BOOKS IN BRIEF
World War II at Sea: A Global History
CRAIG L. SYMONDS, the preeminent U.S. naval historian, usually writes excruciatingly tight. He dubbed two of his recent works a “concise history” and a “very short introduction” to the U.S. Navy. Both could be read in an afternoon. That fact makes his latest book, World War II at Sea, a sprawling—but very worthwhile—departure.
Symonds, who taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and currently teaches at the U.S. Naval War College, set out to fill a gap in the literature by charting the entire maritime course of history’s greatest conflict. Plenty of door-stopping naval histories have already been published, such as Samuel Eliot Morison’s 15-volume chronicle of the U.S. Navy in
