Contents 1 Welcome to Sobel Wiki 2 For Want of a Nail 3 For All Nails 4 Latest activity

Welcome to Sobel WikiEdit

Sobel Wiki is a collaborative website about Robert Sobel's counterfactual history For Want of a Nail that anyone can edit!

For Want of a NailEdit

For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga is a counterfactual history by Robert Sobel, an American business historian. For Want of a Nail is unique among counterfactuals in being a book-length exploration of a single scenario: an unsuccessful American Revolution. The book takes the form of a nonfiction work from an alternate timeline, an academic history of the North American continent from 1763 to 1971, complete with footnotes, a bibliography, three appendices, and a map. In the alternate history it describes, the British won the Battle of Saratoga, leading to defeat for the American colonists in the North American Rebellion. Afterwards, the rebellious colonies are reorganized into the Confederation of North America, or C.N.A., a dominion of the British Empire that gradually gains complete autonomy over the course of two centuries. Meanwhile, the defeated rebels leave to settle in northern Mexico, where they found the State of Jefferson. In 1819, Jefferson and Mexico merge to form the United States of Mexico.

Like any history book, For Want of a Nail references hundreds of places, names, and events, most of which are unique to the alternate history it describes. The Sobel Wiki exists to help sort out all of these references, and to serve as an encyclopedia of this alternate timeline.

Although most of the articles will be written from an in-universe point of view, they can also contain italicised information from an IOW point of view.

For All NailsEdit

In 2001, a number of alternate history enthusiasts at the soc.history.what-if Usenet newsgroup (including Sobel Wiki creator Johnny Pez) joined together in the For All Nails project: to extend Sobel's timeline past its original 1971 terminus. The result was a series of over 300 Usenet posts, mostly narrative vignettes of life in the Sobel timeline, but also including newpaper and magazine articles, letters, and vitavision transcripts. Dan McDonald, one of the participants, began archiving the posts at his website kebe.com, but real life intervened, as it so often does, and the archive remains incomplete. In order to remedy this deficiency, the Sobel Wiki will be hosting a second archive of For All Nail posts here.

Latest activityEdit