Geary believed in the Alliance. Even when he uncovered overwhelming evidence that the highest echelons of the government and fleet command were involved in secret programs and prison camps, he believed it was worth saving. He believed his duty was to see that justice was served even though some factions feared that revealing the truth would cause the Alliance to crumble. But after narrowly surviving two assassination attempts when he brings evidence of the misdeeds to the capital star system, Geary realizes that some want to get rid of him.

Hampton Sides' superb account of this epic clash in the Korean War relies on years of archival research, unpublished letters, declassified documents, and interviews with scores of marines and Koreans who survived the siege. While expertly detailing the follies of the American leaders, On Desperate Ground is an immediate, grunt's-eye view of history, enthralling in its narrative pace and powerful in its portrayal of what ordinary men are capable of in the most extreme circumstances.

Thousands of miles from friendly ports, the US Navy had finally managed to complete the capture of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943. Now the Allies sought to keep the offensive momentum won at such a high cost. This is the central plotline running through this page-turning history beginning with the Japanese Operation I-Go and the American ambush of Admiral Yamamoto and continuing on to the Allied invasion of New Georgia, northwest of Guadalcanal in the middle of the Solomon Islands and the location of a major Japanese base.

Pacific War expert Mark Stille examines the key aspects of battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War, with new and insightful analysis and dismantles the myths surrounding the respective actions and overall performances of the two most important commanders in the battle, and the “lost victory” of the Japanese advance into Leyte Gulf that never happened.

In March 1836, the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna massacred more than 200 Texians who had been trapped in the Alamo. After 13 days of fighting, American legends Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett died there, along with other Americans who had moved to Texas looking for a fresh start. It was a crushing blow to Texas' fight for freedom. But the story doesn’t end there. The defeat galvanized the Texian settlers, and under General Sam Houston’s leadership, they rallied. Six weeks after the Alamo, Houston and his band of settlers defeated Santa Anna’s army in a shocking victory.

Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. By the start of 1942 Nazi Germany had conquered mainland Europe, and Imperial Japan had overrun Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific. How could Britain and distant America prevail in what had become a "war of continents"? In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea.

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

Shaking off this label, a shy and lonely 17-year-old, Horatio Hornblower, embarks on a memorable career in Nelson's navy on HMS Justinian. In action, adventure, and battle he is forged into one of the most formidable junior officers in the service.

In the early 18th century, the Pirate Republic was home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates - former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves - this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, Blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote.

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 and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean but America's war fleet, only 20 ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war.

Acclaimed author James Tertius de Kay recounts the lifeof Commodore Stephen Decatur in the first new biography of the great naval hero in almost 70 years. De Kay draws on material unavailable to previous biographers to explore Decatur’s extraordinary life. From his burning of the Philadelphia to his capture of the HMS Macedonian, Decatur demonstrated his legendary bravery at every turn.

America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen - the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842.

London: 1793. Young firebrand John Pearce, on the run from the authorities, is illegally press-ganged from the Pelican tavern into brutal life aboard HMS Brilliant, a frigate on her way to war. In the first few days, Pearce discovers the Navy is a world in which he can prosper. And he is not alone; he is drawn to a group of men who eventually form an exclusive gun crew, the Pelicans, with Pearce their elected leader.

The predominant image of this first world war is of mud and trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, and slaughter. A generation of European manhood was massacred, and a wound was inflicted on European civilization that required the remainder of the twentieth century to heal.

In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy, under Lord Horatio Nelson, dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this definitive work that recreates those five momentous, earsplitting hours with unrivaled detail and intensity.

In this thoroughly researched book the author argues convincingly that Forester's model was Adm. James Gordon, a flesh-and-blood hero of Nelson's navy. Gordon entered the Royal Navy as a semi-literate eleven-year-old and rose to become Admiral of the Fleet. He took part in major sea battles, frigate actions, single-ship duels, and operations far behind enemy lines. It was the fire of Gordon's ships against Fort McHenry that inspired the American national anthem.

British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now, Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs.

Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? The founders, particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, debated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once.

America in 1775 was on the verge of revolution - or, more likely, disastrous defeat. After the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, England's King George sent hundreds of ships westward to bottle up American harbors and prey on American shipping. Colonists had no force to defend their coastline and waterways until John Adams of Massachusetts proposed a bold solution: The Continental Congress should raise a navy. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Give Me a Fast Ship is the definitive history of the American Navy during the Revolutionary War.

Of all the colorful cutthroats who scoured the seas in search of plunder during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century, none was more ferocious or notorious than Blackbeard. As unforgettable as his savage career was, much of Blackbeard's life has been shrouded in mystery - until now. Drawing on vivid descriptions of Blackbeard's attacks from his rare surviving victims, pirate expert Angus Konstam traces Blackbeard's career from its beginnings to his final defeat in a tremendous sea battle near his base at Ocracoke Island

Nicknamed le loup des mers ("the sea wolf") by Napoleon, Thomas Cochrane was one of the most daring and successful naval heroes of all time. In this fascinating account of Cochrane's life, historian David Cordingly unearths startling new details about the real-life "Master and Commander", from his daring exploits against the French navy to his role in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the shock exchange scandal that forced him out of England and almost ended his naval career.

As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider's name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a 24-year-old warrior.

Acclaimed author James Tertius de Kay recounts the lifeof Commodore Stephen Decatur in the first new biography of the great naval hero in almost 70 years. De Kay draws on material unavailable to previous biographers to explore Decatur’s extraordinary life. From his burning of the Philadelphia to his capture of the HMS Macedonian, Decatur demonstrated his legendary bravery at every turn.

Adam Nicolson takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. A story rich with modern resonance, Seize the Fire reveals the economic impact of the battle as a victorious Great Britain emerged as a global commercial empire. Nicolson not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there.

Roy Adkins, with his wife, Lesley, returns to the Napoleonic War in The War for All the Oceans, a gripping account of the naval struggle that lasted from 1798 to 1815, a period marked at the beginning by Napoleon's seizing power and at the end by the War of 1812. In this vivid and visceral account, Adkins draws on eyewitness records to portray not only the battles but also the details of a sailor's life: shipwrecks, press-gangs, prostitutes, spies, and prisoners of war.

In July 1862, Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes took command of a secret new warship. At the helm of the Alabama, he became the most hated and feared man along the Union coast, as well as a Confederate legend. Now, with unparalleled authority, depth, and a vivid sense of the excitement and danger of the time, Stephen Fox describes Captain Semmes's remarkable wartime exploits.

During the summer of 1776, a British incursion from Canada loomed. In response, citizen soldiers of the newly independent nation mounted a heroic defense. Patriots constructed a small fleet of gunboats on Lake Champlain in northern New York and confronted the Royal Navy in a desperate three-day battle near Valcour Island. Their effort surprised the arrogant British and forced the enemy to call off their invasion.

Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest British frigate captain in the age of sail. Left fatherless at age eight, with a penniless mother and five siblings, Pellew fought his way from the very bottom of the navy to fleet command. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet he had a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, and he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves.

John Paul Jones is more than a great sea story. Jones is a character for the ages. John Adams called him the "most ambitious and intriguing officer in the American Navy." The renewed interest in the Founding Fathers reminds us of the great men who made this country, but John Paul Jones teaches us that it took fighters as well as thinkers, men driven by dreams of personal glory as well as high-minded principle to break free of the past and start a new world. Jones' spirit was classically American.