Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II

by Paul Kennedy, Ian Marshall (Illustrator)

Overview

A sweeping, lavishly illustrated one-volume history of the rise of American naval power during World War II
 
“When he is at his best, as he often is in these pages, Kennedy can be dazzling.”—Ian W. Toll, New York Times
 
“The book makes for enjoyable reading, owing to the author’s easygoing style. . . . Kennedy is an academic who does not write like one; he writes a story, not a treatise.”—Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post
 
“Engrossing.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal
 
In this engaging narrative, brought to life by marine artist Ian Marshall’s beautiful full‑color paintings, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War—the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan—Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. From the elimination of the Italian, German, and Japanese fleets and almost all of the French fleet, to the end of the era of the big‑gunned surface vessel, the advent of the atomic bomb, and the rise of an American economic and military power larger than anything the world had ever seen, Kennedy shows how the strategic landscape for naval affairs was completely altered between 1936 and 1946.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300219173
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	321,552
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Paul Kennedy is J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Ian Marshall was a fellow and past president of the American Society of Marine Artists as well as a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. He wrote and illustrated numerous works, including Armored Ships and Ironclads and Paddlers.

Table of Contents

List of Paintings Ian Marshall ix

List of Maps xi

List of Charts and Tables xiii

Preface xv

Part I Setting the Stage

Chapter 1 Prologue: Sea Power and the Sweep of History 3

Chapter 2 Warships and Navies before 1939 17

Chapter 3 Geography, Economics, and Geopolitical Writings 67

Part II Narrative of the Great Naval War, 1939-42

Chapter 4 The Early War at Sea, September 1939-July 1940 107

Chapter 5 The European War at Sea, July 1940-December 1941 143

Chapter 6 A War in Every Sea, 1942 197

Part III The Critical Year of 1943

Chapter 7 Allied Control of the Seas, 1943 241

Chapter 8 The Shift in Global Power Balances, 1943-44 293

Part IV Narrative of the Great Naval War, 1944-45

Chapter 9 Triumph of Allied Sea Power, 1944 333

Chapter 10 The Allied Victory at Sea, 1945 371

Part V Aftermath and Reflections

Chapter 11 Navies and Naval Powers in World War II: An Audit 401

Epilogue. The Sweep of History 431

Appendices. 1943: The Pivotal Year of the War by Three Measures

Appendix A Sinking U-boats in the Dark, May 6, 1943 439

Appendix B A Hypothetical Causation-Chain, from a Bauxite Mountain in Suriname to Air-Sea Victory in the Western Pacific, 1943-44 443

Appendix C America as Number One: Overall Warship Tonnages of the Powers, 1930-60 447

Acknowledgments 449

Notes 453

Bibliography 487

Index 497

Editorial Reviews

The book makes for enjoyable reading, owing to the author’s easygoing style. . . . Kennedy is an academic who does not write like one; he writes a story, not a treatise. It is a story enhanced by Marshall’s exquisite artwork.”—Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post

“Engrossing. . . . Alongside the pacey narrative, ranging across both the European and Pacific theaters of the war, are evocative battle-themed paintings by the late British artist Ian Marshall. . . . Kennedy convincingly shows that World War II was won, ultimately, by superior American industrial capacity. . . . A new world had been born. It was indeed, as Kennedy terms it, ‘the age of Pax Americana,’ and it originated in the American naval supremacy he so vividly chronicles in Victory at Sea.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal

“An authoritative global narrative [and] lavishly illustrated with watercolour paintings by the fine marine artist Ian Marshall, together with excellent maps and graphs. . . . I believe the Royal Navy and US navy to have been the outstanding wartime fighting services of their respective nations. Kennedy offers them a fitting tribute and a penetrating analysis.”—Max Hastings, Sunday Times

“For the illustrations alone, Victory at Sea is worth the hardcover price. . . . When he is at his best, as he often is in these pages, Kennedy can be dazzling. His prose never fails him; he is always graceful and lucid on the page.”—Ian W. Toll, New York Times

