Book Review, The Sailor's Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know About the Sea

By Admiral James Stavridis
Reviewed by Steven Ludwig, HRNM Volunteer

The Sailor’s Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know the Sea, by Admiral James Stavridis, has something for anyone drawn to the sea. The book provides a comprehensive reading guide for old salts, historians, adventurers, scientists, and dreamers alike, and its structure allows each to “navigate“ the sections depending on their individual preference. This is a challenging book to review, as it is a collection of reviews itself. Admiral Stavridis has distilled thousands of books about the sea, sailors, explorers, fictional characters, and naval history to his top 50 recommendations. Anyone reading this guide might have other choices, but few are as qualified to make these selections as the author.

Admiral Stavridis’ love of the sea and literature is evident in his reviews. Here we get the benefit of him doing our intellectual heavy lifting. The admiral is a sailor/scholar uniquely qualified to author this well thought out guide. He is a retired four-star U.S. naval officer, and currently Vice Chair, Global Affairs and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. He is also chair of the Rockefeller Foundation board. Previously he served for five years as the dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was the first Navy admiral to lead the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as Supreme Allied Commander.

Admiral James Stavridis (Official Navy photo)

After the preface, the book is divided into four categories: The Oceans, Explorers, Sailors in Fiction, and Sailors in Non-fiction, followed by an afterword. The preface gives us insight into the Admiral himself. His love of family, the sea, and literature are examined from his early childhood to the present. Each of the following four sections contain reviews of multiple books of varied topics. The reviews start with a glimpse into why this selection is important to the author, from childhood memories to personal and professional references over his vast naval career. Each review ends with a bonus feature. Some bonuses reference other books or movie adaptions. My favorite bonus is in the review for The Bedford Incident. The admiral explains the psychological and literary parallels with Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. His ability to make these parallels of two books separated by 100 years is an example of how insightful these reviews are.

The Oceans: From navigation, naval history, and the importance of cod on a global economy, to free diving, ecology, and a book devoted to the most remote islands in the world, the thirteen books in this section are all-encompassing. They are devoted mostly to a macro view of the oceans and those sailing them.

Explorers: The books span a diversity of exploration. Included are Cooke’s expeditions, which redefined the world as it was known in eighteenth-century England and a tale of six men crossing the Pacific Ocean in a primitive raft named Kon Tiki. Among others, there are tales of the first man to circumnavigate the globe by sail and an expedition to Antarctica which was miraculously saved by its leader.

Sailors in Fiction: The books in this section include the science fiction world of Jules Verne, and the magical realism of Yann Martel. There are also well-known literary characters from works including The Old Man and the Sea, Mister Roberts, Moby Dick, and Mutiny on the Bounty to name a few. Other excellent selections focus on the stresses of command and life aboard old sailing ships, modern surface ships, and a WWII diesel submarine.

Sailors in Non-Fiction: This is the largest section with 15 book reviews, including the Time-Life 22-volume set The Seafarers. Sailing and sailors from 2,500 years ago to the present are represented in these books. Ground-breaking individual and naval forces achievements and epic tragedies are disbursed among excellent biographies and autobiographies.

The afterword, written by Commander J. D. Kristenson, USN provides further insight into the author and offers three ways the selections can be taken from each section depending on a person’s individual interest and experience. Commander Kristenson also provides a valuable warning: don’t take on this entire list as a challenge. He urges the reader to “find what truly speaks to you, that which can be used to help you weigh, consider, and challenge your thoughts.”

Admiral Stavridis’ reviews have given me an idea of what speaks to me, and my personal, disjointed, order of preference will start with Master and Commander, followed by Kon Tiki. My question for you is, which books speak to you and why?