In 1942, Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison proposed directly to President Roosevelt that the history of the naval side of the war be prepared by an experienced and competent historian, that it be prepared while the history was being made, and that he—Morison—was standing by to receive orders. A more fortuitous and strategic historical decision could not have been made, for Morison was commissioned a lieutenant commander and given carte blanche for the task. In 1947, the first of the “Morison Histories” emerged, and now 13 years later, the job is finished with the publication of Volume XIV, Victory in the Pacific 1945 (Little, Brown, $6.50). (A full review of this volume will appear in the January 1961 Proceedings.)
The completion of the Morison series is the major event in the naval book field for 1960. Historians have covered the naval side of no other American war (and probably no non- American) as thoroughly as has Morison covered World War II. Morison brought to this formidable challenge a unique set of qualifications for historical research in the naval field. An examination of the contents of the series causes nothing less than profound admiration that the great task ever reached completion.
The Navy Department’s role in Morison’s work should, however, be noted and appreciated, for he was given all reasonable assistance and encouragement, complete freedom to see what and whom he wished, permission to travel to the scene of action both during and after a campaign or battle, and, above all, freedom to write as he wished any conclusions he formulated. Rarely has an “official historian” been given such a free hand.
With the completion of these 14 volumes, five on the European war and nine on the Pacific war, Samuel Eliot Morison has earned the gratitude of the Navy and of all the students of naval history. He has faithfully fulfilled the mission with which he was charged in 1942: the preparation of the History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II.
“Notable Naval Books of 1955” gave especial attention to The United States and World Sea Power (Prentice-Hall, 1955) by Naval Academy Professor E. B. Potter and 11 of his colleagues. That book was a pioneering achievement, and its adoption as a Naval Academy and NROTC text meant that virtually every officer entering the U. S. Navy since September 1955 would be exposed to that volume.
Hardly had The United States and World Sea Power been published when the Potter group began a thorough revision of their book, but soon the idea of a revision was abandoned in favor of a higher goal—the writing of an almost entirely new book. One of the 1955 volume’s more enthusiastic champions accepted an invitation to serve in an advisory and editorial capacity for the new volume, and 1960 saw the publication of Sea Power—A Naval History (Prentice-Hall, $11.00 [text]; $14.65 [trade]), E. B. Potter, Editor; Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Associate Editor. Potter and 11 of his Naval History Committee members are the authors of these 932 pages, which include a detailed bibliography, index, and dozens of charts and sketches.
A full review of the Potter book will soon appear in the Proceedings; therefore space will not now be taken to do more than emphasize that the scope and execution of Sea Power merit for it a place among the outstanding naval books of 1960.
History up to World War II
Almost every year at least one significant historical work on sea power during ancient and medieval times is published, but 1960 failed to live up to that tradition. The early modern period, on the other hand, has not been entirely neglected as is evidenced by Michael Lewis’s The Spanish Armada (Macmillan, $4.50). While not as full a treatment as Garrett Mattingly’s superb Armada of last year, the Lewis account is extremely well presented and possesses all of the readable and scholarly qualities which have made other Michael Lewis books obvious leaders in the field of naval literature. For example, the same author’s Social History of the British Navy, 1793-1815 (Allen & Unwin, 42/) is a masterful investigation and analysis of such oft-neglected personnel studies as officers’ backgrounds, shipboard living conditions, ranks, promotions, punishments, appointments, casualty causes and figures, etc. The publication of this meritorious work accentuates the need for a similar research project for the early American Navy.
Vancouver is today a geographical name associated with the Pacific Northwest. How it came to be planted there along with several dozen British Navy names (Hood, Puget, Whidbey, etc.) is ably told in Rear Admiral Bern Anderson’s Surveyor of the Seas (Washington University Press, $6.75), a long-needed, thorough biography of Captain George Vancouver, RN, whose 1790-95 voyage of exploration provided a lasting coast and geodetic survey of the Pacific Northwest Coast from northern California to Cook Inlet, Alaska.
Horatio Nelson’s annual appearance is made this year in three significant books. The first is Oliver Warner’s Battle of the Nile (Macmillan, $4.50), one of the British Battle Series (as is the Lewis volume, above). To this detailed account of Nelson’s great 1798 victory, Warner brings the same high quality of literary and research skills which brought deserved acclaim to his 1959 biography of Lord Nelson.
