In this alarming defense of American seapower, Navy insider Seth Cropsey blows the whistle on America's weakening naval might in the twenty-first century. As with other powerful nations throughout history, maritime supremacy has been the key to America's rise to superpower status and the relative peace of the postwar era. Over the past two decades, however, while Washington has been preoccupied with land wars and targeted drone-centric operations,...

The espionage activities of cunning ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin have kept him at odds with the most important French agent in the Mediterranean, Lesueur-a man with a long memory and a taste for revenge. When that revenge takes the shape of the delicate and distracting Mrs. Fielding, who also attracts the ever-wandering eye of Jack Aubrey, Stephen's sensibilities are severely tested.

Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., ashore after a successful cruise, is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make certain investments in the City. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage-the province of his friend Stephen Maturin. Is Aubrey's humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot? This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue...

A fast-paced narrative traces the emergence of the United States Navy as a global power from its birth during the American Revolution through to its current superpower status. --Publisher's description.

A history of the controversial attack sub traces the story of the submarine's invention, exploring how self-taught innovator John Philip Holland's obsession with the idea of controlled undersea navigation led to decades of skepticism, setbacks, and innovation. "The enthralling history of the attack submarine--and the story of its colorful creator, John Philip Holland--that reveals how this imaginative invention changed the face of modern warfare....

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up to intimidation. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors...

Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery -- but it sent one of the largest concentrations of sea captains and U.S. merchant mariners of any community in America to fight in World War II. The Mathews Men tells that heroic story through the experiences of one family whose seven sons (and their neighbors), U.S. merchant mariners all, suddenly found themselves squarely in the cross-hairs...