Victory at Sea

“The book makes for enjoyable reading, owing to the author’s easygoing style . . . Kennedy is an academic who does not write like one; he writes a story, not a treatise. It is a story enhanced by Marshall’s exquisite artwork.”—Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post

“Engrossing. . . . Alongside the pacey narrative, ranging across both the European and Pacific theaters of the war, are evocative battle-themed paintings by the late British artist Ian Marshall. . . . Kennedy convincingly shows that World War II was won, ultimately, by superior American industrial capacity. . . . A new world had been born. It was indeed, as Kennedy terms it, ‘the age of Pax Americana,’ and it originated in the American naval supremacy he so vividly chronicles in Victory at Sea.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal

“An authoritative global narrative [and] lavishly illustrated with watercolour paintings by the fine marine artist Ian Marshall, together with excellent maps and graphs . . . I believe the Royal Navy and US navy to have been the outstanding wartime fighting services of their respective nations. Kennedy offers them a fitting tribute and a penetrating analysis.”—Max Hastings, Sunday Times

“For the illustrations alone, Victory at Sea is worth the hardcover price. . . . When he is at his best, as he often is in these pages, Kennedy can be dazzling. His prose never fails him; he is always graceful and lucid on the page.”—Ian W. Toll, New York Times

“Essential reading for anyone generally interested in the Second World War. . . . Kennedy’s expansive work provides a wonderful strategic overview of the naval conflicts during the Second World War. It is also an analysis, utilizing the navy as an exemplar, of the shift in global fortunes and global power.”—Rob Clemm, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs

“Marshall’s art is one of this book’s many delights. . . . Marshall’s meticulously detailed paintings illustrate Kennedy’s point that, although the production statistics tell part of the war’s story, ‘the deficit in all deterministic explanations—the substructure alters, therefore the superstructure is changed—is that they lack human agency.’”—Mike Watson, Washington Free Beacon

“A brilliant and gripping book by a master historian working at the top of his powers.”—Fredrik Logevall, Harvard University

"Paul Kennedy has written a classic in this sweeping narrative account of the desperate struggle to command the seas and America’s rise as a superpower during the Second World War."—John H. Maurer, U.S. Naval War College

"This extraordinary work of both global history and nautical art brings two brilliant minds together in Paul Kennedy's luminous prose and Ian Marshall's lovely paintings."—Admiral James Stavridis, author of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“In Victory at Sea, Paul Kennedy demonstrates why he is the world’s leading scholar on naval strategy. For serious students of World War II or naval history, this book is a must read.”—John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago