Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.