In recent years, the World War II books of Dudley Pope, the British journalist-historian, have earned high praise for their author (for example, 73 North and The Battle of the River Platte), and now Pope has been seized with the Nelsonian fever, which has prompted him to re-tell the story of Nelson’s greatest triumph in Decision at Trafalgar (Lippincott, $5.95). The Pope account is valuable not only for its fresh analysis of the actual battle but particularly for his explanation of the meaning and long-range effects of the Battle of Trafalgar.
The figure of Nelson is, of course, paramount in Kenneth Fenwick’s H.M.S. Victory (Cassell, $4.50) which is a fascinating biography of “the world’s most famous ship,” which has been continuously in commission since 1767.
Turning now to the American Navy, three 1960 books gave especial attention to the role of sea power during the American Revolution. William Bell Clark’s George Washington's Navy (Louisiana State University Press, $5.00) and W. J. Morgan’s Captains to the Northward (Barre Gazette, $7.50) both deal with the same basic theme—the personalities and deeds of the Continental Navy of the American Revolution. Both are based on careful research and both add appreciably to our knowledge and understanding of the uses to which sea power was put in achieving our independence.
A third book, George Billias’s General John Glover and His Marblehead Mariners (Holt, Rinehart and Winston $5.50), merits inclusion here in that Glover was the mastermind who organized and directed the moving of Washington’s battered forces from Long Island across the East River to Haarlem Heights late in the summer of 1776—one of the more significant amphibious operations (albeit a retreat) of the Revolution.
Readable and authentic biographies have been published on a number of “Preble’s boys”—that remarkable group of youthful naval leaders which gained everlasting fame in the Barbary Wars and in the War of 1812 -—but Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough’s biography was lacking. The Proudest Day (John Day, $5.75), by C. G. Muller, a journalist, is a highly readable and dramatic account of Macdonough’s Lake Champlain career (1812-14), but unfortunately, this book’s fictionalized features prevent it from being the first-rate biography that Macdonough richly deserves.
Despite the steady outpouring of Civil War literature, the naval side of the war received scant attention in 1960’s books, the only naval volume being Ruth White’s Yankee From Sweden (Holt, Rinehart and Winston $4.50), the absorbing biography of the Monitor's stormy creator, John Ericsson.
Among the post-Civil War era’s most dramatic and heart-rending military events was the Greely Arctic Expedition (1881-84), an episode in which a U. S. naval force under Winfield Scott Schley gained considerable renown by rescuing the ill-fated Greely and his few surviving companions in 1884. The whole story of the expedition and its rescue is well presented by Theodore Powell in The Long Rescue (Doubleday, $4.95).
Nothing of naval importance appeared in 1960 on the Spanish-American War and very little dealt with World War I. From Britain came Barrie Pitt’s Coronel and The Falklands (Cassell, 21 /), a long-needed account of those two 1914 sea battles off the south coasts of South America, the first a triumph for German sea power under von Spee and the second a British victory by Sturdee over von Spee.
A book which deals rather extensively with certain aspects of World War I—but also extends its scope many years each way from that war—is Donald Macintyre’s The Thunder of the Guns: A Century of Battleships (Norton, $3.95). Starting this ship-type history in the Crimean War era, Britisher Macintyre relates an absorbing, evolutionary account of battleships and includes the key roles played by the great ships of that type. As would be expected, particular attention is centered on the two world wars and on the British Navy.
A number of excellent yarns (Hellcats of the Sea, etc.) have come from the combined efforts of the war’s ComSubPac, Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, USN (Ret.), and Hans C. Adamson, and now they have joined forces again, this time to produce the full story of one of the U. S. Navy’s greatest peacetime disasters. Tragedy at Honda (Chilton, $4.95) is the full account of that 1923 destroyer pile-up on the California coast—an episode which Proceedings readers will recall from R. B. Hadaway’s article, “Course Zero Nine Five” in the January 1957 Proceedings.
World War II—General
Britain’s most distinguished naval historian of World War II, Captain S. W. Roskill, RN (Ret.), has produced one of the year’s most significant and useful books, White Ensign: The British Navy at War 1939-1945 (U. S. Naval Institute, $4.50 [$3.38]), which is reviewed on page 116 of this issue. Roskill, it will be remembered, is the author of that truly unique, four-volume (two of which have been published) War At Sea (1954—), the official British history of the naval side of the war. While this new Roskill book is approximately one-third the size of one volume of The War At Sea, White Ensign is sufficiently broad and detailed to give appropriate attention to every significant aspect of the naval war, and best of all, this book is equally as good reading as the other Roskill productions. All in all, White Ensign is most assuredly as fine a volume as its most significant rival in the field, Peter Kemp’s Key to Victory (1957).
