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Summary: Peter M Koonce
Review: Once again Robert K. Massie has brought history to life. He has accomplished this by describing how personalites and popular views of an era shaped the events of that era as opposed to primarily descibing events leaving personalities and popular views in a supporting role.
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Summary: Fabulous Book! Where is the promised sequel?
Review: This is one of those books that you want to read slowly because it is so rich and you know you will be sorry when you finish, -- wanting for more. At the end of the book Massie promised the sequel about the naval battles of WWI. I've been waiting for years!! Do you know the frustration of looking for a book every time you go in a bookstore? At least now with Amazon.com I can quickly see if it is available yet without spending a lot of time anticipating that maybe Mr. Massie kept his promise each time I enter a bookstore. Robert, old buddy, I know you felt the necessity to finish the Romanov story, but I'm still holding you to your promise. Pleeezze don't make me wait too much longer.
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Summary: Very Informative
Review: While I have studied World War One a great deal, I found myself truly amazed at the closeness of Victoria's descendants as presented in this book. The book started out describing the monarchs of the previous generation, their policy makers (excellent treatment of Bismark), and finally key military and civilian personalities and how their actions brought Britain and Germany closer to war, and readied them to fight it. A very good book for anyone wanting to know more about the "Why" of WWI instead of the common "Where and When".
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Summary: Popular history doesn't get any better than this!
Review: As someone whose degree is in history, and who studies it as a hobby, I am always distressed when told "I never did like history - all those names and dates." How to explain that history is about people and ideas and institutions, and what happens when they come into conflict? Massie does a superb job of mapping out the road Europe took into the First World War. At heart it is the story of a grievous miscalculation and misunderstanding, in the failure of Kaiser Wilhelm and his advisors to see that while seapower was a luxury to Germany, it was an absolute necessity to Great Britain. Germany could live without a fleet, England would die without one. By directly challenging British seapower the Germans threw down a gauntlet which could never be ignored. In other words, the Germans were treating a matter the British considered essential to their survival as nothing more than a matter of prestige. So why did they think England would meekly submit to the German naval buildup? Who would hold a knife to his neighbor's throat and expect it to be taken as mere friendly rivalry? Massie provides the many human stories behind the inexorable flow of events... but it wasn't inexorable, there were many occasions when history might have taken another turning, if only people then had the benefit of our hindsight. In a way, reading this is like watching a horror film you've seen before - you want to shout "No! Don't open that door!" But they always open the door, however loud you shout. As a scholarly work of history this book is superficial, but as an accessible story of how we entered our first modern global war it is invaluable. Perhaps history haters will read this and then be inspired to pursue other avenues of inquiry... and thus get beyond "all those names and dates." For one thing, had the Germans studied England's history with the same determination they turned to the works of Mahan, they would have known what they were risking, or what Great Britain would not risk (and yet, it was there in Mahan all along - how did they miss it?). World War I didn't spontaneously appear in history books, it was brought about by thousands of individual human stories. Here are some of the ones surrounding this particular piece of history's universal puzzle: how did it all happen? As I like to tell those suspicious of the study of history, if we don't know where we've been, how can we tell where we are? This is a good place to start.
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Summary: The Great Battleship Race and the Coming of World War I
Review: This is a well structured history of the competition of Britain and Germany to build Dreadnought Battleships - the nuclear weapons of the age. It has good personality analyses of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Edward VII, and superb biographical material on Jacky Fisher, the father of the modern British navy. It has the best analysis of the blunders that led to World War that I have read. (For a good biography of Jacky Fisher, see Fisher's Face by Jan Morris.
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Summary: Excellent !
Review: Although the title of this book refers to a type of warship the book is about far more. It covers the origins of the modern navy, Britian at the turn of the century and most important a fascinating history of the origin of the modern German state. Also covered are the events leading up to World War One, personal histories of important figures in late ninteenth century and early twentieth century Germany and as per the title of the book, the origin of the modern battleship. This is an excellent book, one I didn't want to put down, and I strongly recommend it.
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Summary: Massive book on the coming of the Great War
Review: Robert K. Massie is given to large books, and this one is no exeption. You almost think his last name is missing the "v," so that it could be spelled "Massive." Dreadnought is about the half-century or so before the onset of World War I, and while the author tries his hand at history, he is best at biography, and here, in a hundred thumbnail sketches of the leaders in Berlin and London, he excells with an ease rather rare in non-fiction writers.
There are, however, a number of frustrating aspects to this book. First, the author insists on anglicizing the Kaiser's name: William. What's frustrating about this is that the author is also inconsistent about it: William will talk to Franz Josef (Francis Joseph?) the Austro-Hungarian emperor, and in the same sentence, he's anglicized the one name and left the other in German. There are a number of annoying mistakes that should have been caught: the American revolution lasted from 1775-1881, the Prince of Wales moved into his London home with his wife the year before they were married (I think Queen Victoria, his mother, would have disapproved) and so forth. And lastly there's the author's ignorance of the subject the book's titled after. While he does alright on the basics of warship design, he then goes into a soliliqy about the tragedy of the design of the British battlecruisers, explaining that they never should have been committed to combat at the battle of Jutland some years later because their armor was too thin. This just isn't true. The Germans committed battlecruisers also, and lost none (Massie says they lost one, but he's wrong) while the British lost three, due to a flaw in their design that they could have fixed if they'd thought it important: the shell-lift from the magazine to the turrets wasn't sealed when the guns were firing, meaning that a fire in the turret almost automatically blew up the ship. The Germans had already corrected this at the time of Jutland, and though their ships were being fired at by British ones with much larger guns, they only lost one old battleship, among the larger ships.
All this being said, this is a wonderful book to read. Whenever I read a mistake of fact in a book of non-fiction, I always wonder what else he's missing that I don't know about, so I can't recommend the book unreservedly. But if interesting reading on turn-of-the-century Europe is what you're looking for, this is right on the shelf next to Barbara Tuchman.
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Summary: Superb!
Review: 'Dreadnought' is purportedly about an arms race; don't be fooled. 'Dreadnought' is about a time that is no more, a way of life long vanished - and it has the distinct advantage of being true. It has heroes and villains galore, all of them larger than the puerile paraders of a century later, and enough high technology to satisfy. Read it, and learn what civilization was like before the Age of the Common.
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Summary: Another Massive Massie Masterpiece
Review: You will read this book. Then you will read it again. And again. This book reads like half a dozen novels, every one of them a little more engrossing than the previous. From the social, to the political, to the military - Massie manages to cover an enormous amount of territory at just the right level of detail
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Summary: Dread nought this book!
Review: "Dreadnought" gives a thorough, indepth view of the causes of the Great War, from Victoria's arrogant, competitive eldest grandchild, to the machinations of Bismarck and German political leaders, and to the turn of the century arms race of capital ships.
Most interesting is Bismarck's vain attempt to use bombastic Prince William to counterbalance the Anglo-liberal tendencies of Frederick and his strong-willed Empress, ending up with an irrepressible, uncontrollable "war lord".
The other major example of irrepression is in the form of Jackie Fisher -- Massie shows us how the will of an individual can change the decades-old traditions of a hoary organization into a modern day navy.
Overall, an excellent account of the prelude to the first major conflict of the 20th century
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