Shipbuilding and Icebreakers Reading List

It's always a pleasure to research a topic that the government has significant involvement in, because there will typically be a ton of publicly available information: reports from various government agencies, books and papers from researchers using government data, and so on. Shipbuilding is one of those areas. While the U.S. hasn't managed to fix its shipbuilding problems, it has studied the issue extensively, and generated a lot of information in the process. As usual, "recommended reading" comprises books that are interesting to pick up and read (while still being useful references), while "other sources" refers to books that are useful references, but probably not of interest to the general reader.

Recommended reading:

The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy by Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan, 2000: This is a great history of the entire history of U.S. merchant shipping, from the early years of the republic up through the 1990s. It's not a book about shipbuilding per se; as per the title, it's more about government policy around shipping and shipbuilding. But because U.S. shipbuilding has been so uncompetitive for so long, shipbuilding issues end up being a major portion of the book. Gibson and Donovan do a great job balancing between giving detailed, specific information and higher-level synthesis and takeaways (something I'm always trying to do better in my own work). This is the book I'd recommend starting with for those wanting to read more U.S. shipbuilding and the policies around it.