Battleships

by Antony Preston

Battleships

Genres: Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Military History, Naval History

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Antony PReston was an English Naval Historian and editor.

Reviews

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 3 out of 5]

An attractively designed book. But it's too short to go into very much detail, and so the layman (like me) finds himself stumbling over one opaque term/description after another.

[Dr. George H. Elder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving Preston three stars is a bit of gift, and it is only being done because I know how difficult writing a book like this can be. In fact, the author frequently misconstrues why design choices were made in the various classes of battleships, and seldome presents anything that goes even a step beyound the yadda-yadda research that seems to be passed down from one writer to another without any of them taking so much as a breath to consider going into an archive. Preston is clearly biased in some areas, as in his criticism of the Bismarck Class. These ships had plenty of warts, but he misses many and restates others that are of dubious nature. I could go on, but these are not the kind of books I like having the library. Granted, I have several Preston texts, but I cannot advise most of them. Preston and D. K. Brown were great friends, but one was a scholar...and the other could have stood to practice more scholarship. Nonetheless, there is some sound info on various British ships, and that makes the text useful from that perspective. Like I said, it isn't easy to write a book like this.

[Jonathan Gillespie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid primer on the evolution of the Battleship, written in a way that should appeal to both casual and hardcore fans of history. I had minor disagreements with some of the facts presented, but they just represent the author's analysis with facts known at the time of publication, and as such I wouldn't ding them these days.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and well illustrated history of the heyday of the battleship, from its rise in the late 19th century to its obsolescence post-World War II.