What If?, subtitled The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, also known as What If? The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is an anthology of twenty essays and fourteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, , and this book as well as its two sequels, What If? 2 and What Ifs? of American History, were edited by Robert Cowley. It was later combined with What If? 2 to form The Collected What If?. Cowley decided to create the book after several "What if?" articles were published in the Military History Quarterly, which he edits, and received much attention. Essays "Infectious Alternatives" by William H. McNeill What if a plague had not forced the Assyrians to withdraw from their siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC? "No Glory That Was Greece" by Victor Davis Hanson What if the Persians had won the Battle of Salamis? "Conquest Denied" by Josiah Ober What if Alexander the Great had died at the Battle of the Granicus River? "Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg Forest, A.D. 9" by Lewis H. Lapham What if Varus had defeated Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? "The Dark Ages Made Lighter" by Barry S. Strauss What if the battles of Adrianople in 378 and Poitiers in 732 had been won by the Romans and the Muslims, respectively? "The Death That Saved Europe" by Cecelia Holland What if Ogadai Khan had not died in 1241 on the eve of the Mongol siege of Vienna? "If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer" by Theodore K. Rabb What if Suleiman the Magnificent had begun his 1529 siege of Vienna earlier in the year? "The Immolation of Hernán Cortés" by Ross Hassig What if Cortés had been killed or his expedition into Aztec-dominated Mexico had failed? (The essay discusses La Noche Triste, the near-destruction of Cortés' force in 1520, as a key possibility of a point of divergence.) "The Repulse of the English Fireships" by Geoffrey Parker What if the Spanish Armada had successfully landed in England? "Unlikely Victory" by Thomas Fleming What if the Americans lost the Revolutionary War? (Thirteen ways are presented here.) "What the Fog Wrought" by David McCullough What if George Washington and his forces had not escaped after losing the Battle of Long Island? "Ruler of the World" by Alistair Horne What