentia (was it really necessary to give us a full biography of Isaac Asimov's career as a Russian science fiction writer?). But overall this book is intriguing and the main counterfactuals eminently plausible. Those interested in more counterfactuals will be interested in "Virtual History," edited by Niall Ferguson, and the two volume "What If", featuring essays by various historians.

While the history he records is fascinating, the positive unfortunately doesn’t outweigh the negative. It is well worth reading, but you may find yourself mentally saving, “What?” And having to go back and re read Plan many days of reading and possibly note taking.

This is an interesting and quite thoughtful book in which the author looks at how the world might have been different if the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand had failed. Anyone familiar with the geopolitical situation pre-war will find much to consider in this alternate history and will have to admit that Richard Ned Lebow certainly knows his stuff. However, it is well-informed conjecture that drives this brief work and it shouldn't be taken too seriously. It is easy to pick apart the author's conclusions and his assessment of how things might have turned out is open to debate. Enjoyable, however, and even fun if you enjoy this sort of thing.

This excellent book supposes that Archduke Fran Ferdinand, heir of Austria-Hungary, is not assassinated in 1914, removing the largest factor in starting World War I, and indirectly World War II. The book reads a bit dry, much like a college textbook would. The author imagines how the world would develop without the powder keg being set-off. He imagines a better-case world, and a bad-case world (he actually imagines two lesser-case worlds, on being a sub-set of the other.) This is not a light alt-history book where you read of armies marching and fighting new battles; instead, this is s sober, scholarly take on things that might have been, should a set of amazing circumstances not led to the Archduke's assassination. For example, there is no Hitler and no Holocaust, so many more millions live, although the world remains somewhat anti-Semitic and no independent Israel ever forms. Many people who historically emigrated instead stayed home, helping allow the existing great powers to retain their scientific and cultural edges, to the eventual detriment of the United States. This is a good book if you're looking for something weightier to digest. Four stars.

A very interesting speculative telling about all the events that wouldn’t have happened if Archduke Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been killed in Sarajevo (which touched off WWI). Amazing that so much rested on such a relatively minor dignitary’s living or dying. Well-written, thought-provoking read!

Good counterfactuals story. The book is in two parts: the first one is the better world without world war one and the second part is a worst world without world war one(even the limited nuclear war between Imperial germany and Great-Britian is less harmfull. Read well. Everything is plausible.

Compré el libro despues de leer "The trigger" sobre la historia de Gavrilo Princip ... y vaya desilusión por llamarlo algo. Repetitivo, desorganizado, árido ... hay algun punto interesante, pero creo que dentro de la contrahistoria hay libros mejor escritos, mejor investigados y más entretenidos.Dinero tirado, y me di cuenta a la media hora de empezar a leer. Por si hay dudas, revisad las opiniones en amazon.com, cosa que no hice y me arrepiento

Received in time for signing of the book by my colleague Lebow. Thank you.

I remember reading a counterfactual essay from Professor Niall Ferguson in a national newspaper at the time of the 80th anniversary of the Armistice - a quarter of a century ago - in which he argued that Britain was primarily responsible for the longevity and destruction of the First World War, for turning it into a world war. His view was that if she had not intervened or only offered a token presence in the form of the BEF Germany would have beaten France and Russia in relatively short order but she wouldn't really have threatened the UK. The result would have been what he characterised as the Kaiser's European Union happening without British involvement, or the massive loss of blood, treasure and power which necessitated that involvement. More recently I read Sir Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers which covered much the same ground: he described the First World War as the 'ur-catastrophe' from which all the other catastrophes of the 20th century sprang and was unusually sympathetic to Germany and Austria-Hungary, noting how aggressive the Franco-Russian alliance was and how Britain sided with them because of the existential threat Russia posed to India across the North West Frontier: again Germany presented a negligible threat to the home islands which was easily contained. What came across was how avoidable this seminal conflict really was while I was astonished to read of how inept and amateurish the security arrangements Governor Potiorek had devised for the Archduke and his wife were: one got a sense of how easily their assassination could have been prevented.In all of the alternative counterfactual scenarios sketched out here there is no Hitler, no Stalin, no Holocaust, no Israel and no Arab-Israeli conflict as we would understand it. Anti-Semitism is rife in all of Professor Lebow's worlds but without the genocidal impulse to exterminate the Jews/ Israelis and drive them into the sea which has characterised our own real world. Similarly militant/political Islam is not a factor: India was never partitioned and became a Dominion within the British Empire while the Ottoman Empire remained largely intact and the Armenian genocide, the first to be identified as such, never occurred.In British politics the strange death of Liberal England and the rise of Labour never materialised either though Ireland's experience was much the same as in reality from 1918-21. Tsarist Russia was facing revolution regardless but the Bolsheviks were never have emerged triumphant in the absence of wartime conditions: it was more likely that something like the actual Kerensky government could have prevailed in more favourable peacetime circumstances. Without Communism gaining a foothold China would never have experienced Mao's Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution and would not be the force that it is in today's world. There would have been no superpowers: though the US would still have been the world's leading economy it would never have achieved full-spectrum dominance militarily, scientifically or artistically and its relationship with Europe would have been much more evenly balanced (the EU itself would never have existed). In the absence of the world wars the pace of change in terms of society in respect of race, religion and sex would have been much slower, with conservative, 'Victorian' attitudes prevailing for much longer.As one might expect this is a fascinating and thought-provoking read though there are weaknesses: the bias of the author shines through at various points such as when he suggests that only self-serving Republicans could doubt the reality and seriousness of global warming. Moreover I found the conflation of socialism with democracy rather jarring: all too often in our modern world they have actually been diametrically opposed. He also refers to Tottenham Hotspur aka Spurs as 'the Hotspurs' which is surprising from someone who has lived and worked in this country and otherwise evinces a good knowledge of it. Overall I did not find his conclusions too surprising: the areas in which we are better or worse off as a consequence of the world wars are well known. Nonetheless it is an interesting topic and a compelling read.

While some these hypotheses seem to have plausible grounding .. many are speculations are too far without sense or reason. The author projects a scenario of stupidity on everyone but the USA. I dont know if he's read Fischer's " Germany's Aims in the first works war'. If so his interpretation of it seems to differ from mine. This is an interesting concept .. but his negative and somewhat sneering opinion of Britain and Europe even in his conceptual world, come through strong and clear. This book certainly makes one think! And challenges opinion.. but much of this book annoyed me. Having said that.. worth reading!