Another little gem I got for christmas is "Thunder In Its Courses" by Richard "Tiournu" Worth, puplished at Nimble Books.
What can you expect?
"Thunder In Its Courses" is a thin book that contains seven essays on the battlecruiser. Driven by well known statements like "Battlecruiser were never meant to fight against Battleships" or "Their large caliber guns lured admirals into using battlecruisers like battleships with inevitably desastrous results" Worth provides a summary of the true history,origin and rational behind battlecruisers and continues with musings about questions like "The first battlecruiser?", "Couragous - What the heck?", "Who killed the battlecruiser?" etc.
As you can expect, Worth offers his thoughts with some kind of humor at times. To quote from his chapter on Couragous:
[...] The search for a rationale within the Couragous design itself assumes the existing of such rationale. Matching a 7-inch barbet with a 3-inch belt, putting battleship guns on a ship armored against light cruiser shells, providing high speed to a ship with no place to go - the possibility exists that the decision was irrational, a monster slipping through the disconnect between an admiral's fantasy and the realities of naval combat. [...] The design had what he wanted, even if he had no valid reason to want it, and no one in the Admiralty showed the inclination to stop him. For Fisher, the ships of the Couragous class were their own justification, sparing him an unpleasant question: Is 19,000 tons of useless ship so far superior to 0 tons of useful ship as to justify the expenditure?"
Another example is his titel to a well-known photo, showing gallant SMS Seydlitz in the docks after Jutland, with bow down and listing and her forward armament removed to lighten the ship: "Most of Seydlitz made it home after Jutland."
What should you not expect?
The book is no reference book that provides information on all classes, their design history and technical detail. Therefor you would still need Breyer, Gröner, Raven/Roberts, Whitley etc. You should expect no combat records or maps, nor are there any color shemes that may help modelers.
Worth the money?
Yes, I really recommend this book to anybody interested in Dreadnough-era capital ships, especially for battlecruiser nuts it is a must have. Many details on the battlecruiser became obscured long ago by multiple layers of hindsight, "common knowledge", anachronismn, and dueling definitions - and Worth precious little book cleans up the mess.