History up to 1860
British historian G. J. Marcus has set for himself a formidable task, the writing of a multi-volume history of British sea power, a job that has not been done since the seven- volume Clowes history appeared 60 years ago. The first volume in the Marcus series, The Formative Years (Little, Brown, $12.50) is a most impressive start and carries the story from the medieval prelude through England’s 16th century struggle with Spain, the 17th century Anglo-Dutch wars, and the 17th-18th century Anglo-French wars, and concludes with one especially useful chapter on the American Revolution. If this first volume is a fair sample of what subsequent volumes by Marcus will be, his Naval History of England will rank high among major works on that theme.
Moving now to the narrower aspects of naval history, we encounter a remarkably well- researched study on The British Search for the Northwest Passage in the Eighteenth Century (Longmans, 35/) by Glyndwr Williams. This British historian relates in full detail the stirring story of the British quest for the Northwest Passage, an intriguing motive which caused a host of explorers to follow the example of Frobisher (1576) and others in seeking what they were so confident existed, a broad, water passage from the Hudson’s Bay region to the South Sea. Only with the definitive explorations of Vancouver in the 1790’s did the search subside and shift in the 19th century to the Arctic region.
Among the several neglected areas of naval history research is—or was—the medical and hygienic side, often less exciting than the campaigns and battles, but definitely of basic importance. A number of years ago a dedicated former Royal Navy medic, John Keevil, Keeper of the Library of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, began the preparation of the medical side of the Royal Navy’s history, and prior to his death he completed two volumes. This important research has been continued by Professor Christopher Lloyd of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich and Surgeon Captain Jack L. S. Coulter of the Royal Naval Medical School. Building on the solid foundation established by Keevil, these two historians have produced Volume III of Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900 (Williams & Wilkins, $10.00) covering the period 1714-1815, a period which saw the rise of British sea power to its zenith as well as some of the most significant advances in naval medicine.
Two volumes dealing with privateering appeared this year. In the first, The Privateers (Random House, $4.95), Fleming MacLeish and M. L. Krieger relate in detail how two English ships, the Duke and the Dutchess, sailing under letters of marque, circumnavigated the world (1708-1711), and attacked any enemy, mainly Spanish ships, which they encountered during those years of the War of the Spanish Succession. The other title in this field is The American Privateers (Dodd, Mead, $4.00) by Donald B. Chidsey. This book is a brief sampling of some of the more illustrious U. S. privateers of the American Revolution, the Quasi-War with France, and the War of 1812.
Ever since Nordhoff and Hall produced the best selling novel Mutiny on the Bounty in 1932, Captain Bligh has been one of the best known figures in the long history of the Royal Navy, but not until the appearance of HMS Bounty (William Morrow, $4.50) by Alexander McKee had there been readily available a non-fictionalized account of that renowned voyage of 1788 which resulted in the most famous mutiny of all time. McKee has performed a masterful job of research and presentation in this book which merits a priority over all fictionalized accounts.
One of the most tragic events in the long history of Britain’s Royal Navy occurred at Portsmouth in 1757 when Admiral John Byng, loser of the Minorca campaign of the previous year, was placed on trial and executed. This sorry episode is set forth in full by Dudley Pope in his At Twelve Mr. Byng Was Shot (Lippincott, $6.95).
Perhaps no ship type has a rank of such esteem in the rich traditions of the American Navy as has the old time frigate, and in his Tall Frigates (Dodd, Mead, $3.00), Frank Donovan relates the story of these valiant ships starting with three built in the 1790’s— the United States, Constellation, and Constitution. His tale ends with the last of the frigates (this one equipped with steam), the USS Merri- mac, later the CSS Virginia. Of particular interest in this pleasant little volume is the concluding do-it-yourself chapter entitled “How to Sail a Frigate.”
C. S. Forrester’s novels invariably provide a genuine education in Royal Navy history, and the latest, Hornblower and the Hotspur (Little, Brown, $3.95) is no exception. This yarn presents Hornblower as commanding officer of HMS Hotspur, and together, ship and captain harass the French base at Brest in the months following the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803.
The year 1962 may prove to be unique in naval writing if only because no new biography of Nelson has appeared. The book closest to this perennial theme, however, is Evelyn Bereckman’s Nelson's Dear Lord (Macmillan, Ltd., 30/) which is a vivid portrait of Earl St. Vincent (Admiral Jervis) who played a major role in the reform of the Royal Navy and was said to have been the chief architect of the Mediterranean campaign which led to the victory of Trafalgar.
