Unmaking the West: ""What-If?"" Scenarios That Rewrite World History

Author:   Philip Tetlock ,  Richard Ned Lebow ,  Noel Geoffrey Parker
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
ISBN:  

9780472031436


Pages:   432
Publication Date:   23 October 2006
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Our Price $99.00 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Unmaking the West: ""What-If?"" Scenarios That Rewrite World History


Add your own review!

Overview

What if the Persians had won at Salamis? What if Christ had not been crucified? What if the Chinese had harnessed steam power before the West? Disparaged by some as a mere parlor game, counterfactual history is seen by others as an indispensable historical tool. Taking as their point of inquiry the debate over the inevitability of the rise of the West, the eminent scholars in Unmaking the West argue that there is no escaping counterfactual history. Whenever we make claims of cause and effect, we commit ourselves to the assumption that if key links in the causal chain were broken, history would have unfolded otherwise. Likewise, without counterfactual history we all too easily slip into the habit of hindsight bias, forgetting, as soon as we learn what happened, how unpredictable the world looked beforehand, and closing our minds to all the ways the course might have changed. This collection is thus both an exploration of alternative scenarios to world history and an exercise in testing the strengths and weaknesses of counterfactual experiments. ""If ever there was an argument for the usefulness of counterfactual history, this admirable, and admirably focused, collection has convincingly made it."" —Robert Cowley, editor of the What If?TM series ""With chapters ranging from politics to war to religion to economics and to science and technology, this is the most thematically wide-ranging collection on counterfactuality. An intelligent, cutting-edge study with important things to say."" —Jonathan C. D. Clark, Department of History, University of Kansas ""This volume is likely to become a standard reference in the literature on historical methodology, and could have a dramatic impact on the way future generations of historians approach disciplinary inquiry. . . . By allowing readers to share in the doubts and epiphanies that lead up to the authors' epistemological revelations, the volume allows readers to grasp the rich potential of approaching their own research from a counterfactual perspective."" —Aaron Belkin, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara Philip E. Tetlock is Mitchell Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?Richard Ned Lebow is James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and author of The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders, winner of the Alexander L. George Award for the best book in political psychology. Geoffrey Parker is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History at Ohio State University, a Fellow of the British Academy, and author of The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, winner of two book prizes.

Full Product Details

Author:   Philip Tetlock ,  Richard Ned Lebow ,  Noel Geoffrey Parker
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
Imprint:   The University of Michigan Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.575kg
ISBN:  

9780472031436


ISBN 10:   0472031430
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   23 October 2006
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

David Krasner is Associate Professor of Theater Studies, African American Studies and English at Yale University. His books include A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1920 and Renaissance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895-1910. He is co-editor of the series Theater: Theory/Text/Performance. David Z. Saltz is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Head of Theatre History and Theory at the University of Georgia. He is editor of Theatre Journal and is the principal investigator of the innovative Virtual Vaudeville project at the University of Georgia.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

RGJUNE2025

 

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List