Finally, there is an encyclopedia of underwater/maritime archaeology. Among the contributors are over 200 of the world's foremost experts in the area. The material has been edited by James P Delgado. Among the advisory editors are professors George F Bass, C O Cederlund and Seán Mc Grail.

The book is a collection of excellent up-to-date articles, sorted in alphabetical order, including cross references. There are plenty of fine illustrations, and the articles as such contain a wealth of information. It is a welcome update on the earlier works by Bass, Throckmorton and Muckelroy. I particularly enjoyed reading the articles of ancient shipwrecks, e.g. the Italian Giglio wreck.

But for an encyclopedia, the material is not integrated well enough. Examples:

Under Sutton Hoo, there is a good article, but no illustration. However, there is a photo of the famous site in the article about ship burials, but no reference to the photo from the Sutton Hoo article. The articles on airlift and water dredge contradict each other. Obviously they were written by different authors, but the articles could have been better integrated. U/W video has a good article, but U/W photo is not represented as a topic.

Also, I missed some things that could have been included:

I tried to find the status of underwater archaeology in Canada. But Canada was missing both from the topics in the book and from the index. I failed to find texts on either logboats, anchor types, or ship building and the clinker boat type. I also failed to find anything about types of amphoras, cannon, bottles or clay pipe. However, these topics are covered in the land archaeology literature.

Personally, I would also have liked articles about Keith Muckelroy and Jacques Cousteau.

These shortcomings are minor details, which can be resolved in a later edition. This beautiful book is excellent. It may be one of the best publications ever made in the area, and the best literature available for under 30 pounds sterling. I can recommend it to anybody working with or interested in the area. Despite its possible shortcomings as an encyclopedia, it is well worth buying only for the articles themselves.

Discovered this book in a library yesterday and immediately ordered it from Amazon. If anyone were seriously interested in Nautical Archaeology this should be the first book to get. Anyone studying this subject should make sure they have access to it, whether in a nearby library or in their personal library. Very comprehensive and well written.

James P. Delgado's list of credits is impressive by any standards; Former Head of the US Maritime Preservation Programme and former Official Historian for the US National Parks Service, today, he is the Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and Official Archaeologist for the National Geographic and History television channels. His expeditions have included such world-famous shipwrecks as the Titanic, USS Arizona, Carpathia and those found at Bikini Atoll.

With such a high reputation in the field of marine archaeology, you just know the information contained within this book is something on which you can rely - but there is much more to this book than just a collection of facts. "Lost Warships" is accurately described by the Publisher as an "Archaeological Tour of War at Sea" but Mr Delgado has turned that tour into the most fascinating journey through time on that theme. Better still, this is also a very readable book with something for everyone.

Measuring 11¼in x 9¼in, Lost Warships is hardback containing 190 pages of solid information. There are illustrations on almost every page in the form of historic photographs, paintings, line drawings and even brass rubbings. With each of these being carefully selected, they combine to depict the wide variety of subject matter necessary to support the various elements of the overall "story" which this book tells so well.

Neatly laid out, this book is an anthology of War at Sea as, chapter by chapter, we move steadily forward from ancient times to the nuclear age.

Part of the caption to the last photograph in the book reads; "Today, the silent guns resting beneath the waves, are a reminder that the sea is our greatest museum of human sacrifice, bravery and folly."

Says it all really!

NM

Pearl Harbor Recalled with text by James P. Delgado and illustrations by Tom Freeman places the attack in a new perspective. In place of multiple poor quality black and white prints which is all we have to envision the Day of Infamy, Tom Freeman has supplied a visually stunning chronology of the attack beginning with aerial views of the harbor as the attack commenced and ending with a beatiful view of the battleship Arizona as she lies today in the mud of Pearl Harbor. Each episode in the drama is portrayed from the sailing of the Kido Butai (First Striking Force) to the launching of the midget submarines to the first skirmish with the latter and Tone's scout plane confirming the presence of the fleet in harbor. Freeman then potrays the assaults on US airfields preventing any air opposition and then the smashing of battleship row, culminating with a breathtaking portrayal of the Arizona blowing up at approximately 810 am. Individual heroics are portrayed with one G.I. firing his .45 caliber pistol at an A6M Zero as it races close overhead and firemen putting out fires at Hickam Field.
The vast expanse of the fiery inferno is vividly portrayed and places the attack on Pearl Harbor in the world of color for I believe the first time. If not the first, then it is certainly the best artistic impression made of the attack, well researched and executed. Mr. Delgado's narrative is informative and complements the paintings extremely well. This is an excellent book which I would recommend to any naval student, wargamer or naval historian.

The Norsemen may have been the first to attempt this passage but they were certainly not the last. Over 300 years of trials and bitter, freezing failures were to come and go before Norwegian Roald Amundsen finally conquered the passage in the early 20th century. It is not a coincidence that the only other undiscovered lands and the last of the remaining great adventures was also in a snowy, bitter climate - Shackleton's voyage to the Antarctic on the 'Endurance' was taking place at about the same time.

