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Title: Cassell Military Classics: Gunboat!: Small Ships at War by Bryan Perrett ISBN: 0-304-35670-0 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: The Little Ships
Comment: I just wish I could have liked this book more. The subject matter -- the little warships that shaped world foreign policy for much of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century -- deserve more attention than they get. Perrett tries hard to convey this, but you sometimes get the sense that he wishes he lived in that era. At any moment you're half expecting him to refer to indigenous peoples as savages. He certainly editorializes throughout.
That aside, Perrett's book is an entertaining read, outlining some aspects of the history of gunboats. Yet, for all their importance, the gunboat story is divided up into a series of small histories -- the gunboats did this HERE, the gunboats did that THERE. There doesn't seem to be a common glue (apart from being gunboats) cementing the place of these small ships in history.
But it's hard to put down, nonetheless. His telling of the fierce little wars these ships fought in China and the middle east are the stories of Empire. Some significant gunboat incidents are marginalized -- the bombing of the USS Panay by the Japanese on the Yangtze River is one that came to mind, and the final chapter telling of the U.S. war on the Mekong River in Vietnam gets really short shrift, which was unfortunate. You get the sense it was tacked on.
But I'd recommend the book without much reservation. It's lively, it's fun, it's entertaining and informational, and you can't ask for a lot more than that.