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Sea Change at Annapolis: The United States Naval Academy, 1949-2000 Review

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(More customer reviews)As one who witnessed first-hand the beginning of the changes at the Naval Academy described by Dr. Gelfand, I had the advantage of comparing what I experienced with events as depicted by the author. On that basis alone, Dr. Gelfand is to be commended for the accuracy of his work. He has managed to give those events a balanced treatment that provides the reader a good perspective of what was indeed a sea change at the Academy. The expansion of the academic program to that rivaling any Ivy League university, the inclusion of women within the ranks of the Brigade of Midshipmen, and the inception of the Honor System all have had a deep impact on Academy life, an impact very well captured by Dr. Gelfand. He also saw the value of including the lighter side of Academy life, such as the notorious Color Parade of the Class of 1952 (which happens to be my class). I highly commend this book for any youngster interested in attending the Naval Academy, amd their parents as well.

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Grace Hopper: Navy Admiral and Computer Pioneer Review

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(More customer reviews)Grace Hopper, Charlene W. Billings
Charlene W. Billings wrote a number of books for young people. This 1989 book is written for teenagers to fit on 128 pages. It would be better if it had more details and around 300 pages. It is worth reading for its history about the early days of digital computing machines. [Before the 1950s a "computer" was the person who used a slide-rule or an accounting machine.] In 1986 retiring Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was the oldest commissioned officer on active duty in the US Navy (Chapter 1). The book tells of her childhood, college student, marriage and teaching career (Chapters 2, 3, 4). During WW II she joined the US Naval Reserve and was sent to the Computation Project at Harvard University where Howard Aiken wrote about an Automatic Calculating Machine, the "Mark I". Grace worked on this project to code the instructions that controlled the machine (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 tells about the early Harvard Computers. Grace joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia Penna. The ENIAC was the first electronic computer with vacuum tubes. The UNIVAC became the best-known computer (Chapter 10). Grace became an advocate for a programming language to create machine language (Chapter 11). She wanted to use plain English words (Chapter 12). This universal computer programming language would be common to every computer company (Chapter 13). The result was COBOL.
The Defense Department required its use for any of its suppliers. She worked to test and standardize COBOL compilers (Chapter 14). Chapter 15 provides anecdotes about Grace. Standard interchangeable parts go back to Eli Whitney in the early 19th century, the assembly line to Cincinnati and Chicago slaughterhouses (p.94). Ford's low-cost automobiles met the needs of America. Those "railroads are falling apart" (p.96) because of a lack of government regulation since the Civil War, their greed and mismanagement. Information has value based on relevance, accuracy, and completeness. Grace thinks the home computer industry will grow larger (p.98). She did not foresee the growth of computers for entertainment. She said parallel computers in a network could out-perform one centralized processor (p.99). [Weren't big mainframe computers composed of networked computers that handled I/O?] Grace worried about the proper distribution and sharing of water (p.101). [That is a collective responsibility.] Chapter 16 summarizes her career and achievements. In 1985 Grace was promoted to Rear Admiral, the only woman admiral in the history of the US Navy. Our "greatest natural resource" is young people (p.112). Leadership is more important than management (p.113). The Navy retired Grace at age seventy-nine; she then worked as a consultant to DEC. [There is an error on page 119: 10100110 does not stand for decimal 83 but for decimal 166.] There is an amazing list of awards on pages 121 to 124, most from the 1980s.

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ROYAL NAVY TRAWLERS - Part One: Admiralty Vessels Review

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(More customer reviews)"In the early days of the 20th century, the simple contact mine was becoming the cheap weapon of choice for many navies. Countering this threat eventually fell to the humbler trawler -- the similarity between trawling for fish and trawling for mines having quickly been realized.
By 1916 however, the Admieralty were facing a famine of commercially available trawlers, so they went into the trawler-building business. By the time the Armistic was signed, the RNR Trawler Section, originally a little force of 1200 men and 150 vessels for sweeping UK waters had expanded to a massive 39,000 men, manning more than 700 vessels at home and abroad.
This volume traces the histories of those Admiralty-built vessels which started life as humble minesweepers but soon became the jack-of-all-trades in two World Wars and beyond."
A handsome little volume from Maritime Books. Hardcover with a sewn binding; in dustjacket; baby blue papers over boards with gold details.
227 on glossy stock, index, bibliography, abbreviations, Port Registry. B&w illustrations.

