Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy

"Superbly edited by Brooke's grandson, a professor emeritus at Virginia Military Institute, this book will quickly take a qualified place among the outstanding works on the South's 'war at sea.'"—The Roanoke Times

"George Brooke Jr. deserves our thanks for making his grandfather's illuminating correspondence and journal available. Civil War scholarship will be the better for it."—Civil War Book Review

"Scholars will welcome the long anticipated publication of the wartime diaries and letters of John M. Brooke because it helps fill a major gap in Civil War literature. Too little has been written about the role of science and technology in the course of the war, especially from the southern perspective. As an untutored genius, Brook was a perfect representative of American ingenuity in the nineteenth century. Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy provides yet another compelling argument that the American Civil War was truly the world's first modern war."—Charles F. Bryan Jr., Virginia Historical Society

"John M. Brooke was the Confederacy's ordnance genius, and now, thanks to this superbly edited volume, we have the opportunity to see that extraordinary mind at work. George M. Brooke, Jr. has given us one of the most valuable books on Confederate naval history to appear in recent years. Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy deserves an honored place on every Civil War bookshelf."—Charles Dew, Williams College