REVIEWS TALL SHIPS BOOKS Histori cal fiction from the age of fig hting sail to WWI, WWII and modern times. Hardcover and paperback books, new and used. $3 for catalog, refundable with first order. Tall Ships Books, PO Box 8027 8 Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52408-8027
NAVAL, MILITARY, AVIATION & WORLD HISTORY BOOKS Out-of-print • Used • Rare Large catalogues issued several times a year. Subscription $5 for the next three issues, deductible from first purchase. We respond to want lists and also buy in our fie ld.
J.H. Faber, Box 24, Millwood NY 10546
THE GLENCANNON PRESS
Maritime Books The Jeremiah O'Brien, Lane Victory, Mission tankers, sea stories, south seas adventures, the Colin Glencannon stories and many more. Free catalog. Box 633 Benicia CA 94510 707-745-3933
Stobart created historical Marine painting in America.
He's produced more than 100 ltd. edition lithographs. Most rose in price. Some spectacularly. A number went out of print so fast you did not have time to say, "I'll buy one." Nantucket 1904 at $400 is coming out in November. There will not be enough to supply the demand. We have ordered some for our customers. Be a customer. Send a $100 deposit. We market rare Stobarts. For sale now: South Street by Gaslight Natchez, Maiden Lane Gateway to the West The Schooner America, Savannah We are buying: Boston, New York, Charleston, Nantucket, Ten Mile River St. Louis, Savannah, Hilton Head San Francisco & New Orleans
Sea Heritage {800) 247-3262 44
ner Bertha L. Downs. One wis hes that someone would replicate those e legant" lines to preserve this fine heritage. THAD K OZA
Wickford, Rhode Island The Essex Aircraft Carriers, by Andrew Faltum (Nautica l & Aviation Publi shing Company of America, Baltimore MD, 1996, 2 l 6pp, illus, appen, notes, biblio, g loss, index , ISBN 1-877853-267; $39.95 hc) Describing the 24-ship Essex class as the " most significant c lass of warships, in American naval hi story," Faltum begins hi s stud y with an introducti on to carrier evolution and the development of naval av iati on. In hi s view, the Essex class played a key ro le in making the carrier the backbone of the US Navy. He describes American , British and Japanese efforts to perfect this class of wars hip before World War II. Chapters on design characteri stics and construction of the 24 ships provide myriad interesting details. Among the many innovations were an economica l use of materials and the use of we lding in stead of riveting to save weight and time. With the commi ss ioning of the USS Essex on 3 1 December 1942 at Norfolk Navy Yard , these carriers began a long career that wo uld see them serve in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Faltum outli nes this serv ice in the l 2chap ters which make up the larger part of the book. Four appe ndices on individual ship 's technical data, operational history, aircraft technica l data and an appe ndi x on ship camoufl age follow . Excellent notes provide supplementary information. Faltum 's hi ghl y recommended introductory stud y pulls together much of the enormous amount of in format ion avail able on the 24 ships. For comp lementary views, see Norman Friedman's US Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History and Stefan Terzibaschitsch ' s Aircraft Carriers of the US Navy. H AROLD N. BOYER Locust Valley , New York The Battle for History: Re-fighting World War II, by John Keegan (V intage Books, ewYorkNY, 1996, 128pp, notes , ISB N 0-679-76743-6 ; $10pb) An outstanding feat ure of this excellent brief s urvey of the hi stories th at have been written of World War II is a readability that stems, not from any lightness of tone, but from the author's confident grasp of the flow of events, a
confidence grounded in ve ry sound scholarship . For thi s reason, Keegan ' s critical commenta ry provides in itse lf a fair overview of the titanic stru ggle, which in the end , as the a uthor points out, involved all but a handful of the nations of the world. Keegan ri ghtly , I think, di smi sses the latestrev is io nistang leon the war, name ly that Britain should have accepted Hitler's peace offer of 1940, thus bring ing the horrific confli ct to an early end. Hitler, he s uggests, would have gone on to subdue or subve rt the whole of the democratic world. And to a generation not brought up in the ultimate realities of World War II , he points out that popul ar res istance simply did not work against the Nazi war mac hine; those who attempted it were killed, their homes razed , the ir fam ilies hunted down and exterminated. Contrary to postwar mytholog ies, it was onl y in Yugos lav ia, Keegan notes, that resistance gained significant ground . There the pri ce was the death of fully I 0 percent of the popul ation . An equivalent casualty rate in the US today would be 27 milli o n dead. This authoritative book reminds us that John Keegan is the leading military hi stori an of our day. One may differ with his judgment on occasion, as when he neglects to note that Montgomery 's failure to clear the approaches to Antwerp, thus delaying the opening of that vital suppl y portforcritically important weeks in late 1944, was due to his deci sion to mo unt the overambitious Arnhem air drop. I a lso be li eve the destruction of Gennan armi es west of the Rhine in the Palatinate campai gn in 1945 was due more to Patton 's genius as an operational war commander, than to any German collapse. These, and other iss ues, will continue to be debated, and should be, as Keegan points o ut, that we may continue to learn from thi s most terTible of human experiences , World War II. PS Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine, by Michael L. Hadley (Naval Institute Press, Annapo li s MD, 1995 , 286pp, illus, notes, biblio , index , ISBN 1-55750- 134-3; $37.95hc) This informed analys is of how Germany has looked upon its s ubmarines and the men who took them to sea is based on a stud y of 250 nove ls, films , memoirs and fictionalized hi stories publi shed in German and the role of propaganda in s hap ing popular percepti ons. SEA H lSTORY 79, AUTUMN 1996