This year’s most impressive history volume (other than the last of the Morison series) is Rear Admiral Julius A. Furer’s Administration of the Navy Department in World War II (Government Printing Office, $6.50), a 1,042-page tome produced under the direction of the Office of Naval History and containing a thorough account of all aspects of the Washington headquarters of the U. S. Navy during the war. Admiral Furer’s well- researched and sprightly-written history dovetails, of course, with the Morison series. This huge book will serve not only as a fine history, but also as an administrative guide should another emergency develop such as arose in 1940-41.
The World War II history program of the U. S. Army will include some 80 heavy volumes when completed, and many of the 50 already on hand have appeared in these annual round-ups, for the Army volumes are thorough and wide in scope and often give considerable attention to interservice matters. This year, five volumes merit mention: the first being Time Runs Out in CBI (Government Printing Office, $6.75) by C. F. Romanus and R. Sunderland. This volume completes this author-team’s trilogy on the China-Burma-India Theater, and this volume covers the final year of the war.
Closer to home, Military Relations Between the United States and Canada 1939-1945 (Government Printing Office, $5.00), by Colonel S. W. Dziuban, reveals considerable background on a less spectacular but highly effective wartime alliance which is still functioning and is increasingly important.
The Atlantic and Caribbean areas come in for special attention in Framework for Hemispheric Defense (Government Printing Office, $4.25), by Stetson Conn and Byron Fair- child. Here for the first time is presented the fully documented story of prewar and early wartime problems and plans for the defense of the Americas. Of particular interest to naval readers is the volume’s detailed accounts pertaining to such Atlantic locations as Greenland, Iceland, and the Azores.
Of outstanding significance in the history of the Anglo-American wartime alliance is Maurice Matloff’s Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1943-44 (Government Printing Office, $5.00), which is the second volume in this politico-military series. Particular attention is here centered on the major wartime conferences at Casablanca, Cairo, Tehran, and Quebec (1943 and 1944).
A fifth Army volume warrants mentioning for its reference value: Mary H. Williams’s Chronology 1941-1945 (Government Printing Office, $4.75) is a full and highly useful account of wartime events in all theaters, all services, and covering all belligerents.
From Britain’s impressive Official Military History project comes the third (of a projected 6-volume series) volume of The Mediterranean and the Middle East (British Information Services, $9.29) by Major-General I.S.O. Playfair and associates. During the eventful years (September 1941-September 1942) covered by this weighty book, one of war’s main themes for both Allied and Axis powers was the struggle for sea communications in the Mediterranean, a struggle in which tiny Malta played a major role. This volume devotes considerable attention to this theme.
From the U. S. Army Engineers comes what is (and probably will remain) the fullest, single, official historical account of the war’s amphibious operations in Amphibious Engineer Operations (Government Printing Office, $11.50), which covers in the greatest detail the “soldier-sailor-engineer’s” role in putting MacArthur’s forces ashore on New Guinea, the Philippines, Borneo, and Okinawa. Of especial interest is the introductory chapter on the history of amphibious operations prior to 1943.
Due to be released late in November is The Great Sea War (Prentice-Hall, $7.50), which will be a most useful volume in that it will contain the World War II sections of the previously mentioned Sea Power by E. B. Potter and associates.
Two massive works relating to the entire war bear mentioning here. First is Louis L. Snyder’s The War: A Concise History 1939- 1945 (Messner, $7.95), which relates in more than 500 pages of non-technical description the full picture of the political and military events of World War II.
The second large work is a unique compilation entitled The Taste of Courage (Harper, $10.00), a huge, skillfully-edited work prepared by two British publishing executives, Desmond Flower and James Reeves. Drawing their material from hundreds of eyewitness and participant accounts, these two editors have told the war’s entire story from the I-was-there viewpoint, both civilian and military, high and low rank, victor and vanquished. Of all the anthologies dealing with the war, this volume is the most impressive.
Two other volumes must be mentioned here despite the fact that they extend before and beyond World War II. First is a unique, biographical account of the role of a leading American industrialist (and former naval officer), Eugene E. Wilson, in persuading the American aviation industry to achieve its own salvation in those difficult 1944-45 days of cutbacks on wartime defense contracts. In Kitty Hawk to Sputnik to Polaris (Barre Gazette, $5.00), Wilson relates how, as the war drew to a close, he accepted and executed his challenging but often frustrating assignment. The latter part of this work is devoted to the author’s personal views on the role of air power as a factor in world peace.
