Raileigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1985. - 606p.Captain Peterkin's survey of technical drawings documenting the details of the U.S.S. Monitor stands alone - it is *the* goto source when searching for engineering level details on the Union's first civil war ironclad. A monumental amount of work went into this project, and it shows.
We should be clear on what the book is and what it isn't - this book isn't intended to tell the human story of the Monitor. It exists because NOAA and North Carolina wanted some basis on which to evaluate the current condition of the physical wreck of the U.S.S Monitor, and to get the best basis available they supported a study to identify and catalog surviving historical resources that might be helpful in that respect. Hence the "technical analysis" in the book's title - this report is not simply a listing of material but evaluates the merits (or lack thereof) of various drawings.
For its time and considering that it was published as a state government report, the book's physical quality isn't bad. There is a color fold-out of one of the best surviving drawings, and the black-and-white depictions are usually clear enough to be useful. The DPI (dots per inch) is a little low when trying to magnify for detail, and with the exceptions of the color insert and the book cover the drawings aren't shown in color, but those limitations are not surprising and don't take away from the "normal" reading experience.
It is a specialized book, for those interested in the technical history of the Monitor, but as a resource for those interested in that specialization it stands alone.