“Kennedy, the author of the epochal The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, brings his wide-ranging historical vision to this hugely authoritative history of the 1939–45 war at sea. Much conventional wisdom—about the role of the German U-boats, for instance—goes out of the window in his penetrating analysis.”—Sunday Times, “50 Best Books for the Sunlounger”

“There is no shortage of histories of naval warfare, not least on World War II. What Kennedy’s book brings is a broader perspective on the role—sometimes decisive, sometimes desultory—that naval power would play not just in breaking the power of imperial Japan, Italy, and Nazi Germany but in creating a world that would last.”—Alexander Wooley, Foreign Policy

“Victory at Sea is a tour de force. It is sweeping naval history of the Second World War, delightful in its relating of facts and lucid in its presentation of arguments. . . . Victory at Sea is capable of inspiring a new generation of military historians to study sea power in the tradition of their forerunners.”—Daniel J. Samet, American Purpose

“A great read, Kennedy’s book encourages one to think and think again, and not only about the events of World War II but also why that conflict is so totally atypical of warfare as a whole, past and present.”—Jeremy Black, New Criterion

“Essential reading for anyone generally interested in the Second World War. . . . Kennedy’s expansive work provides a wonderful strategic overview of the naval conflicts during the Second World War. It is also an analysis, utilizing the navy as an exemplar, of the shift in global fortunes and global power.”—Rob Clemm, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs

“Marshall’s art is one of this book’s many delights. . . . Marshall’s meticulously detailed paintings illustrate Kennedy’s point that, although the production statistics tell part of the war’s story, ‘the deficit in all deterministic explanations—the substructure alters, therefore the superstructure is changed—is that they lack human agency.’”—Mike Watson, Washington Free Beacon

“This is not just a book about navies in wartime—it is a book that examines the naval war in the wider context of a changing world and looks at landscapes, both military and political.”—Sarah Miller, Aspects of History

“While a previous century found Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power on the bridges and wardrooms of many of the world’s fleets, Victory at Sea is worthy of similar treatment. . . . Marshall’s art combined with Kennedy’s prose makes this volume a most desirable acquisition.”—David F. Winkler, Naval History

“Kennedy packs an enormous amount of information into Victory at Sea.”—A. A. Nofi, NYMAS Review

“The wealth of material on the naval war [in World War II] would appear to preclude any new insights into its origins, conduct, or eventual outcome. Yet Kennedy does just that. . . . The breadth of his approach to his subject distinguishes Kennedy’s book among its peers.”—Dov S. Zakheim, Orbis

“This handsome book by a distinguished historian is a sweeping history . . . to be valued for its art as much as for its narrative.”—Seapower

“The 53 paintings . . . are some of the most beautiful depictions of ships of war ever produced. . . . Marshall’s paintings and the scale of Kennedy’s ambition and understanding make this a book that should be widely read not just here but perhaps even more diligently in the war colleges of our pacing threat.”— John A. Nagl, Parameters

"A magnificent strategic-level look at World War II. Kennedy’s exploration of sea power . . . cannot be topped. Similarly, Marshall’s paintings offer a breathtaking view of World War II at sea.”—Mark Lardas, Nautical Research Journal

“This is a brilliant and original work of history, literature, and art—a rare combination.”—Admiral James Stavridis, Yale Alumni Magazine

“A brilliant and gripping book by a master historian working at the top of his powers.”—Fredrik Logevall, Harvard University

“Paul Kennedy has written a classic in this sweeping narrative account of the desperate struggle to command the seas and America’s rise as a superpower during the Second World War.”—John H. Maurer, U.S. Naval War College

“This extraordinary work of both global history and nautical art brings two brilliant minds together in Paul Kennedy’s luminous prose and Ian Marshall’s lovely paintings.”—Admiral James Stavridis, author of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“In Victory at Sea, Paul Kennedy demonstrates why he is the world’s leading scholar on naval strategy. For serious students of World War II or naval history, this book is a must read.”—John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago

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