Rating: 
Summary: One of the best historical accounts ever written
Review: This is one the best of its genre. You may be pushed away by its size and depth of coverage, but after reading the first chapter, you will be lured in to the great men, women, and tradegies that lead to the "Great War". Massie's style is as if your Great-Grandfather were telling you how the the first World War really started; plus the added bonus of objectivity
Rating:
Summary: You must read this book!
Review: From the Battle of Trafalgar to the British declaration of war against Germany, you will be gripped by this book. You will be drawn forward through this book as inexorably as the the countries of Europe were drawn toward Armageddon. Massie's portraits of the impish and maniacal Kaiser, the bon vivant Edward VII, the scheming Holstein, and the brilliant and charming Jackie Fisher, passionate proponent of the modern battleship, will make you feel as though you have personally known these compelling figures. Massie makes intelligible a great many otherwise enigmatic aspects of twentieth century history: the phenomenon of the arms race, the relationship between military and political strategy, and the background of the current conflict in the Balkans. If you read one book this year, "Dreadnought" should be it
Rating: 
Summary: Only 2 pages on the Dreadnought
Review: This is not a book about the Dreadnought, or even naval history. It covers the politics and colonial intrigues that set the stage for a pan-European catastrophe.
Each character, large or small, on the internation stage gets several pages of biographical introduction, which was mostly skipped by this reviewer. The somewhat subdued pace picks up considerably with the introduction of Fisher and Churchill half way through the book.
4 stars might be a touch generous, 3 stars a little miserly.
Rating:
Summary: First-Class Historical Narrative
Review: Robert Massey's DREADNOUGHT is less a history of the building of the first true battleship or even a history limited to the naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain in the years prior to World War I than it is a comprehensive and expansive political and personal history of the men, policies, and treaty entanglements of Europe over the last half of the 19th century and up until the breakout of total war in 1914. The scope of this book is impressive and its particular strength is in the detailed personal narratives concerning the men who shaped the history of Europe and the world at this time.
The most compelling of these narratives and the most interesting exposition of personality must be the storyline concerning the Kaiser, William II. Alternatively child-like in his petulance and his longing on approval from his family (that being the English royal family) and regal in the assertion of his imperial prerogative and in his capricious vanity, William is flawed, but ultimately likable.
This volume is powered by dozens of other richly textured character studies on both the English and German sides from Otto von Bismarck and Queen Victoria to Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Winston Churchill.
Personally, I am a fan of naval history (or more generally, the history of technologies and warfare) as well as a fan of general history. For the naval buffs, I would recommend the sequel to this volume: CASTLES OF STEEL, over this work. However, for general history, you won't find anything better than DREADNOUGHT.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
Rating: 
Summary: Shallow, second hand treatise
Review: Massie is no serious historian. He never does any researches of his own, and just about copies everything from other published titles.He is so lazy that he even skipped the Bibiography section. As for the book proper,it's just recycling of some of the silliest propaganda rubbish by the British on the Germans (read Lamar Cecil's book on Kaiser Wilhelm I for a substantive, informative look into the jealousies, animosities and rivlaries between the House of Windsor and Hohenzollern, which addedmfuel to fire between the 2 nations).
Go read the book Germany's High Seas Fleet in the World War by Admiral Reinhard Scheer instead. Or the book by Allies-centric book by Paul Halpern.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Naval Arms Race Between Tirpitz and Fisher
Review: Massie's "Dreadnought" is, on one level, the stirring and fascinating tale of how two navies - British and German - evolved in the late part of the 19th century and emerged, in the 1910s, as two closely-matched, high-tech capital fleets at either end of the North Sea. On a deeper level, however, this history revises - or at least places in context - the land-borne histories of Barbara Tuchman and John Keegan, which explain the roots of World War One in terms of the "Guns of August" and the armies that mobilized over the summer of 1914. As Massie shows, the rivalry between Britan and Germany arose much earlier, and was borne not of competing General Staff plans but a bureaucratic desire - on both sides of the dispute, but more so on Tirpitz - to acquire more funding for the naval constuction programs. In order to acquire more funding, Tirpitz and his British counterparts had to identify a present or potential threat that justified a buildup in defense spending, and so the need to identify a potential naval adversary dictated that the parties would soon find themselves adverse to one another. Although Massie introduces the Prussian characters with panache - the walrus-mustached Bismarck; the fork-bearded Tirpitzm; the deformed Kaiser - he is best when describing the British rulers of the early twentieth century: Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Lloyd-George and the brilliant Sir Edward Grey. The clear "hero," however, is the brilliant Jacky Fisher, inventor of the epynomous "Dreadnought" battleship class, sponsor of the all-diesel turbine engine and relentless modernizer: if World War One turned entirely on the naval campaign (a thesis Massie pursues in the sequel, "Castles of Steel"), truly it was Fisher who saved the Empire from German aggression. A magisterial work, with much color and light, as well as many classic social vignettes.
