Naval Military History

Admiral George Dewey: The Life and Legacy of the Most Decorated Naval Officer in American History chronicles the foremost American military hero of the late 19th century. You will learn about Admiral Dewey like never before.

Sandwiched between the Revolution and the Civil War, the War of 1812 is one of America’s forgotten conflicts, and the stalemated nature of the war (which resolved virtually none of either side’s war aims) has also ensured that it is often given merely a cursory overview. Under President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and James Madison (1809-1817), the United States tried to steer a course that would keep it from being drawn into the European war and defend its neutrality on the high seas.

The Battle of Midway was, on paper, an improbable victory for the smaller, less experienced American navy and air force, so much so that it was quickly described as “a miracle.” This new history demonstrates that luck, let alone miracles, had little to do with it. In The Silver Waterfall, Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor show how the efforts of America’s peacetime navy combined with creative innovations made by designers and industrialists were largely responsible for the victory.

The waters of the Pacific Ocean - stretching deep blue under the tropical sun, or scourged by typhoons - provided World War II's most far-flung battlefield. Two of the world's premier mid-20th century maritime powers, the United States of America and the Empire of Japan, grappled for supremacy across that pelagic expanse. In the process, they forcefully sounded the death knell of battleships and naval gunnery, ushering in the era of the aircraft carrier and the submarine.

On July 12, 1588, the legendary Spanish Armada started for the English channel. The Spanish plan was to take this invasion, led by the duke of Parma, to the coast of southeast England, where they would be released to conquer Elizabethan England for the Spanish monarch and Catholic Christendom.

In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty US Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

Students hate history. That’s because 95 percent of high school and college history students don’t know what they are supposed to be learning. History is not an academic subject; it’s a tool for life. If history teachers knew what they were doing, they’d be teaching their students to “think like a pirate". Which is exactly what this book does. 

To most observers, it seemed clear that Japan and Russia were destined to come into conflict in Korea and Manchuria. However, Russia’s vastly larger population, army, and navy seemed to make it inevitable that Japan would lose if the conflict escalated into war. Few could have foreseen that when war came, it would reveal that Russian power was largely an illusion. That would be underscored by one of the war’s most famous events, a bizarre battle that involved a makeshift Russian fleet under the command of an irascible and unstable admiral sailing around the world to meet its fate.

On February 2, 2019, the skies over Maynardville, Tennessee, filled with the roar of four F/A-18F Super Hornets streaking overhead in close formation. In each aircraft were two young female flyers, executing the first all-woman Missing Man Formation flyover in Navy history in memory of Captain Rosemary Mariner - groundbreaking Navy jet pilot, inspiring commander, determined and dedicated leader - whose drive to ensure the United States military had its choice of the best America had to offer broke down barriers and opened doors for female aviators wanting to serve their country.

To Provide and Maintain a Navy, a succinct but encompassing treatise on sea power by Dr. Henry J. "Jerry" Hendrix, goes beyond the numbers to reveal the crucial importance of Mare Liberum (Free Sea) to the development of the Western thought and the rules based order that presently governs the global commons that is the high seas. Proceeding from this philosophical basis, Hendrix explores how a "free sea" gave way to free trade and the central role sea borne commercial trade has played in the overall rise in global living standards.