xiii 301 pages, indexed, illustrated with black and white plates, two fold-out maps. The book is ex Australian National University Library. There's a remnant Dewey label at the tail of the spine, a library stamp on the copyright page and on the head and tail, and a date due slip on the back end paper, listing just one date. Apart from these faults, a clean, unmarked and solid copy. "This collection of thought-provoking essays by arguably the 20th century's greatest naval historian ..... It opens with a stimulating reappraisal of the naval attack on the Dardanelles, the success of which would have made the disastrous Gallipoli land campaign that followed completely unnecessary. Marder identifies a number of relatively minor issues that made a failure of what was in reality a great strategic opportunity to shorten the war.Other chapters cover what the Royal Navy did and did not learn from the Great War, and Churchill's controversial time at the Admiralty before he became Prime minister in 1940, while Marder's analysis of the inter-war Ethiopian Crisis asking whether military aggression can be countered by sanctions has powerful echoes of current political concerns. The final essay looks at one of the most contentious episodes of the Second World War, the British pre-emptive strike on the fleet of their one-time allies at Oran after the French surrender in 1940.Because Marder's view of history emphasises the human dimension over abstract forces, his work is always approachable in style and of as much interest to the layman as the professional historian. This book is no exception." (Publisher)