“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.

This acclaimed book traces Britain’s rise and fall as a sea power from the Tudors to the present day. Challenging the traditional view that the British are natural ‘sons of the waves’, he suggests instead that the country’s fortunes as a significant maritime force have always been bound up with its economic growth. In doing so, he contributes significantly to the centuries-long debate between ‘continental’ and ‘maritime’ schools of strategy over Britain’s policy in times of war. Setting British naval history within a framework of national, international, economic, political and strategic considerations, he offers a fresh approach to one of the central questions in British history. A new introduction extends his analysis into the twenty-first century and reflects on current American and Chinese ambitions for naval mastery.

‘Excellent and stimulating’ Correlli Barnett

‘The first scholar to have set the sweep of British Naval history against the background of economic history’ Michael Howard, Sunday Times

‘By far the best study that has ever been done on the subject … a sparkling and apt quotation on practically every page’ Daniel A. Baugh, International History Review

‘The best single-volume study of Britain and her naval past now available to us’ Jon Sumida, Journal of Modern History