June 1963 will be the 150th anniversary of one of the U. S. Navy’s most humiliating defeats, the USS Chesapeake's humbling by HMS Shannon off the port of Boston. In Guns Of Cape Ann (Rand McNally, $3.95), Britisher Kenneth Poolman has produced a rather exciting factual account of that one battle and the ships and men who fought in it.
The Civil War
Especially welcome among this year’s Civil War volumes is Rear Admiral Bern Anderson’s By Sea and By River (Knopf, $5.95), the latest and one of the two best one-volume coverages of the naval history of the Civil War. Based on careful research and sound strategic and tactical understanding, this book relates the full story of the War’s naval operations. Especially useful is Admiral Anderson’s concluding chapter wherein he summarizes and evaluates events, leadership, and strategy.
The third and concluding volume of V. C. Jones’ The Civil War at Sea (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, $6.00) covers the final two years of the War. Beginning with the fall of Vicksburg and the splitting of the Confederacy in July 1863, Jones relates in some detail the remaining major events, in particular, Mobile Bay, high seas raiding activities, and the Fort Fisher campaign—and concludes with Waddell’s defiant cruise in CSS Shenandoah from the Bering Sea to Liverpool in the summer of 1865, weeks after the Civil War had closed.
The Civil War’s most renowned naval event, the Monitor-Virginia battle of March 1862, is the central theme of Robert McBride’s The Dawn of Naval Armor (Chilton, $7.50).
The Navy Department’s Naval History Division has released the 117-page, 1862 portion of its detailed and illustrated Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865 (Government Printing Office, price to be announced).
World War I
Again this year the principal World War I naval book centers on the dynamic Admiral Sir John Fisher. Admiral William Jameson, Royal Navy (Retired), is the author of The Fleet That Jack Built (Houghton Mifflin, $5.95) which consists of nine detailed biographical sketches of Royal Navy leaders who helped to prepare and use British sea power in World War I. Those nine are: Keppel, Wilson, Fisher, Beresford, Scott, Jellicoe, Beatty, Tyrwhitt, and Keyes.
Statesmen who devote much of their lives to public affairs frequently top off that service by writing their memoirs, and grateful we should be for those firsthand historical accounts, even though the memoirs usually fail to tell all that the historian wishes. The latest of the great military figures (and this one actually a politico-military figure) to render this service to posterity is Britain’s Lord Hankey, whose The Supreme Command 1914-1918 (two volumes, Allen and Unwin, 84/) reveals a world of information about the high-level British (and Allied) conduct of World War I. As Secretary of the Committee on Imperial Defence, Hankey was in a most advantageous position to view those momentous events and influential persons.
Lord Hankey, a Royal Marine Artillery officer nearly six decades ago, caught the eye of Admiral Fisher who urged Hankey’s appointment to the newly established Committee on Imperial Defence, and in 1912 Hankey moved into the secretaryship of that all- important group. Throughout the First World War he was the right-hand man to Prime Ministers Asquith and Lloyd George. The Hankey memoirs are especially welcome for he is the last of that great group of British World War I leaders to tell his story. When the Hankey memoirs of the two decades following the war—a period when Hankey continued his CID job and also served as Secretary of the Cabinet—are available, his great contribution to historical writing will be complete.
Incidentally, a scholarly account of the activities of the committee Lord Hankey served for so long is admirably told in Defence by Committee (Oxford, $8.00) by F. A. Johnson.
One of the first War’s more bizarre weapons, and one attracting remarkable attention and research in recent years, is the German zeppelin. Three books appeared this year— all of which make individual contributions to the zeppelin story. British journalist Kenneth Poolman’s Zeppelins Over London (John Day, $4.00) is a fast-moving series of episodes— mostly British—involving the raids against Britain, raids which lasted from September 1915 to August 1918. The German side of these attacks is admirably told by Dr. D. H. Robinson in Zeppelins In Combat (Foulis, 63/), a story which the same author presented, in part, in “Zeppelins in the German Navy 1914-1918” in the July 1956 Proceedings. The third book to deal with this general subject is a carefully researched and thoroughly documented work entitled The British Rigid Airship 1908-1931 (Foulis, 63/) by Robin Higham. These last two volumes constitute the finest coverage of the two related themes with which they deal.
