With the biographers rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the young ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britains greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey; & Jacky Fisher the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British Navy & brought forth for the first true battleship H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story & the story of the era filled with misunderstanding missed opportunities & events leading to unintended conclusions unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human & dramatic Dreadnought" is history at its most riveting."