Books, Arts & Manners: Mahan Redux

Seapower in Global Politics 1494-1993, by George Modelski and William R. Thompson (University of Washington, 394 pp., $35)

This book is destined to become a standard work of reference; nearly half of it is devoted to tables and graphs charting the year-by-year changes in naval strength of the great powers over five centuries. However, it is the book’s thesis that makes it relevant to current debates over national security policy.