Promotional Information

The history of naval architecture is a fascinating adventure. Ferreiro's book takes the reader on a journey through time, exploring how the science and engineering developed. A myriad of topics are included such as the important prerequisite of stability. It is a marvelous voyage of discovery, written in a very readable manner which will appeal to all, from the curious to those of us actively practicing the profession. -- Stephen M. Payne, OBE, Vice President and Chief Naval Architect, Carnival Corporate Shipbuilding, designer of the Queen Mary 2 Naval architecture has been a rarity among the sciences, having no written history worthy of the name -- until now. In this book, Larrie Ferreiro has produced a work worthy of the discipline he has practiced and studied with equal ability. For the first time the many and varied theoretical and practical traditions of European ship design have been analyzed as part of the scientific and intellectual world in which they developed. The result is a work of the highest importance, linking science, ships, and sea power. -- Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History, King's College London This important book offers counterpoint to Kenneth Alder's Engineering the Revolution. With great skill and imagination, Langins exploits an eighteenth-century controversy over fortification design to illuminate the nature of engineering, the tension between theory and practice, the contrast between the lone genius and institutionalized professionalism, and the relationship between engineering and revolution. -- Alex Roland, Professor of History, Duke University

About the Author

Larrie D. Ferreiro is a naval architect and historian who served for more than thirty-five years in the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense. An Adjunct Professor of Engineering and History at George Mason University, he is the author of the award-winning Ships and Science (MIT Press) and Brothers in Arms, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in History.

Reviews

Ships and Science is a meticulously researched, scholarly book...Any maritime historian or maritime architecture scholar should benefit from reading this erudite, thought-provoking book.—Louis Arthur Norton, The Northern Mariner

This volume should be required reading for all students of naval architecture.—Marine Technology

This is a superb volume, and is likely to be regarded in coming years as the starting point of the now fast growing study of the foundations of applied science and engineering.—Fred M. Walker, Mariner's Mirror

Highly recommended.—Choice