Especially useful is the profusely illustrated handbook Warships of World War I (Ian Allen, 15/), edited by H. M. Le Fleming. This author previously presented much of the same information, all of which deals exclusively with the British and German navies, in several volumes; now he has added data to his original publications and combined them into this one unique guide to the British and German naval vessels of the period.
World War II
This year’s major World War II books are centered on personalities. Foremost in this category is the highly significant Forrestal and the Navy (Columbia University Press, $6.95) by Robert G. Albion and Robert H. Connery. This work is not a full-length biography, but rather a topical presentation covering the multitudinous activities of Forrestal from the time he entered government service in 1940 until he left the Navy Department to become the first Secretary of Defense in 1947. This account is unquestionably the major naval biographical book of 1962 and as such sheds considerable light on the high-level civilian administration of the U. S. Navy in World War II and immediately afterward.
Covering a broader scope than merely World War II is the action-packed biography, Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller (Little, Brown, $5.95) by veteran biographer Burke Davis. Puller, five-time winner of the Navy Cross, served his country and the Marine Corps with distinction through the Nicaraguan campaigns of the 1920’s, World War II, and Korea, and author Davis has superbly captured the legendary “Chesty” Puller character.
Another biographical effort of 1962 is Admiral Arleigh (31-Knot) Burke (Chilton, $7.50) by Ken Jones and Hubert Kelley, Jr. While this book is interesting as far as it goes, it will never qualify as a full-length biography of the dynamic Burke, whose career during the past two decades has been truly unique.
Two other accounts, each autobiographical, contain revelations closely associated with some of the World War II leaders of the U. S. Navy. First is Lewis L. Strauss’ Men and Decisions (Doubleday, $6.95) whose author worked closely with Knox and Forrestal in Washington during the War. The other volume is General Leslie R. Groves’ Now It Can be Told (Harper, $6.95) whose author headed the Manhattan Project which produced the A-bombs. Both Strauss and Groves must be recognized as pioneers in administering the development of nuclear energy during the War.
Leaving the biographical field and entering specific campaigns, we encounter two recent volumes dealing with severe British setbacks in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1941. Greek Tragedy 1941 (Anthony Blond, 25/) by Admiral H. T. Baillie-Grohman and Anthony Heckstall-Smith, is a vivid, first-hand account of the loss of Greece. A companion volume, The Fall of Crete (Anthony Blond, 25/) by Alan Clark, covers in detail what Churchill called “a head-on collision with the very spearpoint of the German lance.”
Both of these volumes are popular accounts of major events that are much more thoroughly covered in the detailed official histories produced in Britain and Australia.
Three recent volumes, all British in origin, deal with the ever-popular theme of submarines. C. E. T. Warren and James Benson’s Will Not To Fear (William Sloane, $4.95) is the fantastic story of HM Submarine Seal, which was captured by Germany while on a mine-laying mission in the Kattegat early in 1940. These two authors are well remembered for their other naval writings, especially their Midget Raiders (1954) and their story of the Royal Navy’s 1939 peacetime loss of HM Submarine Thetis.
The second submarine volume, Submarine Victory (Kimber, 25/) by David A. Thomas, covers the role played by British submarines throughout the entire war.
The third volume, Submariners V.C. (Peter Davies, 21/) by Admiral Sir William S. Jameson, cuts across both World Wars and ranges from the Dardanelles to the Pacific, for it is the heroic account of the fourteen Royal Navy submariners who won the Victoria Cross in the two wars, nine of them in World War II.
One of the co-authors of the above mentioned Greek Tragedy, Anthony Heckstall- Smith, has produced in The Fleet That Turned Both Ways (Anthony Blond, 30/) a popular account of the French Navy during the 1940 crises in the war.
Turning now to the Pacific War, we encounter what must be called the analysis of the how-and-why of Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford University Press, $7.50) is the most thoroughly researched work on this most controversial of all modern American events, and although readers may disagree with this author’s conclusions, they will have to accept her superb documentation and over-all presentation.
The most impressive action volume on the Pacific War is Robert Leckie’s Strong Men Armed (Random House, $7.95) which is the best one-volume coverage of the U. S. Marines’ war against Japan.
Commander E. P. Stafford’s The Big E (Random House, $7.95) is the biography of USS Enterprise (CV-6), World War II’s most famous carrier.
