Spans five thousand years of the ocean's history to tell the stories of the courageous individuals who sailed the seas for trade, to conquer new lands, and to explore the unknown, from the early Polynesians to the first circumnavigations by the Portuguese and the British.

"Fleets of World War II, packed with data and illustrated throughout, is not a simple list of ships but a fascinating and often critical appraisal of those ships and the navies they served. Japan built the world's largest battleships with guns bigger than anything in the Allied arsenal - but was bigger in fact better? The British engaged in a wartime flurry of ship production - but did they build the ships they needed for victory? Unlike most ship...