Air power pioneers (such as Eugene Wilson) and air enthusiasts in general welcome Martin Caidin’s Golden Wings (Random House, $10.00) which is a pictorial history of U. S. Naval and Marine Corps aviation from earliest days to the present. This handsome volume is a companion to the same author’s pictorial history of the Air Force published three years ago.
World War II—The Atlantic
Campaigns, battles, ships, raids, and biographical accounts continue to constitute the subjects of the steady flow of books dealing with the 1939-45 war. From Captain Donald Macintyre (already mentioned as the author of The Thunder of the Guns) comes a most welcome volume Narvik (Norton, $3.95) which deals in detail with that rather pathetic and ill-planned operation to prevent Norway’s major northern port from falling into German hands. Captain Macintyre is no apologist for his own nation when he analyzes the reasons for or the effects of this severe setback early in the war.
Another British loss, this one two years and ten days after Narvik, is well described in Tobruk: Story of a Siege (Norton, $3.95), by Anthony Heckstall-Smith, whose role as a British naval liaison officer in the beleaguered Libyan port enabled him to prepare this firsthand account. During this prolonged siege, the only surface communications between Tobruk and friendly forces were maintained by Admiral A. B. Cunningham’s Eastern Mediterranean Fleet.
The Mediterranean, and especially the British stronghold of Malta, are the scene of action in Ian Cameron’s inspiring Red Duster, White Ensign (Doubleday, $4.50), which gives full play to the perilous tasks facing the Malta convoys from June 1940 until the invasion of Italy in September 1943. In that period of fierce sea and air encounters USS Wasp staged her double-entry into the Western Mediterranean to ferry Spitfires within maximum flight range (550 miles) of Malta, thereby inspiring the Churchillian quip, “Who said a wasp couldn’t sting twice!”
The fearful explosion of HMS Hood during the Bismarck chase in May 1941 was for Britain one of the greatest single tragedies of the war. That famous ship’s full biography from her construction during World War I to her demise in the Denmark Strait is faithfully related by Ernie Bradford in The Mighty Hood (World, $4.95).
By comparison with Hood, HMS Electro, a destroyer, was a small craft indeed, but she saw far more action than the giant battle cruiser, as is revealed in HMS Electro (F. Muller, 18/) by the ship’s Gunnery Officer, Lieutenant Commander T. J. Cain. Electro's end came in the Battle of the Java Sea (late February 1942), and many hours later more than 50 of her men, including the author, were rescued by USS S-38.
One of the most carefully researched analyses of German sea power in the war, and by far the fullest account of Operation Sealion, is Rear Admiral Walter Ansel’s Hitler Confronts England (Duke University Press, $7.50). The author, who began this work as a Forrestal Fellow several years ago, is now engaged in a companion study involving the German campaign against Crete in 1941.
The war contained no more fantastic episode than the 1942 British raid on the great French shipbuilding center at St. Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire River. That incredible commando action, wherein HMS Campbeltown (ex-USS Buchanan DD-131) played a key role, is superbly told in The Greatest Raid of All (Little, Brown, $4.95) by C. E. Lucas Phillips.
For more than 30 years, top adventure books have been emerging from the man with the greatest name in modern salvage operations, Edward Ellsberg, and his latest, The Far Shore (Dodd, Mead $4.95), contains no less drama and excitement than did its 16 predecessors. Ellsberg has always had the enviable facility of producing a superb yarn out of whatever he was assigned to do, whether it was to raise sunken submarines from Long Island Sound, carry out salvage operations under the searing Red Sea sun, or, as in the case of this latest volume, help insure the proper operation of the Mulberries and Phoenixes, the caissons towed to the beaches of Normandy and sunk to form harbors, during the invasion of 1944.
Four autobiographical accounts from exceedingly active World War II naval figures (three British and one German) contribute considerably to the literature of the war. Of major importance is Grand Admiral Erich Raeder’s My Life (U. S. Naval Institute, $6.00 [$4.50]), which is by far the most straightforward, personal, naval account to come from “the other side of the hill.” Raeder’s full career of high responsibilities—from the 1890’s to World War I, when he was Chief of Staff to Admiral Hipper, and on into World War II (until 1943), when he served as Hitler’s top man in the German Navy— are described with complete frankness (at times with naivete) and make this volume one of the half dozen key naval autobiographies to come from the top commanders of World War II.
