ARMOURCLAD FUSŌ TO KONGŌ CLASS BATTLE CRUISERS – Capital ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1868 – 1945 (Volume I) Hardcover – January 1, 2019

I really enjoyed this book, which offers a well-documented design history approach to the full gamut of Japanese capital ships from the 1878 IJN Fuso to just short of the 1915 IJN Fuso. I was especially pleased to see the full treatment given to the captured Russian battleships from the Russo-Japanese War. The level of detail is outstanding, with the right materials presented in the text and the right ones in tables and captions. There are valuable appendices on topics like the Japanese attempts to promote the growth of their steel industry to support warship construction, the methods used to produce armor, and the building of battleship main gun barrels.The only flaw with the book is the poor translation into English. Just about every paragraph presents to reader with a word or phrasing that has to be parsed through to make sense of it. It all makes sense after a bit of consideration of context, but it is a flaw. If there is a reissue, I hope the published has a fluent English speaker check the translation.I was a bit leery of ordering from a completely unknown publisher, but delivery was speedy, the packaging was more than adequate to ensure against damage, and I'm delighted with the purchase.Potential buyers should note that the picture currently shown on Amazon US is of the wrong book, and that the book is not a paperback, but rather hardcover with printed-on covers (no dust jacket).

Great book very detailed, good quality, superb service well packaged and speedy delivery.