The Price of Admiralty by John Keegan (Penguin, 1990) analyses some
key naval battles to discover just why the winner won. It’s a favourite of
astronomer Douglas Richstone of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Richstone made a big splash of his own with the idea that galactic structure
could be explained by supermassive black holes seeding galaxies. The attraction
of naval books? “I guess there is a traditional link between astronomy and
seafaring,” he says.
There’s space on Richtone’s shelves for science fiction, such as the
bestseller Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson (Bantam Books, 2000). “It’s
kind…
