On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...

"The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told before, yet missing from most maritime histories of America's first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels, from 20-foot whaleboats to 40-cannon men-of-war, that truly revealed the new nation's character-above...

Evan Thomas takes us inside the naval war of 1941-1945 in the South Pacific in a way that blends the best of military and cultural history and riveting narrative drama. He follows four men throughout Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, the macho, gallant, racist American fleet commander; Admiral Takeo Kurita, the Japanese battleship commander charged with making what was, in essence, a suicidal fleet attack against the American invasion of the Philippines;...

Presents an account of the Allied effort to reclaim thousands of Japanese-occupied islands, detailing the campaign's technical innovations, logistic complications, and human and economic costs.

Published in 1823 and written out of dissatisfaction with the nautical life depicted by Sir Walter Scott in The Pirate (1822), The Pilot pioneered a new kind of sea adventure tale which drew on its author's experiences as a merchant seaman and Navy sailor. Set during the American Revolution, the novel features a character based on John Paul Jones.

Chronicles the worst disaster in U.S. naval history, describing heroism in the face of persistent shark attacks and hypothermia after the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in the South Pacific in the final days of World War II.

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, distinguished historian, and bestselling author Barbara W. Tuchman finally turns her sights homeward. Here she analyzes the American Revolution in a brilliantly original way, placing the war in the historical context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland, demonstrating how the aid of both of these nations made the triumph of American independence possible. She sheds new

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
With the war in Europe winding down in the spring of 1945, the United States turns its vast military resources toward a furious assault on the last great stepping-stone to Japan—the heavily fortified island of Okinawa. The three-month battle in the Pacific theater will feature some of the most vicious combat of the entire Second World War, as American troops confront an enemy that would rather...