From Japan, with some adroit American assistance, come two welcome accounts of the Pacific War. The End oj the Japanese Imperial Navy (Norton, $4.50) by veteran Japanese military commentator Masanori Ito and Roger Pineau is the best Japanese-inspired broad coverage of the entire war. The second volume, much narrower in scope, is The Kaiten Weapon (Ballantine, $.75) by Yutaka Yokota and J. D. Harrington. This is Yokota’s first-hand account of the fantastic role of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s suicide torpedoes and the men who were trained for those incredible missions.
The year’s principal official history on a World War II theme is the third volume of The War Against Japan (British Information Services, $11.35) by Major General S. W. Kirby and Associates. This volume covers the war from August 1943 to the August 1944 fall of Myitkyina, a Japanese stronghold in Burma. The story is mainly concerned, of course, with the activities of British-American forces in the Southeast Asia Command, but sufficiently detailed accounts of such related events as the Marianas Campaign are included to keep the whole war against Japan in proper perspective.
The U. S. Navy’s World War II operational history was concluded in 1962 with the publication of S. E. Morison’s Supplement and General Index (Little, Brown, $7.50) which is Volume XV in the Morison series. This volume’s title fails to reveal the broad, varied and highly useful contents of the book, for within this volume are: Part I—the story of postwar operations of the U. S. Navy in the Pacific; Part II—a listing of all ships of the U. S. Navy during World War II, and, for many, their dimensions and armament; Part III—a list of all important errata pertaining to Volumes I through XIV; and Part IV— the General Index to all of those volumes.
The year 1962 saw the appearance of an unusual number of volumes devoted primarily to planes of World War II. Most impressive is the series by William Green, War Planes of the Second World War (Hanover House, $2.75, four volumes to date). When completed, this series will undoubtedly be the most significant reference work in the field, for it contains full details of all aircraft, both operational and experimental, of all combatant countries. Closely related to the above series is The Hawker Hurricane (Hanover House, $5.95) by F. K. Mason. This renowned plane fought on all fronts in World War II.
Three other aviation volumes follow closely. Edward H. Sims’ Greatest Fighter Missions (Harper, $4.95) deals with the top U. S. Navy and Marine aces of World War II. The other two works were emerging just as this roundup was being completed, and though they are here listed, they have not been examined by this writer. They are Bruce Robertson’s United States Naval and Marine Fighter Aircraft 1916-1961 and Owen Thetford’s British Naval Aircraft Since 1912 (both published by Aero Publications, each $9.95).
One picture book, this one with abundant textual material, merits mention in this listing. A. A. Rooney’s The Fortunes of War (Little, Brown, $6.95) devotes one of its four major sections to the Battle for Tarawa; another to the D-Day landings in Normandy. These are well presented both in pictures and in text.
Two volumes published in 1962 deal extensively with U. S. Navy and Marine Corps operations in Korea. The first is Robert Leckie’s Conflict: The History of the Korean War (Putnam, $6.95). The other is U. S. Naval Operations: Korea (Government Printing Office, $4.25), written by James A. Field, Jr., under the over-all supervision of the Navy Department’s Naval History Division.
Sea Power and Strategy
Britain’s most eminent naval historian of World War II, Captain Stephen W. Roskill, has again scored an impressive literary and professional achievement, this time with his The Strategy of Sea Power: Its Development and Application (Collins, 25/). Roskill’s superb War at Sea volumes won him the distinction of being named, in 1961, Senior Research Fellow of the new Churchill College at Cambridge, and his latest book is an outgrowth of the Lee- Knowles Lectures he delivered at Cambridge during 1961.
This Roskill volume traces the broad development of British sea power from earliest times to the end of World War II and then sets out to assess its meaning as well as its present and future application. There is a paramount need, Roskill asserts, for a mobile deterrent, for an integrated and balanced fleet within the NATO alliance as a whole, for a reconstruction of broad strategy on a truly inter-service basis, and especially for a thorough re-examination and re-emphasis of Britain’s—and the Western world’s—maritime needs.
The U. S. Naval Institute continues to attempt to fill a distinct need in the presentation of professional literature by undertaking the publication of the Naval Review (U. S. Naval Institute, $10.00; $7.00 to Institute members). Analytical in form and strikingly illustrated, the 7962-1963 Naval Review presents 14 significant essays dealing with various phases of the current policies and operations of the U. S. Navy in particular, and the defense effort at large. These articles, all by knowledgeable men, present ideas which merit most serious reflection.
