Virtual history : alternatives and counterfactuals : Ferguson, Niall

Includes bibliographical references (p. 463-470) and index

Pt. 1. Liberal apprentice, 1929-68. The making of an extrovert — Circling home — Getting ahead in Canadian politics — Shoals of candidacy — Close to power

Pt. 2. Master politician, 1968-79. Driving the omnibus — Implementing the just society — Apprehended iInsurrection — Intranational diplomacy — Shokku — The price of gas — Stalking stagflation — Citizen Turner

Pt. 3. Leadership, 1979-88. A myth and a muddle — Oiling the tinman — Prime Minister for a day — Things fall apart — The road back — Participatory democracy — Creature from the black lagoon — Image, substance, and subversion — Mad dog and businessmen

A biography of the political life of John Napier Turner, who became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, following Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and who was briefly the prime minister of Canada before being defeated in a general election in 1984

Includes bibliographical references (pages 441-529) and index

Alvin Johnson — Kaiser’s European Union : what if Britain had “stood aside” in August 1914? / Niall Ferguson — Hitler’s England : what if Nazi Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940? / Andrew Roberts — Nazi Europe : what if Nazi

Germany had defeated the Soviet Union? / Michael Burleigh — Stalin’s War or peace : what if the Cold War had been avoided? / Jonathan Haslam — Camelot continued : what if John F. Kennedy had

J.C.D. Clark — British Ireland : what if home rule had been enacted in 1912?

Virtual history : towards a “chaotic” theory of the past / Niall Ferguson — England without Cromwell : what if Charles I had avoided the Civil War? / John Adamson — British America : what if there had been no American revolution?

What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? Historians have traditionally refused to ask questions of the past, preferring to assume that whatever happened was inevitable. But Virtual History challenges this complacency as leading historians apply “counterfactual” arguments to decisive moments in modern history.–Publisher description