Power at Sea
Between 1890 and 1914, Britain, Imperial Germany, Japan, and the United States were or became preeminent naval powers whose fleets often set the tone and rhythm of international affairs. These naval powers subsequently established parameters of the Great War of 1914-18, most notably by the inability of the German fleet to defeat Britain's Royal Navy and its subequent employment of unrestricted submarine warfare. During the interwar years, the re-emergence of a German Navy, the progressive exhaustion of Britain's maritme power through overcommitment,Japanese expansionism, and growing American naval might set the stage for World War II in which four vast war fleets contended for control of the world ocean, and thus of the global future. After 1945, a triumphant United States employed its world-wide fleets aggressively in support of the national commitment to containment of international communist power.
Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Book Award of the North American Society for Oceanic History and a Main Selection of the History Book Club for April 2007, reviewers have called Power at Sea "masterful" (prominet naval historian Edward Marolda) and a "masterpiece" of naval history (History Book Club)