History of Warships: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century [Hardcover]

James L. George (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1998

Organized by the four major ages of warships - galley, sail, steam, and modern - George graphically presents the design evolution, construction, and operational uses of specific ship types, including their defenses, weapons, propulsion, and famous sea battles. While his focus is on ships of major naval powers, he also offers interesting examples from lesser navies and includes Leonardo da Vinci's submarine designs, Germany's pocket battleship, Austria's World War I air-cushion catamaran, and Italy's naval tanks with lateral caterpillar chains.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557503125
• ISBN-13: 978-1557503121
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,763,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The perfect title, February 5, 2004

By 

Jeffrey J. Gudmens (Leavenworth, KS United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of Warships: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

This book is a very good, general overview of the history of warships. A reader would be hard pressed to find a better, single source GENERAL overview of the history of warships. Granted, if a reader wants to compare and contrast types of guns, etc., this is not the book. If you need a single source book to quickly determine the histoy of a warship type, this is it. The author named his book well.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Misdirected Focus, July 1, 2002

By 

BP (Herndon, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of Warships: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

Not being a naval expert, my review of this book might be taken with a grain of salt.

That being said, there are several things missing from this study that probably should have been included. The book lists an enormous amount of data, mostly ship weights and armaments. The tactical difference between a 9-inch gun over a 10-inch gun, however, is not discussed. It's obviously a central issue, yet the book just lists the guns of a given ship with no analysis of why one chosen weapon system matters more than another.

This goes for the weight, too. My eyes began to glaze over after the 100th tonnage listing because there was no context given as to why one number mattered more than another.

More illustrations would also have been helpful, as the differences between ship designs were emphasized. But, with the way the author wrote the book, it was often difficult to visualize the differences. A glossary would also have been a welcome addition.

The way a ship's design influenced tactics was pretty much breezed over as well.

So, for all the information packed into the book, I finished it with only a general understanding of the material.

3.0 out of 5 stars More mystery than history, August 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: History of Warships: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

This book will be a disappointment to the serious student of naval history. The author has an annoying tendancy to make sweeping statements of major historical import, followed by little or no supportive evidence. Most of the assertions concerning major design developments of antiquity are nothing more than educated guesses, often accompanied by disclaimers to that effect! Nonetheless, the scope of the work is ambitious, and the volume is useful if only as a broad timeline of the most significant design developments. As to the statement by the author that the book also ties these developments into the political and sociological evolution of modern civilization, those chapters must be in another volume. I couldn't find them.