This excellant book should be read with its four accompanying volumes to obtain a detailed and elegant account of the Royal Navy during the Fisher era.

This is one of a set that analyzes the Royal Navy during WWI. Marder is a world class naval historian. His books are readable and interesting. He tells a tale that is occasionally sad as he describes a Royal Navy that tries, and at Jutland fails, to live up to its Nelsonian traditions. All in all, great history and worth the study. Accompanied by good maps.

Mark Twain is the quintesential American curmudgeon. His style formed an era and no one could ever reproduce him although many have tried. Read the book and meet the Man. I laughed out loud and at times was gripped with the wringing unrelenting pathos of this great master. I had to laugh at myself a time or two...

Mark Twain's satiric fantasy "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" sets up the premise of a 19th Century American being transported (via the application of a crowbar to his skull) to the legendary Camelot, where he initially suffers culture shock in the extreme. The novel's immediately obvious flaw (and I assume Mark Twain was aware of it but simply ignored it) is the 19th Century hero's ability to communicate with Britons of the 6th Century. They, of course, would have been speaking an English similar to that in "Beowulf"; the book has them talking like characters in "Hamlet". The opening chapters are comic in mood, complete with limp jokes. (When one character introduces himself as a page, the Yankee replies: "Go 'long, you ain't more than a paragraph." Oh, Lord.) However, the story quickly becomes dark and then increasingly darker. The degraded condition of the masses (which the modern hero compares to 18th Century France) culminates in a tour (with King Arthur disguised as a peasant) of a oountryside corrupted by monarchy and the Church, both of which were loathed by Mark Twain. Feminists should be warned that the author's misogyny is given free rein here: all the ladies of the court are thoughtless twits, and Morgan Le Fay is a shrew who habitually and casually kills her servants. The heroine Alisande (who, of course, becomes Sandy) is a tiresome chatterbox, whom the hero abruptly marries as a sort of social condescension. But his attitude towards women is merely a part of his general misanthropy, leading him to write at one point: "Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce." Once the protagonist has established himself as Arthur's right-hand man (he's called "The Boss"), he exercises his Yankee ingenuity to industrialize the realm. With the genius of Gutenberg, Morse and Bell at his disposal, he sets up a newspaper and introduces the telegraph and the telephone to the Middle Ages. (Just how he devises the technology to accomplish this is not made too clear.) At any rate, The Boss is considered a great wizard, and Merlin (or Brer Merlin, as the Yankee calls him) is treated like a fraudulent fool. Motivating all this is a somewhat smug sense of 19th Century superiority. Actually, the Yankee goes beyond his own century and into the 1900's. When Guenever's treason causes the civil war which divides Britain, The Boss drills a group of cadets (his West Pointers, he calls them) that he leads off to battle against the anti-Arthurian knighthood. The result is a blood bath presciently and repulsively similar to the trench warfare of 1914-1918. (The novel was published in 1889.) If this is meant to be an indication of future efficiency, it's an extremely pessimistic vision. But then, the whole story is Mark Twain's gloomy statement on Mankind's uneasy place in a dysfunctional world, be it the Dark Ages or the somber present.

When Hank Morgan, the head superintendent of the great arms factory, receives a smack on the head given by a friend nicknamed Hercules, he wakes up under an oak tree. A young man tells Morgan is he is in Camelot in the year 528. Not believing the boy, Morgan insists it is the year 1879 in Hartford, Connecticut. Morgan's adventures are written in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain. Sir Kay throws Morgan in prison after he finds the Yankee and scares him up a tree. Sentenced to death the next day, Morgan performs a "miracle" before he is hung and King Arthur, believing him to be a wizard, set him free. Slowly, Morgan works his way up to "The Boss" of King Arthur's court and brings all of his 19th century knowledge to the people of Camelot, such as the telephone and electric lights.
Although I would recommend this book to advanced readers, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is over 400 pages and it was difficult for me to get into the story at first. Also, the language was hard to understand. For example, "Fair sir, will ye just?" and "Prithee do not let me." Despite the length and the language, I enjoyed the way Twain used characters and stories from the Arthur legends and formed them into the plot. The book made me think, what would the world be like if some one actually did go back in time?

'Connecticut Yankee' is an excellent political satire still relevant to today's world. Everyone's heard of it, and it's been spoofed many times in film. However, few people have read it and they're missing a treat. Mark Twain is one author whose works consistently remain applicable to modern society. 'Yankee' is funny, interesting and highly worth your time.