In addition to this principal section of the 1962-63 Naval Review substantial space is devoted to a rundown of recent changes in the world’s warships, to a 1961 Naval Chronology and to a brief review of current foreign naval annuals.
This first Naval Review is a genuinely impressive start of what should be a real contribution to annual current analyses of where we stand in sea power. It will take its place alongside the other two standard annuals, Brassey’s and Jane’s.
Two volumes of distinct merit have emerged this year from Columbia University’s Institute of War and Peace Studies. Three well- qualified authorities, W. R. Schilling, P. Y. Hammond, and G. H. Snyder, have combined their efforts in the production of Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (Columbia University Press, $10.00). This trio here presents three challenging studies of American national security policy and defense budgets for the period 1948-1955, that crucial period when this nation passed from a position of atomic monopoly to one of thermonuclear stalemate.
The second Columbia-sponsored study is Changing Patterns of Military Politics (Free Press of Glencoe, $7.50), wherein Samuel P. Huntington has edited a stimulating collection of several writers’ viewpoints, varying widely in scope, but all centered on the book’s unifying theme. In many respects Huntington’s “Foreword” is the most significant portion of this thought-provoking collection.
One of the year’s most important and distressing revelations appears in Cuban Invasion (Praeger, $3.95, Ballantine, $.50) by journalists K. E. Meyer and Tad Szulc. This book sets forth the dreary details of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961.
The full story of the U. S. Marine Corps and its 1775-1962 history is thoroughly and fearlessly recounted by Marine Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr. in Soldiers of the Sea (Naval Institute, $14.00, $10.50 to Institute members). This long-heralded work is definitely the broadest and most comprehensive biography of the Corps. The author is well-qualified to write this spirited book, for his impressive career in the Corps dates back a quarter of a century, and, between combat assignments, includes authorship of a substantial number of books and articles. Soldiers of the Sea also carries numerous illustrations vividly portraying Marines from 1775 to Korea.
The Navy League of the United States has long needed its history related carefully and objectively, and these qualities truly mark Armin Rappaport’s Navy League of the United States (Wayne University Press, $7.50). This study is one of the year’s major scholarly works dealing with a naval theme.
Royal Navy Captain T. D. Manning has rendered a distinct service by his masterful history, The British Destroyer (Putnam 42/), which does for that type what Oscar Parkes’ British Battleships and Lipscomb’s The British Submarine did for those craft. With superb photographic coverage Captain Manning traces six decades of destroyers from the Royal Navy’s original Havock-class to the present Daring-class.
Highly useful as a historical record is James Dolby’s The Steel Navy (MacDonald, 15/) which is a concise reference, complete with silhouettes, to all of the principal vessels built for the fleets of the British Commonwealth since the construction of Britain’s first ironclad, HMS Warrior, launched in 1860.
A related theme is the subject of Captain W. G. Schofield’s Destroyer—60 years (Rand McNally, $7.50), which is a large pictorial coverage, with informative text, of the U. S. Navy’s DD’s from USS Bainbridge (DD-1), completed in 1902, to USS Bainbridge (DLG- N-25) which joined the Fleet in 1962.
A brief pamphlet-size, illustrated account of six decades of destroyers is Destroyers in the U. S. Navy (Office of Naval History, no price announced).
Beneath the Waves
Two 1962 books serve to accentuate the modern U. S. Navy’s present and future roles. Each book describes epic undersea voyages of 1960; each was written by the naval officer who commanded the submarine involved.
In the spring of 1960 the USS Triton (SSN-586) circumnavigated the globe on a 36,000 nautical mile, two month voyage— submerged. The Triton’s commanding officer, Captain Edward L. Beach, is one of the best known naval writers in today’s U. S. Navy, and his Around the World Submerged (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, $4.95) is a fascinating account of the purpose, planning, and conduct of that pioneering cruise.
Equally intriguing is Commander George P. Steele’s Seadragon (Dutton, $4.95), which narrates his nuclear submarine’s 1960 discovery and traversing of an underwater Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Both of these books are genuine tributes to the men and ships of today’s U. S. Navy.
Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood has again teamed with H. C. Adamson to produce a thrilling volume dealing with U. S. submarines. In Hell at Fifty Fathoms (Chilton, $4.95) Lockwood and Adamson relate in detail the story of peacetime submarine disasters that led to modern survival and salvage methods. Particularly valuable for historical purposes is this book’s appendix, which lists submarine accidents of all nations from 1864 (CSS Hunley) to 1960.
A most exciting autobiographical account is Joseph S. Karneke’s Navy Diver (Putnam, $4.50). During his 20-year career, Karneke’s diving duties enabled him to experience and to endure perils the like of which few individuals, even fellow divers, have had.
Several other undersea books merit inclusion in this roundup. Irwin Stambler in The Battle for Inner Space (St. Martin, $5.00) assesses the strengths and weaknesses of American underwater deterrent potential as contrasted with that of the Soviets.
H. B. Kent’s Submariner (Macmillan, $3.00), while designed for young adults, is a fine presentation of what goes on in the basic training program at the Navy’s New London Submarine School.
In They Fought Under the Sea (Stackpole, $4.95) the editors of Navy Times have briefly traced the history of submarine warfare from its earliest beginnings to the present. Cord- Christian Troebst’s Conquest of the Sea (Harper & Row, $4.95) includes an interesting account of the Trieste’s seven-mile descent in its 1960 Pacific experiment.
Robert C. Duncan’s America’s Use of Sea Mines (Government Printing Office, $1.75) is a brief, but amazingly meaty account of sea mines and their use from the Revolutionary War through World War II. The author was former Chief Physicist at the U. S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory.
General
Most handsome of all these volumes is a type of “Specialized Jane’s,” Oceanographic Vessels of the World (U. S. Hydrographic Office, $4.50) which presents vital statistics and photos (in most cases) of the world’s oceanographic ships.
One of the most unusual naval and maritime volumes released in 1962 is M. V. Brewington’s Shipcarvers of North America (Barre Publishing Co., $12.00). Shipcarvers were those, half artists-half tradesmen “whose skill with the chisel gave so much of beauty and grace to the sailing ship.” Today these artisans’ works are highly treasured museum pieces, such as trail and quarter boards, figureheads, billet heads, and stern designs. Of particular interest is Brewington’s chapter, entitled, “The Figureheads of the Frigate Constitution.”
From the Mystic Museum’s Director E. A. Stackpole comes a profusely illustrated anthology of 18 exciting first-person narrations of ocean exploits, Those In Peril On The Sea (Dial, $12.50). These accounts range from St. Paul’s shipwreck on Malta to USS Skate's breaking through the ice at the North Pole.
Two polar exploration books appeared in 1962. The first is Everett S. Allen’s Arctic Odyssey (Dodd, Mead, $5.00). It recounts the life of veteran explorer Rear Admiral Donald B. Macmillan, whose polar trips began with Robert Peary in 1908. Of particular interest to young and not-so-young readers is one of the more recent American Heritage Junior Library numbers, Heroes of Polar Exploration (Meredith Press, $3.95) by R. K. Andrist. This colorful and authoritative volume describes the adventures of such famous polar pioneers as Eric the Red, Captain Cook, Frobisher, Amundsen, Peary, Byrd, and others. A third, A. Denis Clift’s Our World in Antarctica, is a superb pictorial and narrative production which emphasizes the U. S. Navy’s logistics support efforts and American scientific activity.
The American Heritage History of Flight (Simon & Schuster, $15.00) was scheduled for release shortly after this summary was prepared and was therefore not seen, but all indications point to its being another major contribution in the growing list of American Heritage books.
A remarkable insight into the Communist world is John D. Harbron’s Communist Ships and Shipping (Adlard Coles, 45/) which does not deal with Communist naval ships but rather with merchant craft. This book is based on extensive research plus first-hand visits to many of the Communist bloc shipbuilding centers. Photographs and charts add to this volume’s over-all value.
Finally the U. S. Naval Institute is scheduled to publish Uniforms of the Sea Services by Colonel Robert H. Rankin, U. S. Marine Corps this month. This elegant and expensive ($24.50) tome is a pictorial history of U. S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard uniforms from the Revolutionary War to the present. A valuable reference work, it would grace any library anywhere.
Editor’s Note: This is the 13th 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. Most of these books may be purchased through the U. S. Naval Institute, which gives a discount to its members.