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: The subject seemed somewhat uninteresting at first but to my surprise Massie kept me reading and, as another reviewer said, there it is, on my bookshelf next to Barbara Tuchman. I will read it again so I guess I can recommend it wihout hesitation.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but a bit slow
Review: I enjoyed Dreadnought, although I also found it to be a heavy read. Massie's command of the era is superb and this is a book which goes far beyond its title. However, it seemed to me that at times, Massie got bogged down in side stories, mainly concerning historical figures. You'll sometimes find him spending pages and pages on a single diplomat or politician where maybe one or two pages would suffice. In the area of historical narrative, Massie is almost on par with Barbara Tuchman. On the whole, Dreadnought is a very good book and I would recommend it to any lover of historical narrative.
Rating:
Summary: March Toward Armageddon
Review: Despite the grand title, "Dreadnought" is not a maritime shoot-`em-up in the grand tradition of naval battles. The book's prologue, however, is about the battle of Trafalgar, the most significant naval confrontation of the nineteenth century, and thus sets the stage for the book's theme: maintaining Britain's mastery of the oceans at a time when Germany, the emerging economic center of gravity of the Continent, was beginning to establish an aggressive colonial policy. This book should not be read solely to gain some insight about the battleship Dreadnought. Naval enthusiasts may be slightly disappointed because of the paucity of ship photographs and the relative deficiency of discussion regarding German naval matters. This colossal volume is, to a significant extent, about the building of the Dreadnought and the Anglo-German naval arms race. But most of the book is devoted to Machiavellian machinations among the major European and British players at the turn of the twentieth century. The crescendo of events leading to the Great War is made more accessible to the layman through biographical vignettes of the major personalities that shaped Continental and British diplomacy and public policy at the time. The story begins four decades before the Great War. Bismarck, the Prussian premier whose politics were partly shaped by the events of 1848, initiated three wars--against Denmark in 1864, against Austria in 1866 and against France in 1870--with one ultimate objective in mind: German unification. Unification under the Prussian aegis set the stage for the `conservative modernization' of the German state. In turn, rapid industrialization allowed for the establishment of a robust military-industrial complex and facilitated a shift toward overseas adventurism. The rising economic might of the Empire would allow Kaiser William II to argue for Germany's "place under the sun"--and set her on a collision course with Britain. The appearance of Mahan's book "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History" challenged accepted wisdom about the role of a navy in national affairs. Mahan argued that domination of the seas would be highly critical to national welfare. Given this impetus, the two major powers, Germany and Britain, began a naval buildup which would see the emergence of HMS Dreadnought. Unfortunately for Europe, the arms race coincided with several diplomatic gaffes, regional conflicts, and errors of judgment: the expiration of Bismarck's Reinsurance Treaty with Russia; the 1905 Tangier crisis over Morocco's ties with France; the Russo-Japanese war; the Daily Telegraph affair; the 1911 Agadir crisis; and so on. Massie discusses all of these discordant, inauspicious events with all of the panache of a cinematic auteur. A front seat to the drama is provided for, and the thoughts and motivations of the various dramatis personae are laid out. In view of the climate of distrust and the preponderance of secret alliances, all it would take to ignite this powder keg and usher in a conflict of a global scale would be a tiny spark. Bismarck himself foresaw that the struggle will begin in eastern Europe. Admiral Fisher, who oversaw the creation of HMS Dreadnought, was no less prescient: he predicted that the world war would begin in 1914 upon completion of the expansion of the Kiel Canal. Was the First World War was an inexorable, Manichaean contest between democracy and autocracy? The book certainly gives the impression that, given the unique combination of personalities in the world stage at the time, and in view of the circumstances, a Great War was unavoidable. Austria's resolve to conduct a preemptive war against Serbia for its pan-Slavic nationalism, France's decisive defeat in the Franco-Prussian war which led to revanchism against Germany, Germany's professed entitlement to "a place under the sun," and Russia's aversion to intimidation and humiliation following its 1905 defeat in Asia all precluded a limited conflict. This book is a magnificent jump-off point for a reexamination of the causes of World War One. Massie is indeed a fine writer, and I look forward to reading his account of the battle of Jutland, which Admiral Fisher termed "the battle of Armageddon," in "Castles of Steel."
Rating:
Summary: Long Yet Very In
Review: Like my title suggests, the book was a very long one [908 pages in my copy]. Even so, I could not put it down. It was very well written and there were numerous pictures. Massie even included many quotes and letters, diary entries, and the like. I especially liked how he divided the book into a British section and a German one. All in all, if one is interested in this type of book, I highly recommend it.
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