One Hundred Years of Sea Poer The U. S. Navy, 1890-1990 [Paperback]

A navy is a state's main instrument of maritime force. What it should do, what doctrine it holds, what ships it deploys, and how it fights are determined by practical political and military choices in relation to national needs. Choices are made according to the state's goals, perceived threat, maritime opportunity, technological capabilities, practical experience, and, not the least, the way the sea service defines itself and its way of war. This book is a history of the modern U.S. Navy. It explains how the Navy, in the century after 1890, was formed and reformed in the interaction of purpose, experience, and doctrine.This is a history of how the Navy respondedin doctrine, strategy, operations, preparedness, self-awareness, and force structureto radical changes in political circumstance, technological innovation, and national needs and expectations. Baer takes what could have been a dry topicthe political history of the modern U.S. Navyand turns it into interesting reading. A fine book: meticulous, judicious, incisive. It is a book to which the conventional exaggerations must reading, relevant, if you're only going to read one book on the subject, etc.actually may be said to apply. . . . It is a study of the interactions of technology, bureaucracy, politics and culture, of how an institution adapts, or fails to adapt, to changing conditions. As such, the book belongs on a lot of desks at the Pentagon. This is clearly one of the two or three most important works in American naval history published in the last decade; it has the potential to become a classic in the field. Well researched and carefully nuanced, it provides a distinctive perspective on the evolving historical relationship between national interest and national politics on the one hand and naval power on the other. Not only is this a significant contribution to scholarshipone that will critically influence how historians and political scientists think about American naval powerit is an enorml­