Disimilar to other 'popular history' books, this one does not have the same easy, flowing, narrative style but what it does differently and better than other pop histories is give details. Here you learn all that you could possibly want to know about every unfortunate mission that unsuccessfully sought the Nortwest passage. Crammed with maps, photos and illustrations it's all here. The little sidebar descriptions - mini biographies- of many of the explorers is a nice feature.

I found this book a very interesting read. The photos were wonderful. It covers the varied expeditions on the quest for the Northwest Passage. Lots of people lost their lives and ultimately it was not, of course, a really usable shipping route.

The Franklin expedition and the various search parties is well covered. The one existing daguerotype of Franklin, which I had not seen, is included, as are the recent discoveries and theories about what happened.

At a bargain price, this is a nice gift book. Mine came without the tell tale black "bargain stripe" on the spine.

Wondrously illustrated with photographs, artwork, and maps, James Delgado's Across the Top Of The World: The Quest For The Northwest Passage tells of the courageous yet ultimately doomed search for a Northwest Passage across the North American continent. From the Frobisher party in 1547 to the first successful navigation in 1903-6, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner that set the stage for modern exploration using icebreakers, this historical volume portrays the pain, the toll, the struggle, and the quest of man vs. nature in absolute detail. The narrative text is exhaustively researched and so detailed as to metaphorically transport the reader along with the famous journeys. Across The Top Of The World is enthusiastically recommended public library American history collections and for anyone with a keen interest in this fascinating part of American history.

This is a great mini-coffee table book (get the hardcover if you REALLY dig this stuff!) offering hours of information and photos of the famous atomic bomb tests on naval ships at Bikini Atoll. The 190 page book is broken into nine chapters and has excellent notes on sources. Background information covers the first half of the book while the second is focused on recent dives to many of the famous and lesser known ships that were sunk here. The writing is very informative and the photographs are absolutely haunting, particularly the ones of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga! Several color photos are included in the center. The author pushes no agenda in this book. He merely reports the facts available both "good and bad".

My Dad was there (USS Reclaimer) - swimming in the atoll the day after the blasts, cleaning refuged ships, etc. It's amazing he's still alive.

Nice photos; good summaries. This isn't a full-blown account of Operation CrossRoads but a nice summary of the ships. If you are interested in OC, this is a good book to have on your shelf.

James Delgado does a very good job of reviewing the sunken ships of Bikini Atoll and telling the story of the 1946 atomic bomb tests. I read this book after diving at Bikini Atoll and found it to be a good treatment of a topic that has received too little attention. As far as wreck diving goes, Bikini Atoll is the best in the world, and my only disappointment with this book is that it does not fill the need for a coffee-table-style photographic survey of the incredible shipwrecks at Bikini. That being said, Delgado's book is a nice compromise between such a coffee table book and the more comprehensive historical treatment in Jonathan Weisgall's superb book on Bikini Atoll.

This book was a very interesting true story of several British naval officers and their guides who travelled from Hudson Bay into the interior of Canada and up the Coppermine River to the northern coast of the North America. This expedition took several years. As their journey progressed so did the sufferings they endured. Several members of the group died of starvation and other causes. One was murdered and his killer was shot. It was incredible that anyone survived.

Anyone interested in the Arctic exploration and early Native Americans will enjoy this book. The author, Sir John Franklin, was a fearless explorer who died on a subsequent Arctic mission. He descibes his meetings with the traders and local inhabitants in great detail. He relied in large part on local Native Americans as guides and hunters. It was his intention to meet with the Eskimo people, who avoided all contact with his group. The Native Americans refused to accompany the group all the way north due to their fear of the Eskimos. I highly recommend this book.

The combination of the authors' perspectives, the subject matter and its historical perspective, and the eyewitness accounts were
very interesting and moving.

The book has drama, history, and personality......a rare combination!

What a wonderful experience! Reading this book was like being drawn into the living room to sit around the fireplace with the authors and survivors to hear their stories. Crying, feeling, hearing for the first time, learning, and even a laugh or two with my newfound treasury of friends. How refreshing it is to hear the stories told by those who were there as they remember it. I write this as someone who knows nothing about tactics or war and wasn't even a glimmer in my mother's eye at the time, as she was only a few months old at the time. I've tried to read those books with "true historical accuracy" yet got only a distant sterile factual (and boring) understanding. This book has brought the Arizona alive to me. The Arizona is not just a sunken ship. The Arizona is a living breathing bleeding screaming crying brave and courageous part of who we are as Americans. If I may be so bold as to embrace the men and their families as my own. We, Americans, are who we are because these men and their families have deeply empacted their corner of the world, which has become ours. Thank you survivors, authors, publisher, you have awakened an important part of my history in me. Now to live in a way that honors their memory.
review by: The Rev. Pam Feeser

One reviewer commented on the accuracy of this book - "I found this book written on a very basic level, with well known facts wrong (i.e. on Dec 7 people were 'watching the Dodgers play the Giants in late season football'. I always thought the Dodgers were a baseball team."

I checked this out, there was also a NY Dodgers FOOTBALL Team in the NFL in the 1930s and early 1940s. On December 7th, 1941, they were playing football against the NY Giants in New York City. There is a famous radio broadcast on CBS of this game as the announcer had to break in to announce that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.