Michael Lindberg and Daniel Todd's book offers considerably more than its title suggests. The World War II years of the title only begin with the fourth of the book's five chapters. Half the book is prelude, occupied first with a survey of location and agglomeration theory and then with the shipbuilding activity of World War I and the interwar years. However, the subtitle phrase, “A Geographical Perspective,” is entirely accurate. The authors, both economic geographers, state that their “primary focus is examining the spatial distribution (and concentration) of shipbuilding activities in both countries … [and undertaking an] … in-depth analysis of how geography influenced this industry and its spatial distribution” (p. ix). To that end, the initial chapter surveys location theory and agglomeration effects and examines their application to shipbuilding. The authors admit that, “at one level there appears to be no mystery attending the formation of shipyards. They simply appeared in the coastal, riparian, and lakeshore communities that had conjured up sufficient shipping demand to justify their existence” (p. 13). Historically, access to the requisite shipbuilding material, first timber and later iron and steel, produced locational concentrations that were further reinforced by the positive externalities of agglomeration. In the United Kingdom, three such concentrations appeared by World War I: the Thames, the Clyde, and the Northeast Coast (Newcastle-on-Tyne). With the wartime expansion of the Second World War, merchant shipbuilding was occurring at eight locations and warship production at sixteen (tables 4.3 and 4.4). Initial agglomerations in the United States were sited along the East Coast, from Maine to the Chesapeake Bay. By World War II, Lindberg and Todd identify 16 agglomerations—six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, four in the Great Lakes region, and four on the Pacific Coast. These clusters encompassed 43 yards producing merchant ships and 197 yards building naval craft (tables 4.12 and 4.13).

The development and demise of the agglomerations in both countries are traced in detail from World War I through the aftermath of World War II. The planning and implementation of ship construction projects are laid out by ship type, by yard, by firms involved, by workforce numbers, by repair or new construction, and by naval or merchant ship classes. The sheer volume of data, presented as it is in largely narrative, text form, makes for dense reading that frequently obscures rather than highlights the major changes, locational or other, occurring in the shipbuilding industries. Obscured too are any analyses of these changes. The industries' World War II production experience has, in particular, provided classic illustrations of the productivity gains stemming from standardization of design, economies of scale, and learning curve effects, but few measures of these productivity gains or their sources are given despite the rich data the authors possess. The production process change from riveting to welding is observed and its door-opening to women's shipyard work is noted, but no measure of either its productivity effect or the labor force composition change resulting from the shift to welding is offered. Even the prime focus of the book, the impact of agglomeration effects, receives light empirical treatment. Statistical tests of the locational association between marine engineering and merchant and naval shipbuilding are given in the final chapter, though details of the regressions are largely restricted to footnotes (p. 205, notes 13–16). The tests, done for the United Kingdom from 1912 through 1966, show an association in the cases of the Northeast and the Clyde, but ambiguous or nonexistent associations for the other agglomerations. A more straightforward test, the ratio of locally built engines to locally built ships, is also done for the years 1939, 1957, and 1980. These ratios, show some association at the start, but deteriorate badly by 1957 and reach zero by 1980 (p. 195). No analogous statistical tests in either ratio or regression form are attempted for the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

A geographical perspective may not promise significant returns in studying an industry subject to massive swings in production and where government direction largely (or wholly for naval vessels) supersedes market patterns. The intense demand for production during wartime and its near collapse in postwar periods meant industry locations were placed (or displaced) with little concern for the logic of minimum transport-cost points envisioned in standard location theory. Pre-existing experience, the strategic need for specific types of naval vessels, and labor supply availability dictated locations rather more than did any externality effects. Examples from World War II abound. The “Prairie Shipyards” of the American case testified to the role of intense demand and the resulting need to use any and all firms with even a modicum of steel fabrication experience, e.g., the Chicago Iron and Bridge Company and the Cargill Company in Minnesota (p. 157). The strategic need for landing craft led U.S. naval procurement officers to New Orleans where A. J. Higgins, experienced in designing shallow-draft boats for the Louisiana wetlands, possessed the design and, within months, the production capability to build shallow-draft landing craft.

Despite the limited focus provided by the adoption of location theory as an analytical grounding, the book is a useful reference, more successful as a compendium of data on ship production and location than as an analysis of the shipbuilding industries in the United Kingdom and the United States.