by 
Leah
ANSWERS: 7
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A classic of the genre is Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, an early-1960s novel about what happens to the United States after Japan and Germany win World War II. The West Coast has gone Japanese, while the South is full of Germans and the Midwest is still its own independent country. Meanwhile, a mysterious "man in the high castle" has written a book about an alternate United States which won World War II. Dick's mind-bending and tragic novel inspired a whole host of "what if the Nazis won" novels, including the critically-acclaimed Fatherland. Vladimir Nabokov also picked up on the idea of an alternate history novel-within-an alternate history novel for his book Ada or Ardor, about what would have happened if the U.S. had been colonized by Czarist Russia.
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Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick is generally considered one of the great classics. You should be aware however that Dick has a reputation as a difficult author, it's often difficult to know what's really going on in one of his novels. Much more accessible but also highly regarded is Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove in which the Army of Northern Virgina is gifted with a new and powerful rifle by a band of mysterious benefactors. Robert E. Lee with AK-47's? Yeah, that's fair. Much more interesting is what happens after the inevitable victory. Turtledove drops time travel for the realm of the possible in How Few Remain and it's many sequels. This is a very different Southern victory with very different consequences. Eric Flint's The Rivers of War is the only alternate history I've seen set in the War of 1812. Pretty good, despite less than completely familiar subject matter.
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Harry Turtledove is perhaps THE master of the genre (though I'm a big fan of the Eric Flint "1632" series). His "Southern Victory" series runs 10 (!) novels from shortly after the confederate victory in the Civil War to after the equivalent of the Second World War. The "Darkness" series is in an alternate world where WW2 is fought with magic replacing science. The "War Between the Provinces" series recreates the Civil War in a world where magic works. Currently he has two alternate history series that are still active, the "Days of Infamy" series where the Japanese actually occupy Hawaii after Pearl Harbor, and the Atlantis series where N.America east of the Appalachians is actually an island in the Atlantic. He has also written several stand alone alternate history novels.
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Anything by Ann Coulter.
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A short history of mathematics. By W.W.R. Ball
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'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson might qualify. 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' by Michael Chabon definitely qualifies.
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Orson Scott Card has written several. ' The Tales of Alvin Maker ', ' Pastwatch : The Redepemtion of Christopher Columbus ', ' Robota ', and ' Empire '. Happy reading :)
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