The major themes of that earlier book, and of Kennedy’s more recent work, are reprised in “Victory at Sea.” He investigates the seismic shift in global power balances brought about by World War II, from the multipolar maritime world of 1936 to the singular naval hegemony of the United States in 1946. The book was required reading for intellectuals and policymakers of the Reagan era and a rite of passage for Generation X history majors, among them this reviewer. His best-known book, published in 1987, is “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” a five-century history of Western empires that touched off a spirited debate in Washington defense and foreign policy circles. Richardson Dilworth professor of history. Born in the far northeast of England, he earned his doctorate at Oxford and has spent most of his career at Yale, where he is the J. In a long and justly renowned career, Kennedy has won all the accolades his profession has to offer. They are superbly reproduced in this volume. With a fine eye for detail and close attention to accuracy, the artist depicts ships of every fleet in scenes all over the world. Marshall’s minimalist watercolor brushstrokes create an immersive, impressionistic sensation you can almost whiff the salt breeze and hear the gulls. As the work proceeded, the scope of the book expanded, and the result is a sweeping history of the world’s six major navies between 19, accompanied by 53 color reproductions of Marshall’s paintings depicting warships of that era.įor the illustrations alone, “Victory at Sea” is worth the hardcover price.
In 2016, as the project was getting underway, Marshall died unexpectedly, and Kennedy resolved to finish it. His friend Ian Marshall, a celebrated maritime artist, asked him to write a foreword and accompanying text for a new collection of original paintings.
In a preface to this beautifully illustrated book, Paul Kennedy explains that he had not intended, at first, to write a new naval history of World War II. VICTORY AT SEA Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II By Paul Kennedy Illustrated by Ian Marshall
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