It is a book about submarines. What more do you want?

Okay, so you need an explanation as to why this is cool? It is a book that talks about the history of submarines in warfare, starting with the Turtle of the U.S. revolution, through the U.S. Civil War and subsequent highly experimental phase, and into World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and unto the modern day. The book uses individual submarines to tell the history in general, though usually these are representative of a class. (There are one-offs though, even later than you might expect there to be.)

What is very cool is the art. It is beautiful and instructive. There are a few things that I had read about in the past that this book did a lot to help me understand through its visuals. Admittedly, as we get later in history, both because of the size of the vessels and the secrecy that still surrounds some of them, these become less instructive.

These are brief histories, in the sense that they are each only a few pages, without any sort of interstitial material other than the implied narrative of engineering. These are detailed histories in that the book does get nuts and bolts about the boats' forms and capacities.

What should not be cool, but is, is that the histories about the submarines are not conceptually consistent. What this means is that one might focus on the technology involved, whereas another might focus on battles that one was in, and another might focus on how it was modified over the years. As a rule, I do not like this sort of thing in histories, as it makes it harder to follow one thread, but here is the exception to that rule in the way that this allows the author to focus on whatever was the most interesting about that particular submarine and tell the best story out of the lot.

The weakness is that it is an overview, and as such it is easy to drown in detail without context. And I admit that I do not have the technical knowledge to assess all the assessments. But look, if you are like me and sometimes have that feeling come over of a desire to read about underwater propulsion systems, you are looking at the right book.

My thanks to the author, David Ross, for writing the book and to the publisher, Amber books, for providing the ARC to me.

Submarines by David Ross offers an orderly, concise, and well structured survey of the development of the naval submarine from inception (the Turtle) through the modern attack and missile boats of today. Each vessel get a 4 or 5 page chapter with good quality illustrations and photos, technical specifications, vessel and class history, and context of where it fits in the history of the type. Well written, reasonably thorough, with important classes and historical curiosities both featured. It looks like a Dorling Kindersley book if that is a helpful reference. Good for a reference shelf or likelier, for an enthusiast. Lack of footnotes, endnotes or bibliography clearly makes it more of an enthusiast’s or casual reader’s guide. Particularly good for someone new to an interest in naval development. I can see a copy getting dog-eared.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC. This is an unbiased review.