The great thing about this book is that it offers a sweeping panoramic of the Anglo German relations in the years leading up to the first world war in a way that is both accessible and engaging. Indeed, while being a serious work of history, it reads like a novel. Both the facts and the characters that feature in the Anglo German naval armaments race, one of the leading causes of WW1, are depicted in a way that both clarify why things went the way they went and makes one wonder a lot of possible "what if" scenarios, which to me is the sign of a truly great history book. One minor disappointment I have to report is that the book gives relatively more space to the history of the development of the British Navy compared to the German, but this does not detract from this book to be the best I read on the subject. It's almost a thousand pages, but it was so entertaining that I finished it barely in a week.