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.
