Excellence in Historiography: Morison's Two-Ocean War

Among the many pleasures of my 4th re-reading of Samuel Eliot Morison's Two Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Atlantic, Little & Brown, 1963, 610 pages.) are the wide breadth (and depth) of his research; his willingness to see the long view of historical developments; and a pronounced willingness to positively applaud democratic principles, idealism, and heroic personages instead of skulking behind the oh-so-modern pose of moral neutrality.

And Morison is not only educational, he is frequently entertaining and inspirational. His doesn't try to hide his opinions as most modern historians do. He is honest enough to state them...but wise and responsible enough to back them up with facts and a balanced perspective.

Most modern historians, however, have a bucketful of "progressive" assumptions, biases, and presuppositions with which they drench their historiography, all the while insisting that they alone are the indifferent and objective spectators. 

Poppycock. 

Give me an honest and candidly involved historian every time. Give me Shelby Foote, Walter Lord, John Toland, David McCullough, Antonia Fraser, Roland Bainton, Paul Johnson, Stephen Ambrose, Bruce Catton, William Prescott, Basil Liddell Hart, Alexander Solzhenitsyn...

And yes, give me Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison too.

I couldn't recommend Two-Ocean War more highly.