This authoritative reference work is the ideal reading companion to help readers evaluate ships referred to in a battle accounts; it also offers a sense of the size of the CSA's navy; and its encyclopedic entries on each vessel are interesting in and of themselves. This is a hardcopy edition of the online-only publication found on the U.S. Navy's history website. (The Navy created it by abstracting CSA entries from its Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.) The website and this book supply an alphabetical look-up of CSS ship names followed by technical description and service history. Multiple entries show under a heading where different vessels bore the same name, helping readers to identify (for instance) which CSS Beauregard is being referred to in an account of some naval action. The editors have added more pictures of ships and two new ship entries to bring the volume up-to-date.