Castles of Steel

[specster]

A book and audio book about Jutland.  Want to pull the trigger and get it but the last 2 books I bought where not good.  Anyone read this one?  Any advice??

[MikB]

I think it's a good medium-level introduction to the history of WW1 at sea. Some statements and interpretations are challenged in other pieces of work, and it isn't always obvious in CoS which these are, but as a book for laying out the main structure of the story I think it hits the spot better than most others.

 

For more detail got to Marder's 5-volume 'From Dreadnought To Scapa Flow', Gordon's 'Rules Of The Game', and Tarrant's 'Jutland - The German Perspective'.

 

There's no point in trying to guide your opinion - those who do that usually have an agenda, and there are plenty of those. Better to form your own.

[paulgranger]

Both 'Castles of Steel', and it's precursor 'Dreadnought' are available as Kindle e-books, just over £5 each, which isn't too bad.

[specster]

Thank you both, got the book, am into the third chapter and I like it.

[Felix C]

Massie does good social history with some detailed background. I enjoyed his Peter the Great and Romanov's books because I knew nothing of the era. Being a somewhat better reader into naval aspects of the dreadnought race and naval great war it seems on the light and social side in terms of Dreadnought and Castles of Steel is a recap of decades older works by British writers. I would still read it because he writes well. Some works which are heavy on detail are almost unreadable[Friedman's Great War at Sea for example] and then there are very experienced general history writers who can spin a good tale with little work or detail. 

Edited 6 March , 2019 by Felix C