Conrad Waters

Again, this is not a series that I collect, but if you're interested in modern naval affairs it's certainly worth examining. Where as the companion publication "Warship" is mostly concerned with documenting various classic ships, this work is mostly focused on policy and technology. For example, the best article in this edition was probably Kevin Eyer's examination of the U.S. Navy's current concept of "Distributed Naval Operations," and whether the USN has a robust enough electronic warfare capacity to implement it. This being closely followed by Norman Friedman considering what can really be achieved with "stealth" and surface warships.… (meer)

A few years ago when I had the opportunity to read Erminio Bagnasco's study of the Italian "Littorio" class battleships, I thought that this was the model of what a class monograph should look like, while recognizing that it was going to be a rare event for a book on that scale to be published. With Conrad Waters' study of the "Town" class cruisers one has something of the same magnitude, and one can only be impressed with the amount of work and detail that went into this book. The caveat here is that this isn't a narrative history of the class, and those who are mostly interested in the men who crewed these ships might not find this their cup of tea. Otherwise, if you care about British warships, and cruisers in particular, you definitely want this book before it becomes a prohibitively expensive collector's item.… (meer)