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Book Review: The Caribbean before Columbus

or the Soviet Moonzund landings in the autumn of 1944. In fact, after considerable detail on the period from September 1939 to June 1941 the section on the invasion of the Soviet Union is relatively disappointing in length given the intensity of naval activity during the second half of 1941. Early on in this book a little more space is used than is perhaps warranted on providing context that readers will be able to gain elsewhere, where the first four chapters that provide at times very broad context prior to September 1939 might have been condensed to make way for more detail for the core period with which the book is concerned. Certainly the significance of some of the early contextual material for what comes later is not always made clear. The author spends most of the second half of the book on the 1944–45 period and looks at the final months of the war from January 1945 month-bymonth. Here for example the author provides a section with some rich detail on the sinking of the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945. The author’s fragmented approach to including material and tendency to go off at tangents is at times a little frustrating, but on the other hand the reader is provided with all sorts of fascinating titbits relating to the broader topic of the book. The reader also benefits from a number of information boxes that tend to focus on specific aspects of naval warfare such as naval gunnery or technologies such as RADAR or ASDIC (in a relatively rare factual error identified as being introduced by the British ‘around 1941’). These information boxes are typically both interesting and informative, even if not necessarily well-integrated with the text, although once again if anything tend to neglect the Soviet side. A particularly welcome inclusion in this book and illustration of the breadth of coverage is a brief attempt to assess the environmental impact of the naval war in the Baltic. Another strength of the book is the inclusion of a very good range of photographs and plenty of maps that will prove valuable to readers who more often than not will not be familiar with the detailed geography of the region. The author’s attention to detail on those topics on which he focuses is evident in the appendices, where the cross-referenced index of place names in different languages is a case in point. Overall, this is a valuable addition to the literature on the Second World War in the English language. This book brings a topic otherwise poorly covered in English to a wider audience, in what in many ways is a very accessible form. Seaforth Publishing – a division of Pen and Sword – is to be commended for bringing this at times fascinating and often informative book to a new readership. Overall, I certainly recommend this book to those with an interest in naval aspects of the Second World War, and indeed to those with an interest in the Baltic region during the period.