The most important 1960 autobiographical study from the Allied side was Lord Ismay’s Memoirs (Viking, $6.75). Written with fullness of detail and with admirable candor, this account of the man who was Churchill’s Chief of Staff during the entire war adds appreciably to our understanding of World War II as viewed from the top.
The name of Captain Philip Vian, RN, first received widespread attention during the Altmark episode, when he commanded HMS Cossack in the February 1940 rescue of a host of British prisoners, all victims of Graf Spee's 1939 ravages of the South Atlantic shipping lanes. From then until the end of the war “Vian of the Cossack” was frequently heard from, whether on the Malta convoy run, in Operation Neptune against Normandy, or as Commander of the British Aircraft Carrier Squadron in the Pacific in 1945. His 14-year string of sea commands is the central theme of Vian’s memoirs, entitled Action This Day (Muller, 21/).
Two cruisers a generation apart highlighted the drama-packed naval career of the Royal Navy’s Augustus Agar: first, the Soviet cruiser Oleg, which Agar destroyed by torpedoes launched from his 40-foot motor torpedo boat at Kronstadt in 1918, a deed which won him the Victoria Cross; and second, his last sea command, HMS Dorsetshire, which fell victim to Japanese bombs off Ceylon in April 1942. These two episodes and many others are contained in Commodore Agar’s Footprints in the Sea (Evans, 30/).
From Germany comes a remarkable volume, called German Secret Weapons of The Second World War (Philosophical Library, $10.00) by Rudolf Lusar. Lusar here presents a surprising collection, with a brief description of development and uses, of a vast number of Germany’s unique weapons—ships, naval ordnance, naval electronics, etc.
World War II—The Pacific
That Midway was the turning point of the Pacific War (1941-45) is generally recognized, and the details of that June 1942 encounter are quite well known; nonetheless, T. V. Tuleja’s Climax at Midway (Norton, $3.95) is welcome, because it draws together a number of battle threads which have been hitherto scattered. Still at the top, however, is the older Midway by Fuchida and Okumiya, a truly masterful work on which Tuleja relied heavily for his own account.
Singapore is the focal point of two 1960 books, each with naval themes. The first is Kenneth Attiwell’s Fortress: The Story of the Siege and Fall of Singapore (Doubleday, $4.50). The author’s account of this “worst disaster and largest capitulation in British History” was based on his own fearful experiences during the siege and on his 1942 resolve to find out someday, for his own satisfaction, why Singapore fell to the Japanese. This journalistic description, complete with dialogue, is certainly not a definitive history of the fall of Singapore, but it constitutes a distinct contribution to the whole picture.
The second Singapore book, The Heroes (Angus & Robertson, 25/) by Ronald McKie, comes from “down under” and relates in detail the incredible story of two little-known Australian marine raids (by “Z” forces as they called them) against the Japanese bastion of Singapore. Mr. McKie’s painstaking postwar research has produced a detailed account of these two commando-type operations staged against impossible odds.
Only Forest J. Sterling could have written The Wake of the Wahoo (Chilton, $3.95), the story of “Mush” Morton and his gallant submarine crew, lost in September 1943. Sterling, yeoman par excellence in Wahoo from October 1942 until the moment before she sailed on her final cruise, has produced one of the most realistic yarns to come out of the Pacific war.
The Cold War
Of especial value in understanding the jockeying of the Big Three for positions in the immediate postwar world is Herbert Feis’s Between War and Peace (Princeton University Press, $6.50), which is a full analysis of the diplomatic and military events leading up to and including the Potsdam Conference of mid-summer 1945. This volume is marked by the same high quality which characterized the other Feis books on World War II.
Of distinct value in assessing the historical background of modern sea power is Sea Power in the Nuclear Age (Public Affairs Press, $6.00) by Stanford University’s Anthony E. Sokol. Of equal interest is a most provocative study, The Edge of War (Regnery, $6.00), by James D. Atkinson who offers the encouraging thesis that America’s flexibility and basic intellectual skills, if properly employed, will beat our opponents at their own game.
Exploration
Of particular significance in the history of naval exploration is the Vancouver biography already mentioned. Next is Philip I. Mitterling’s America in the Antarctic to 1840 (Illinois University Press, $5.00), which traces the story of American commercial penetration of the forbidding but rewarding seas surrounding Antarctica and concludes with an account of the highly significant explorations of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, USN, who led the U. S. Exploration Expedition into the South Pacific, 1838-1842. Mitterling shows conclusively that “American beginnings in the Antarctic were conspicuous ones.”
