A useful, but by no means wholly reliable reference to naval warfare since the sixteenth century. Several entries are misleading, or flatly wrong (e.g., the Civil War ironclad New Ironsides is described as "one of the Monitor’s successors," when she was built at the same time as the more famous vessels, and that she shared many of the latter’s "design weaknesses," when, in fact, the two ships were not the least alike), and there are a surprising number of omissions (e.g., Carlo di Persano, the loser at Lissa in 1866, Patricio Montojo, the loser at Manila Bay in 1898, and the USS Washington, which did the most important work by any American battleship in World War II). And it lacks maps.