The Navy is a history of the United States Navy from the American Revolution onwards.

It has captains and above and juniors who became captains. It describes the various ships and in battles lists all the ships and their number of guns. It also goes over the various struggles during interwar years as the Navy was often downsized and neglected.

The writing is story style with events unfolding and quotes and near quotes and gossip thrown in. Naval battles are described in good format for a history book and I suppose you shouldn't expect modern-day diagrams showing the plots of each ship as there might not be that much detail in the historical records.

The book was written in 1938 so it does have the years of armistice navies then naval buildup. A chapter or two were added in 1941 sort of giving the state of the fleet vs Japan and key territories that each side will want to control.

There are appendices listing all armed ships built with some details plus end notes and an index.

As a history I guess it's fairly good as it's a 400+ page book with lots of text and there are illustrations — ships in battle paintings with a few photographs towards the end. Even though it has a story style and sometimes has people saying things it's still mostly a dry read of things happening and details of battle with not that much of the human element.

Anyway, I read this as someone who likes military history and as such it's a book that will be in my library though I wish there were a better book.