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Books about the Sea, Ship & Sailor Catalogue Upon Request 54
events. Toil's ability to focus on key figures, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Isoruko Yamamoto, Chester Nimitz, and Ernest King, and then turn his attention to crucial events, from Pearl Harbor, the aborted Wake Island relief expedition, the disastrous ABDA command in the East Indies, the early carrier strikes in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, the Doolittle Raid, and the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, provides rhe reader with an excellent perspective on the hazardous situation that the Allies faced in the first six months of the Second World War. SALVATORE R. MERCOGLIANO, PttD Buies Creek, North Carolina
flexes easily into modern-day conflicts, the wars we've watched on television, and those being fough t today, such as the global war on terrorism. Even the most attentive followers of the service and its day-today operations will be surprised at some of the details about what the service has been doing in recent years. An interesting addition to the book is a survey history of the commandants of the Coast Guard, an understudied topic if there ever was one. Only one, Ellsworth Bertholf, has had a biography written about him . Ir's a topic that deserves more attention.
The United States Coast Guard and National Defense: A History from World W"ar I to the Present by Thomas P. Ostrom (McFarland & Company, Inc. , Jefferson, NC, 2012, 264pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-0-7864-6480-7; $39.95) The role of the US Coast Guard in national defense is an enormous topic, of course, when one considers the global contentiousness of the twentieth century and the manner in which the Coast Guard's role has transformed over its first ninetyeight years under the current name. But Tom Ostrom is a remarkable writer and pulls it off with aplomb. While anecdotes and personal stories certainly have a place in his work, his strength lies in his depth of knowledge on Coast Guard history in the context of world history and how he presents rhar knowledge to his readers. His style definitely leans toward the technical side, but this should nor dissuade readers w ith an interest in the Coast Guard and its role in our history. Ostrom's latest title, and his earlier book, The United States Coast Guard in World war II, are foundational works on their topics, volumes to which researchers can look to years from now to understand why and how the service operates the way it does. Much of the topic is not new to students of Coast Guard history. The tales of the loss of the curter Tampa in World War I, the heroic actions of Signalman First Class Douglas Munro in Wo rld War II, and the loss of heroic aviator Jack Rittichier in Vietnam are well-known. It's what comes next that opens the eyes. Ostrom's research
Blood on the W"ave: Scottish Sea Battles by John Sadler (Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2010, 215pp, illus, biblio, index, ISBN 978-1-84158-9865-0, £20hc) The last thing I expected to read in a book about the history of Sco tland's nautical warfare is a story about a family of cannibals. Yet, a few pages into the book, there it is-the sixteenth-century tale of Alexander "Sawney" Bean and his murderous family who lived in a cave on the coast of southwest Scotland. This sensational anecdote serves to warn readers of how dangerous Scotland's coastline could be and pulls the reader into the book from the get-go. John Sadler's book is peppered with many attention-grabbing incidents while it takes a more expansive look at Scotland's maritime history. The reader gets shortbut thorough-explanations of the role of sea battles in rhe Roman and Norse invasions, the Scottish war of independence, the success and fa ll of privateers, and Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion in 1745. From there, Western naval history is examined through the eyes of important Scots, such as John Paul Jones, who left Scotland to fight for America in the Revolutionary War, and Admiral Thomas Cochrane, the man Napoleon called the "Sea Wolf." Sadler takes the reader through both wo rld wars and the significant technological advances brought by the submarine, focusing on the threat the German U-boat posed to Grear Britain. He concludes with a look at nuclear power and the new strategies employed ro fight terrorism from the sea.
JOHN GALLUZZO
Weymouth, Massachusetts
SEAHISTORY 143, SUMMER2013