To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World

[beatrice_otter]

... is an awesome book, and I highly recommend anyone with an interest in history or the navy to check it out. It's long, but it is well written and interesting. It's got enough detail for the serious historian, but it's not dry at all and should still be interesting to laymen. Among the interesting bits of trivia (and wouldn't this make a great alternate history novel?): Napolean wanted to be a navy officer, but he was sent to the French army college instead of their naval school because his family couldn't afford to send him to the navy. He wanted to be in the navy so much that he considered joining the British navy by going to their naval college. Can you imagine how much different the French Revolution and, well, all of 19th and 20th Century Western history would have been if he'd been a British naval officer instead of a French army officer? The mind boggles!

Comments

[historianheidi.livejournal.com]

Yes, that really is one of those 'what if's', isn't it? It's amazing how such things can change history. This one isn't directly comparable to yours, but when he was a child, Adolf Hitler nearly died (I think it was tuberculosis, but I'm not 100% sure on that). History would certainly have been different if Hitler hadn't survived his teenage years.