Navy and attempts to do it in barely over 100 pages. The book is the ultimate short introduction to the subject of the U.S. Navy: A Concise History, the most recent book by Craig Symonds, is a fascinating effort in pursuit of that goal. This is a challenge that historians of all fields have faced since time immemorial: How do you draw the average reader to your work? The U.S. Especially for a subject in which a reader has only a passing interest. They are masterful works of history, but they tend to appeal to the time and place in which they were written and to be much longer texts than today’s average reader is willing to tackle. In modern debates and discussions of national security policy we are lucky if people accurately remember the events, ideas, and strategies of the Cold War, never mind nearly two and a half centuries of American seapower.Įfforts to introduce those 240 years have generally offered massive tomes from giants in the field like E.B. While I am clearly biased enough to believe that Americans should know the history of their Navy, most people do not. We have no fixed blueprint, but we know what blueprints are.” But where does that historical study begin? The truth is we cannot all be experts in every field. Naval War College, the noted historian of strategy and war Paul Kennedy told his audience: “We engage in historical study to broaden our awareness, to sensitize us, to make us ask questions. In his 2014 Hattendorf Lecture at the U.S. Navy: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2015)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |