Massie's book includes wonderful details of the people involved, from the Kaiser and his strained relationship with his English mother and with his grandmother, Queen Victoria, to Prince (and then King) Edward's love affair with ships, to the great admirals who had the vision of what the modern battleship should look like, von Tirpitz for the Germans and Sir John ("Jacky") Fisher for the English. Massie gives excellent details of the ships' design and construction, and of the battles in each country to get them funded -- the German army begrudged the expenditure and saw the battleships as a dangerous adventure, and British politicians such as Lloyd George and Churchill, who were interested in social reform, regretted their expense (Churchill, however changed his mind when he saw the growing German naval threat, and as First Lord of the Admiralty, sped up the modernization of the fleet in time for the war.).
This is a good book to help understand the naval strategy of the times, and of the general atmosphere of Europe before the frist war.
My only complaint with the book is that it ends too soon -- I would love to see Massie give an account of Jutland, the major sea battle of World War I, in which the ideas of Fisher and von Tirpitz were tested in actual battle -- as the book is, we never see the great ships actually employed in battle. I would also have liked to see Massie's opinion on Fisher's return to the Admiralty during the war under Churchill, and his abandonment of Churchill when he could not face the potential destruction of the ships at the Dardanelles -- which was a cause of Churchill being driven from office. I would also have like to see Massie's opinion of whether Churchill or Fisher's judgment was the correct one.
But these are minor criticisms -- this is a very fine work of history, and is an excellent basius for understanding the naval arms race that was one of the proximate causes of the First World War.
Nor does the author simply focus on these great ships. Most of the book is devoted to the characters who took part in the events and how they shaped them. At the same time, he never looses sight of the irony of the rush to invest huge sums to build these huge ships, even though each generation would be quickly rendered obsolete. The book also forces us to look at many of the foibles of our own time and see that they are far from unique. The struggle between the modernizes of Britain at the turn of the century locked in battle with an entrenched bureaucracy rings more than a little familiar.
To his credit, he also makes sure we understand how all of this nationalist competition would end with the blood of the young men of Europe watering the fields of Belgium and France. The lessons this moment in history teaches are ones we could all use today.
In short, I could not put this book down. If you are planning a trip and have time, or if you travel in many short hops (conveniently none of the chapters are too long) you will find this a wonderful entertaining read.