Countless historians and lay thinkers have expressed their fantasy of being a "fly on the wall," able to view and listen in as a particular moment in history unfolded.Hollinshead has assembled an anthology of these participatory fantasies, written by 20 prominent historians. Through the imagined experiences of these historians, we can spend a day in -eleventh-century Cahokia, the Native American metropolis on the Great Plains; we can join Meriwether Lewis as he straddles the Continential Divide and puts to rest the dream of the Northwest Passage; we can sit in the sweltering courtroom as Bryan and Darrow joust over evolution. Although the various descriptions are well grounded in historical fact, they are inevitably filtered through the biases of the individual historians, and some will dispute their interpretations of reality. So this may not be strictly data-driven history, but it is provocative and should be a fun read for both historians and general readers.

Introduction by Byron Hollinshead and Theodore K. Rabb

JOSIAH OBER

At the Deathbed of Alexander the Great

TOM HOLLAND

Hannibal Crosses the Alps

THEODORE K. RABB

Christmas Day in the Year 800

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH

Venice, July 24, 1177

KATHERINE FISCHER DREW

Magna Carta and the King's Men

BARBARA A. HANAWALT

Rebel Leader Confronts King at Smithfield in 1381

LAURO MARTINES

Ten Thousand Brutes in Renaissance Florence

GEOFFREY PARKER

August 9, 1588: The Spanish Armada (Minost) Surrenders

KATHERINE DUNCAN-JONES

The Globe Theatre, February 7, 1601

JOHN H. ELLIOTT

With the Prince of Wales in Madrid, 1623

MORDECHAI FEINGOLD

By Fits and Starts: The Making of Isaac Newton's Principia

ELLEN V. HARRIS

tfandel Is Fired

WILLIAM H. MCNEILL

Frederick the Great and the Propagation of Potatoes

PAUL KENNEDY

The Battle of the Nile

ROSS KING

The Uncouth Rddle of Edouard Manet: Le Deeuner sur l'herbe at the

1863 Salon des Refuses

RICHARD PIPES

Nicholas 2 Signs the October Manifesto

MARGARET MACMILLAN

Tunnds, Territory, and Broken Promises: France Betrayed by the

Anglo-Saxons ?

CHARLES A. RILEY II

Backstage at the Ballets Russes with Picasso

FREEMAN DYSON

Exorcising Aristotle's Ghost

JOHN KEEGAN

The German Surrender to Montgomery at Luneburg Heath,

May 1945

Acknowledgments

Illustration Credits