Marcus Faulkner

There's probably millions of historical narratives of WWII in its entirety. However, despite the amount of knowledge, I find that most history books lack a decent amount of maps. Faulkner's War at Sea fills an interesting gap in that it's focused on the naval element of WWII.

The book covers all theaters of the war chronologically from 1939-1945. Each single or two-page spread covers a naval operation showing the movements of the major forces, identifies any losses, and provides a few paragraphs of text explaining the event(s). Generally, it looks at the larger operational perspective and not so much on the tactical or grand strategic level.

What this book does particularly well is give to the reader a sense of the scale of the war. You realize that WWII spanned the entire globe and all of the oceans. Not only are the major oceanic campaigns (Atlantic, Mediterranean, & Pacific) covered, but the Arctic convoys and Indian Ocean operations are also examined. Some of the German surface raiders crossed into several oceans, spent over a year at sea, and (nearly) circumnavigated the globe.

Naturally, not every single naval or amphibious operation is covered in specific detail. Some of the charts of ship tracks are more detailed than others, probably owing to the amount of available information. Furthermore, in case you missed the title, this is a "naval" atlas, so the land campaigns (unless they have some immediate relation to the naval operations) are largely omitted. Indeed, there are other military atlases of land campaigns that can be found.… (meer)