| John Paul Jones - A Sailor's Biography (1959) |
| Front Cover | Book Details | ||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Notes/Review |
| I've heard John Paul Jones called the Father of the US Navy, but before reading this book, I really had no idea who he was or what he did, other than the famous quote "I have not yet begun to fight!" I've also come across Morison's name quite often, although I've never before read any of his work. I occasionally toy with the idea of tackling his 15 volume work on the Second World War, but, in addition to being really, really long, I suspect more recent books cover the material better, given the amount of formerly secret resources more modern writers have access to. This book isn't subject to that fault. I found this work most entertaining. Paul Jones was quite the interesting figure. A swashbuckler, if you will. Born in Scotland, went to sea at 13, advanced to command at a young age, settled in the Colonies as the independence movement got rolling, had love affairs wherever he went, was fierce in combat, and so on. Morison never uses the term "father of the US Navy". I see now that people consider JPJ this way due mainly to manuscripts he submitted to the Naval Committee of Congress before he took command of any US Navy vessel. I understand that these documents are still worth studying today. Having read all the Patrick O'Brian books, I couldn't help but wonder how he'd have told the stories of Paul Jones' engagements. O'Brian's heroes fought in different wars, a couple of decades later, but the ships and tactics are quite similar. Morison, of course, wasn't the first to write about JPJ. His deep research of his subject results in him spending a fair amount of time debunking many earlier biographers. One volume he suggests should be moved into the fiction section of libraries, so as not to lead readers astray. Morison won the Pulitzer for this book. There are numerous pictures and maps, and an index. There is no bibliography or end notes in the sense that I'm used to seeing them now. What he calls a bibliography sort of takes the place of notes. |