At the other end of the earth and more than a century later, the U. S. Navy continued its noteworthy successes in breaking through the Arctic. This story is effectively told by Commander James Calvert in his Surface at the Pole (McGraw-Hill, $4.75), the story of USS Skate's arctic adventures.
Exploration of a somewhat different nature is the theme of Robert C. Cowen’s Frontiers of the Sea (Doubleday, $4.95), which is an unusually well prepared volume of oceanography from the days of Cook and Maury down to the Piccard-Walsh record-making descent in January 1960.
A companion volume with similar import to the U. S. Navy is David I. Blumenstock’s Ocean of Air (Rutgers University Press, $6.75), which is an exceedingly full book covering all aspects of the earth’s atmosphere and interrelationship between that “ocean” and mankind, past, present, and future.
Reference Works
With the 1960 appearance of Volume I of the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Government Printing Office, $3.00), prepared by Admiral Eller’s Naval History Division, this most ambitious and highly useful reference series made an impressive start. This “A-B” volume also contains five valuable appendices relating to battleships, cruisers, submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, and other escort vessels.
Logistics is a key ingredient of the over-all science of war but is often neglected or grossly misunderstood. But that situation need no longer exist, for Vice Admiral George C. Dyer, USN (Ret.) has produced one of the most useful volumes on the subject—Naval Logistics (U. S. Naval Institute, $5.00 [$4.00]). This book has all the virtues of a sound text and will be a key reference work. A related volume, containing far more economic theory than does Dyer’s pragmatic approach, is The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (Harvard University Press, $9.50) by C. J. Hitch and R. N. McKean. These two Rand Corporation economists present the view that all military problems are basically economic problems insofar as they involve the efficient allocation and use of resources.
One of the lesser-known activities of the U. S. Navy during the current century was the 51-year (1900-51) naval administration of American Samoa, which is recounted by Captain J. A. C. Gray (MC) USN, in Amerika Samoa (U. S. Naval Institute, $6.00 [$4.50]). The naval story in itself is well worth having, but Doctor Gray (he was the last Senior Naval Medical Officer stationed at Samoa 1949-51) prefaces the administrative account with 100 pages of background on Samoa, its people, their unique and admirable way of life, the fa’a-Samoa, and the story of how Samoa came to be divided between Germany and the United States in 1899. This carefully researched and pleasingly presented history will be of interest to all who have been in the South Seas or who aspire to go there.
The Navy Blue Book (Bobbs-Merrill, $4.50; Military Publishing Institute, $1.50, paper) is one of the most useful, one-volume compilations of facts and figures on all aspects of today’s Navy. This book’s compactness, reliability, and amazing storehouse qualities make it a valuable reference book for the libraries of all Americans interested in national defense.
If the lessons of history are ever to be heeded the time is now, and that is the thesis of The Haphazard Tears (Doubleday, $4.50) by G. E. Reinhardt and W. R. Kintner. This volume tells the military-industrial story of how America has gone to war from 1898 to modern times, and it accentuates the basic relationship between technology and national survival. This book is indeed a timely warning to all who care about the future of this nation and of the Free World.
1960 saw the publication of two broad views of the history and meaning of warfare, the first being a thorough revision and updating by Lynn Montross of his unique War Through the Ages (Harper, $10.00), a book which first appeared in 1944. The other book is War in the Modern World (Duke University Press, $10.00 trade; $7.50, text) by the Duke University historian, Theodore Ropp. The Ropp book is a genuine success at reducing the vast panorama of military history to a single volume and is especially valuable for its superb bibliography.
The theme of civil-military relations has provoked a number of admirable studies in recent years (especially those by Huntington and by Millis), and the latest work in the field is a commendable volume, The Professional Soldier (Free Press, $6.75) by Morris Janowitz, sociology professor from the University of Michigan. This “social and political portrait” of the present status of the military man in American society is definitely sounder than a kindred volume entitled The Power Elite (1956) by C. Wright Mills.
This year’s single Marine Corps entry, a very useful and readable, one-volume account of the “American Marine and the Corps in which he serves,” is The Compact History of The United States Marine Corps (Hawthorn, $4.95) by two Marine lieutenant colonels, P. N. Pierce and the late Frank O. Hough. While the whole history of the Corps is surveyed, particular attention is appropriately devoted to the deeds and leaders of the Corps during the past score of years.
Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh annual survey of the outstanding naval books of the current year. No effort is made to cover fiction or books appearing in foreign languages. British book prices are usually stated in shillings and pence. Any of these volumes may be purchased through the U. S. Naval Institute, which gives a discount to its members.