Monitor: The Story of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the Course of History

by JAMES TERTIUS DEKAY

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Many writers have described the famous clash between the Monitor and the Merrimac, but James Tertius deKay's book probably belongs at the top of the stack. Much of Monitor focuses on how these ships came into being, including John Ericsson's struggle of more than 20 years to have his vision of an ironclad warship become a reality. As the title suggests, Monitor is more about the Monitor than the Merrimac, but both vessels get their due in deKay's wide-ranging narrative. Like so much of Civil War history, the coincidences and ironies of what happened at the mouth of the Chesapeake in 1862--how the two ships met, how brother fought brother, how neither impregnable warrior survived the calendar year--make for a spellbinding story, and deKay tells it as well as it has ever been told.