Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
Andrew Lambert
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
Andrew Lambert
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Presents, along with a fascinating geopolitical chronicle, 'the history of an idea, and its transmission across time'.
Lambert is, without a doubt, the most insightful naval historian writing today. His range is immense, his understanding colossal, his sensitivity to his subject profound. This is, however, a very serious book which never attempts to be fun. It will remain a standard text at universities for decades to come, but readers who want to feast on fascinating tales of the sea will probably be disappointed. I found this book admirable, but not particularly enjoyable..
The problem is this: rather than limiting himself to identifying and understanding the attributes that five sea-oriented states may have had in common, and to tracing the lines of cultural inheritance that connected these states to each other, Lambert enlists his seapowers in an ancient and apparently unending war between sea and land, freedom and slavery.