User:Tone/Norman Friedman (Naval Historian)
Norman Friedman is an extremely prolific and popular naval analyst and author with many weighty tomes to his name. His speciality is cataloguing ship designs, and his work is well known for depth of detail.
Relevant Works
Among his most recent work relevant to our research is Naval Firepower, an almost unique book in the popular press as it delves into historical topics of fire control, and Naval Weapons of World War One: Guns, Torpedoes, Mines and ASW Weapons of All Nations.
The portion of this book which covers World War I fire control is intriguing for attempting to place this subject matter on the shelves of Barnes and Noble rather than The Admiralty Library. It has a good many nice images from the Dreyer Table Handbook of 1918 and the end notes indicate a fairly deep reading of such documents. The text, however, does not seem to indicate a deep understanding of the overall function, perhaps because words that can never convey the subject in its actual form are used extensively. For instance, the author insists on discussing various systems as "analytic" or "synthetic", a distinction that seem uniquely free of meaning or merit to this reader.
A smaller scope to this work might have proven greatly helpful as would substantial assistance from John Brooks rather than Jon Sumida, given the book's aspirations for technical depth.
The book's strength is doubtless that it will serve to invigorate interest in the field and its end notes will provide many readers with the first idea of where to enlarge their grasp of the topic. Its coverage of other periods and other services will certainly assist me as I broaden my own focus.
This book appears a very nice compendium of data, drawing upon manuscripts initially prepared for publication by John Campbell.
Recognition
Footnotes
Bibliography
- Friedman, Norman (2008). Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
- Friedman, Norman (2011). Naval Weapons of World War One. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 9781848321007 (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
