Ian W. Toll

On google books, the first book that I used lots of 'notes' on (highlighted interesting sections of text).

A really great read that strikes a fine balance between the political milieu of the founding fathers (particularly Adams, Jefferson, and Madison), bloody frigate fights, and even some of the War of 1812 that took place off the water (the burning of D.C, Battle of New Orleans, etc.) The Barbary pirates (Tripoli, Algiers) is an interesting section. Blackmail from half way around the world. show more Toll is good at zooming in for details and then zooming out for narrative, keeping things moving, interesting and relevant. A lot of his 'zoom-ins' (like the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Lake Erie) spark interest in further reading on those subjects. Also VERY interesting (having read Aubrey / Maturin) in the analysis of British sailing, gunnery, and naval architecture as compared to the upstart Americans. A real David vs. Goliath story. Balls of steel, those early sea captains. show less

As with the two prior volumes I felt I was experiencing the Pacific war through the eyes of the Americans and the Japanese. The brutality and otherworldliness of the fighting seemed more immediate. It certainly Leaves the reader with a sense of the horror of war. One can't look at a successful war as a grand thing
US naval and air superiority means there is never any doubt that Japan will lose the war. The Japanese challenge is reconciling its defeat with its national character.
The brutality show more of the amphibious landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa show how terrible the battles were for both sides. Clearly the American population advantage and industrial capacity make the outcome inevitable but the Japanese character makes its surrender difficult even after the atomic bombs. Even the emperor's decision to surrender was meet with a threatened coup.
Neither MacArthur or Halsey comes off without character flaws.
The book ends with the return of the American veterans. They faced challenges getting home and greater challenges when home. Clearly the war changed America in ways never expected. Woman experienced more freedom and we're often unwilling to return to their former roles. Ultimately that post war freedom and the introduction of the pill in the sixties gave birth to contemporary feminism.
The returning Black soldiers faced special challenges. The equality they had experienced at war was often rescinded when they returned home. The struggle for a colorblind society is an ongoing challenge.
I found the book thought provoking and I appreciate the time and effort poured into it by the author. show less

There is something in all of us that thrills to the sea. The vast oceans cover 70% of Earth's surface, eternal and everchanging. They are the highways of the world's commerce, the source of a great power's strength and prosperity, and a site where desperate battles fought, and heroic deeds done. In a swift and deeply sourced history, Toll brings alive the character of the period, and the role of the American Navy at the dawn of this country.

The Navy is specified in the constitution, but a show more naval build-up was controversial from the get-go. While Federalists saw a navy as a key protector of trade and defender of national honor, the agrarian Jeffersonian Republican party saw the navy as a useless expense that would incur ruinous debts, entangle America in European wars and benefit New England merchants at the expense of the common man. As Barbary corsairs began to prey on unescorted American traders, the Washington administration ordered the construction of six frigates to serve as the capital ships of the American Navy.

The six frigates, designed by renegade Quaker shipwright Joshua Humpfrey, proved controversial from the start. Humpfrey's design was larger than European frigates, with exceptionally heavy framing of southern live oak. Finely cut and powerfully armed, the frigates were intended to outrun lumbering ships of the line and overpower lesser frigates and brigs. Philadelphia, then the capitol and commercial center of North America, was the logical place to build the ships, but in an early example of pork barrel defense procurement, the actual job of construction was split to separate cities up and down the Atlantic sea coast, increasing cost and complexity.

The ships served with both success and catastrophe in the quasi-war with France and the initial retaliatory raids against Tripoli. The USS Philadelphia ran hard around outside Tripoli and was forced to strike her colors, before being destroyed in a daring raid. Ships were only one part of the American navy. The officers and sailors were even more important, and Tolls describes an alien martial culture of dueling and high honor.

The key conflict of the era was over impressment of American sailors. The British Navy faced a personnel problem of epic proportions as it waged war against Napoleon, and the burgeoning American merchant fleet was full of sailors, some deserters from the British Navy, but many Americans. The British were cavalier in stopping American ships and topping up their crews, no matter the legalities. British merchantile interests resented the Americans, who were prospering on trade with embargoed France as Britain bled. Through 1811, diplomacy failed and bellicosity increased, with the Chesapeake incident, where British ships attacked, boarded, and impressed sailors from an American man-of-war, tilting the balance towards outright war.

The six frigates earned their place in the history in the war, with a series of sharp single-ship actions against British frigates that showed that the Americans could fight and defeat the seemingly invincible British Navy. These battles had little strategic impact, the loss of four ships was a pin-prick, but the battles had an outsized effect on morale. American spirits soared, the British despaired, and large and expensive forces were used to tie the frigates down in port, while hundreds of American privateers sallied from smaller ports and devastated British merchants worldwide. The war ended two years later in exhaustion, with Washington DC burnt and the status quo ante restored.

But the six frigates proved their worth, and laid a tradition of victory. Toll closes with a historiographic review, discussing hooary 19th century American myth-making, an influential but libelous British account that was the standard work, and finally a young Theodore Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812, which put seapower in a proper historical context. Roosevelt of course saw the birth of the American Navy as major power, with the Great White Fleet and the Panama Canal.

Six Frigates lives up to every accolade as one of the finest general histories and military histories I have ever read! show less

After reading some great stuff about the WW II European theater, I've been meaning to find an equivalent history of the Pacific theater. I finally found and read this, and it's fantastic. The first book of Toll's trilogy takes us on a deep dive into the period from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway in June 1942. It doesn't skimp at all on details, with granular descriptions of the attack on Hawaii, the swift Japanese advance south toward Australia, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and of show more course Midway, which was the turning point of the war. In spite of the heavy detail, the book is surprisingly readable- Toll is a great writer, with the perfect mix of technical terms and a touch of flowery prose. Though I'm not much of a military expert, I was able to follow the descriptions well, and learned a tremendous amount.

Interesting takeaways that I didn't really understand at all: naval strategies were based on the writings of a 19th century theorist named Mahan, positing that the keys to victory were concentration of forces around great battleships. But the aviation age made those theories totally obsolete, and military planners hadn't really grasped this at the start of the war, that aircraft carriers were by far the most important ship. Of course the carrier's peculiar aspect was that it was offensively devastating, but at the same time very vulnerable itself when attacked; one bomb on the ship started lighting up all the gasoline in the planes and the fueling stations, so a relatively minor strike could take it to the bottom. The Battle of Midway was a great US victory mainly thanks to the work of the analysts in Hawaii who successfully broke the Japanese codes and allowed the US to know their plans; but then the key officer in Hawaii was drummed out of the job by his superiors in Washington because he had been proved right and they had been proven to be idiots. The Midway battle still swung on some strokes of good fortune, and could easily have gone the other way if Japanese scouts had spotted the US fleet a little earlier.

The book is long, so not for the faint of heart. But great- can't wait for the next one. show less