A sweeping, lavishly illustrated one-volume history of the rise of American naval power during World War II   “When he is at his best, as he often is in these pages, Kennedy can be dazzling.”—Ian W. Toll, New York Times   “The book makes for enjoyable reading, owing to the author’s easygoing style. . . . Kennedy is an academic who does not write like one; he writes a story, not a treatise.”—Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post   “Engrossing.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal   In this engaging narrative, brought to life by marine artist Ian Marshall’s beautiful full‑color paintings, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War—the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan—Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. From the elimination of the Italian, German, and Japanese fleets and almost all of the French fleet, to the end of the era of the big‑gunned surface vessel, the advent of the atomic bomb, and the rise of an American economic and military power larger than anything the world had ever seen, Kennedy shows how the strategic landscape for naval affairs was completely altered between 1936 and 1946. “The book makes for enjoyable reading, owing to the author’s easygoing style. . . . Kennedy is an academic who does not write like one; he writes a story, not a treatise. It is a story enhanced by Marshall’s exquisite artwork.”—Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post “Engrossing. . . . Alongside the pacey narrative, ranging across both the European and Pacific theaters of the war, are evocative battle-themed paintings by the late British artist Ian Marshall. . . . Kennedy convincingly shows that World War II was won, ultimately, by superior American industrial capacity. . . . A new world had been born. It was indeed, as Kennedy terms it, ‘the age of Pax Americana,’ and it originated in the American naval supremacy he so vividly chronicles in Victory at Sea .”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal “An authoritative global narrative [and] lavishly illustrated with watercolour paintings by the fine marine artist Ian Marshall, together with excellent maps and graphs. . . . I believe the Royal Navy and US navy to have been the outstanding wartime fighting services of their respective nations. Kennedy offers them a fitting tribute and a penetrating analysis.”—Max Hastings, Sunday Times “For the illustrations alone, Victory at Sea is worth the hardcover price. . . . When he is at his best, as he often is in these pages, Kennedy can be dazzling. His prose never fails him; he is always graceful and lucid on the page.”—Ian W. Toll, New York Times “Kennedy, the author of the epochal The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers , brings his wide-ranging historical vision to this hugely authoritative history of the 1939–45 war at sea. Much conventional wisdom—about the role of the German U-boats, for instance—goes out of the window in his penetrating analysis.”— Sunday Times, “50 Best Books for the Sunlounger” “There is no shortage of histories of naval warfare, not least on World War II. What Kennedy’s book brings is a broader perspective on the role—sometimes decisive, sometimes desultory—that naval power would play not just in breaking the power of imperial Japan, Italy, and Nazi Germany but in creating a world that would last.”—Alexander Wooley, Foreign Policy “ Victory at Sea is a tour de force. It is sweeping naval history of the Second World War, delightful in its relating of facts and lucid in its presentation of arguments. . . . Victory at Sea is capable of inspiring a new generation of military historians to study sea power in the tradition of their forerunners.”—Daniel J. Samet, American Purpose “A great read, Kennedy’s book encourages one to think and think again, and not only about the events of World War II but also why that conflict is so totally atypical of warfare as a whole, past and present.”—Jeremy Black, New Criterion “Essential reading for anyone generally interested in the Second World War. . . . Kennedy’s expansive work provides a wonderful strategic overview of the naval conflicts during the Second World War. It is also an analysis, utilizing the navy as an exemplar, of the shift in global fortunes and global power.”—Rob Clemm, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs “Marshall’s art is one of this book’s many delights. . . . Marshall’s meticulously detailed paintings illustrate Kennedy’s point that, although the production statistics tell part of the war’s story, ‘the deficit in all deterministic explanations—the substructure alters, therefore the superstructure is changed—is that they lack human agency.’”—Mike Watson, Washington Free Beacon “This is not just a book about navies in wartime—it is a book that examines th