the Burns brothers’ Civil War, and Ric Burns’s PBS film Coney Island. Most recently, he served as a consultant on Ken Burns’s World War II series, The War.

Editorial Reviews

"A lively tale of science, war and clashing personalities . . . The charm of Iron Dawn comes from its ability to paddle between the quirky, prosaic world of inventors and bureaucrats and the hell of combat afloat, where death’s scythe swings as swiftly as on land. By keeping a human heart beating inside the keel of two extraordinary machines, Iron Dawn delightfully carries the reader from the Age of Sail to the Age of Iron."—The Wall Street Journal

“With muscular vitality, vast knowledge of military technology, and a novelist's gift for capturing vivid detail, Richard Snow retells the story ofCivil War ironclads as if it is unfolding before our startled eyes for the first time. The Monitor and Merrimack have never seemed more modern, dangerous, or revolutionary as they reappear in the hands of this master storyteller.”—Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion and winner of the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

“A masterful tale of the great Civil War ironclads, those strange, seemingly supernatural ships. One, Richard Snow tells us, looked like a rhinoceros, the other like a 'metal pie plate.' Their story—and that of the misunderstandings and maneuverings that preceded the Battle of Hampton Roads—is irresistible, nowhere more so than in this crackling, supremely poised account.”—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Witches, Cleopatra: A Life, and