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Navy men, Review

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(More customer reviews)James B. Connolly was an interesting figure. The first Olympic champion of the modern era (he won a silver medal, then the first-place award, in triple jump at the 1896 games), he was by his own telling a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and a prolific author of books on naval and maritime themes. His World War Two look at antisubmarine warfare, The U-Boat Hunters, is still in print today. Harder to find, but still worth the effort if the topic interests you, is "Navy Men," published in 1939.
In these pages, Connolly jumps back and forth between reporting on the modern navy of the late 1930s and his experience three decades before when, with TR's assistance, he enlisted in the navy for about a month to report on sailors' lives in the post-Great White Fleet era. The cover blurb on my copy of "Navy Men" says "Jim Connolly has been on more kinds of naval vessels than any other living writer," and that's easy enough to believe. If you're looking for a decent portrayal of navy life, and American naval power, in the first three or four decades of the twentieth century, this might not be a bad title to track down.

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The Old Dark Navy Blues: A History of the Carlton Football Club Review

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(More customer reviews)A version of the story of the Carlton Football Club.
As far as football books go, this one is reasonably decent, so Carlton fans or other interested bodies shouldn't be disappointed with this book, even if not great.
We Are the Navy Blues, indeed, so one for the blueboys collection.3.5 out of 5

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Carlton is the most successful club in the AFL both in premierships and financially. This book looks at the develpment of the club as an institution as well as the history of the fans. All the club's playing and boardroom chatracters appear, their greatest games, all-ins, goals and disgraces. Here is the tale of how the local team of the most enthusiastic football suburb in Victoria became a professional, financially secure club in a national competition, a club which has won more premierships in the first hundred years of VFL/AFL than any other.

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Ned's Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)In January 1878, 12 year old Edward (Ned) Charlton joined the training ship HMS Britannia and in 1924 Admiral Sir Edward Charlton KCB. KCMG. retired. During the intervening 46 years, Ned Charlton had witnessed a lifetime of historic events, met some very interesting people and served on a wide variety of ships in an equally wide variety of situations, conflicts and, of course, throughout WW1, as he worked his way through the ranks of the Royal Navy. Throughout those invigorating years, Ned's private letters home were kept by the various members of his family. To these were added his own collection of private papers and historic photographs when he finally died in 1937.
For more than 50 years this unique collection of ephemera lay almost forgotten until Frank Urban - grandson of Ned Charlton, began a study of the content. With help and advice from other members of the Charlton clan - now found all over the world, Frank Urban has pieced together a most fascinating insight into one man's career and experiences which spanned a most historic period.
Ned's Navy is a hardback book measuring 10¾in x 8½in and is packed with over 170 pages of details and photographs - all of which are bound together by the single thread "Ned Charlton was there." This is a collection of anecdotes and photographs previously unseen and, in many cases, previously not known to exist. From historic warships alongside the south mole of Gibraltar Harbour in 1883, HMS Orlando and the Boxer Rebellion of 1901, service onboard HMS Hood (later sunk in Portland Harbour) in 1893, duties in the Far East in 1905, a tale of Scandal and Intrigue from 1912 and, of course WW1, this provides considerable insight into life in and around the Royal Navy during a period of 46 years. A truly first-rate book - and an excellent read, I would think it may also provide some missing links for those historians who are researching certain specifics.
NM

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Admiral Satan: The Life and Campaigns of Suffren, Scourge of the Royal Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)Verbose but excellent military biography of hard-charging, corpulent French Admiral Suffren. Good insights into how he maintained a squadron off of Ceylon and the Carnatic on the far side of the world in the early 1780s. Suffren was much more aggressive than most French admirals, but, unlike Nelson, he was hampered by ship captains who did not share this attitude. Several excellent area maps and tactical schematics. Nice I.B. Tauris publication.

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