By Peter Gosling

From Baird Maritime:

One of a series described as “Simple Guides ≻≻ Science. This is a useful book. Mainly because it puts into perspective the improvements in the speeds of various forms of transport through history.

While it includes land and air transport, readers of this review will mainly be interested in the maritime aspects. In thirteen of the book’s 168 small pages it manages to give a reasonable if not completely accurate overview of the improvements in speeds at sea.

By Jeffrey G. Barlow

From Baird Maritime:

One great advantage for the nation having the greatest military power in the history of the world is the resultant enabling of extensive intellectual analysis of that power.

This huge and incredibly closely researched book is a very good example of just such analysis.

By Michael Turner

From Baird Maritime:

The author is a Drake fanatic. He is also a SCUBA diving enthusiast who has explored all the Drake relics and locations both on the surface and underwater.

This lends a certain additional quality to his very extensive researches. Bear in mind that this is Volume 3 of a three-volume set. The author’s researches are incredibly extensive.

By Samuel Pepys

Introduced by J D Davies

From Baird Maritime:

Although he died more than three hundred years ago, Samuel Pepys is still by far the world’s best-known naval administrator. For that matter, he is almost certainly also the world’s best-known bureaucrat and political “spin doctor”.

This fascinating little book was written after he lost his job in a massive change of government in 1688. It is unbelievably prescient. Any current senior defence bureaucrat or admiral who has not studied it should be dismissed immediately.