Content area
Full Text
A History of the Confederate Navy. By Raimondo Luraghi. Trans. Paolo Coletta. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1996. ISBN 1-55750-527-6. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 514. $35.95.
In 1887, Rogers and Sherwood published J. Thomas ScharPs History of the Confederate States Navy, an 824-page tome that remains the classic in the field. Scharf served in the Confederate Navy, and wrote his work from personal reminiscences he solicited from commanders, shipbuilders, bureau chiefs, and officers. Raimondo Luraghi is a Genoese scholar and longtime student of the American Civil War. His recent History of the Confederate Navy (which has already gone through two printings in Italy) is a forceful foray into a specialized field of Confederate scholarship.
While Scharf concentrated on men, ships, and combat, Luraghi seeks to answer the question: How? How could the Confederacy, a nation of yeoman farmers yearning to...