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|title=Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World without World War I

|author=Richard Ned Lebow

|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan

|date=January 2014

|summary=A 'counterfactual', or alternative history of the twentieth century which visualises how it might have been if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated at Sarajevo in 1914.

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On the first page of this book, we are given a summary of events from August 2014. Queen Elizabeth is hosting a reception for Prince Harry and his bride, a niece of the German Kaiser at Balmoral, while the governor-general of India is involved in preparations for the next Commonwealth Games. This brief glimpse of a fantasy world is followed by a swift resumé of the twentieth century, as everything actually happened, and of changes in the world order wrought by both world wars. Chapter two tells of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo in June 1914, the final catalyst which precipitated the First World War.

For anybody fascinated by political or social history, this is an stimulating book that will inevitably lead to some thought as to how the world could have developed, and how it could so easily have been a very different place today. The author assumes a fair level of knowledge on the part of the reader, without which it would probably prove heavy going. To call it ‘entertaining’ might not be strictly accurate, and I doubt if that was the intention. But as ‘alternative history’ for the well-informed, and at around 230 pages just the right length not to outstay its welcome, I would certainly recommend this.

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