The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly (1959)

A definitive account from primary sources of the greatest military battle to that time. From my reading it seems that the weather was not the deciding factor, but the superior performance of the English ships. The Spanish had the harder task and were poorly supplied and had many inferior ships. The book goes into excruciating detail about the political context. King Philip of Spain seems a most interesting character as does of course Drake.