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From thunderous broadsides traded between wooden sailing ships on Lake Erie, to the carrier battles of World War II, to the devastating high-tech action in the Persian Gulf, here is a gripping history of five key battles that defined the evolution of naval warfare--and the course of the American nation. Acclaimed military historian Craig Symonds offers spellbinding narratives of these crucial engagements, showing how each battle reveals the evolution of technology and weaponry from one war to the next. Symonds records these encounters in detail so vivid that readers can hear the wind in the rigging and feel the pounding of the guns. Yet he places every battle in a wide perspective, revealing their significance to America's development as it grew from a new Republic on the edge of a threatening frontier to a global superpower. Decision at Sea is a powerful and illuminating look at pivotal moments in the history of the Navy and of the United States. It is also a compelling study of the unchanging demands of leadership at sea, where commanders must make rapid decisions in the heat of battle with lives--and the fate of nations--hanging in the balance.

\"This 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. The story highlights iconic moments of great drama pivotal to the nation's fortunes: John Paul Jones' attacks on the British during the Revolution, the Barbary Wars, and the arduous conquest of Iwo Jima. The book illuminates the changes--technological, institutional, and functional--of the US Navy from its days as a small frigate navy through the age of steam and steel to the modern era of electronics and missiles. Historian Craig L. Symonds captures the evolving culture of the Navy and debates between policymakers about what role the institution should play in world affairs. Internal and external challenges dramatically altered the size and character of the Navy, with long periods of quiet inertia alternating with rapid expansion emerging out of crises. The history of the Navy reflects the history of the nation as a whole, and its many changes derive in large part from the changing role of the United States itself.\"-- Provided by publisher.

The Battle of Midway in the central Pacific, on the morning of June 4, 1942, marked a dramatic turning point in the Second World War, when Allied forces seized the upper hand from the Axis powers. Lincoln Prize winner Craig Symonds offers an account of the Battle from a global perspective, as well as of the first six months of the war.

\"Craig L. Symonds' World War II at Sea offers a definitive naval history of the Second World War presenting the chronology of the naval war, from The London Conference of 1930 to the surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945, on a global scale for the first time.\"--Provided by publisher.

This 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. The story highlights iconic moments of great drama pivotal to the nation's fortunes: John Paul Jones' attacks on the British in the Revolution, the Barbary Wars, and the arduous conquest of Iwo Jima. The book illuminates the changes-technological, institutional, and functional-of the U.S. Navy from its days as a small frigate navy through the age of steam and steel to the modern era of electronics and missiles. Historian Craig L. Symonds captures the evolving culture of the Navy and debates between policymakers about what role the institution should play in world affairs. Internal and external challenges dramatically altered the size and character of the Navy, with long periods of quiet inertia alternating with rapid expansion emerging out of crises. The history of the navy reflects the history of the nation as a whole, and its many changes derive in large part from the changing role of the United States itself.

\"NEARLY FIFTY YEARS AGO, as a new assistant professor in the History Department at the U.S. Naval Academy, I shared an office suite with Elmer B. \"Ned\" Potter. Ned had taught at the Naval Academy since before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was also the co-editor with Chester Nimitz of the book Sea Power (1961), which we all used as a text in the required naval history course that I subsequently taught at the Academy for thirty years. Ned knew Nimitz well having worked closely with him on Sea Power. Ned's biography of the admiral (entitled, simply, Nimitz) appeared in 1976, and he kindly gave me an inscribed copy. I still have it. Since we shared a telephone line, I often took calls intended for him. My favorites were from his wife Grace, a Virginia lady in every sense of that term. She never identified herself, as in \"Hello Craig, this is Grace Potter.\" She never had to. When I heard, \"Wheyal, halloh thayah\"-each word two distinct syllables-it could be no one else. I never got a call from Nimitz since he had died in 1966, but Nimitz was very much a part of the many conversations Ned and I had about naval history until Ned retired in 1977. We remained friends until he died twenty years later in 1997. I hope he would have approved of the wartime portrait of the admiral that I offer here\"-- Provided by publisher.

Seventy years ago, more than six thousand Allied ships carried more than a million soldiers across the English Channel to a fifty-mile-wide strip of the Normandy coast in German-occupied France. It was the greatest sea-borne assault in human history. The code names given to the beaches where the ships landed the soldiers have become immortal: Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and especially Omaha, the scene of almost unimaginable human tragedy. The sea of crosses in the cemetery sitting today atop a bluff overlooking the beaches recalls to us its cost. Most accounts of this epic story begin with the landings on the morning of June 6, 1944. In fact, however, D-Day was the culmination of months and years of planning and intense debate. In the dark days after the evacuation of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, British officials and, soon enough, their American counterparts, began to consider how, and, where, and especially when, they could re-enter the European Continent in force. The Americans, led by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, wanted to invade as soon as possible; the British, personified by their redoubtable prime minister, Winston Churchill, were convinced that a premature landing would be disastrous. The often-sharp negotiations between the English-speaking allies led them first to North Africa, then into Sicily, then Italy. Only in the spring of 1943, did the Combined Chiefs of Staff commit themselves to an invasion of northern France. The code name for this invasion was Overlord, but everything that came before, including the landings themselves and the supply system that made it possible for the invaders to stay there, was code-named Neptune. Craig L. Symonds now offers the complete story of this Olympian effort, involving transports, escorts, gunfire support ships, and landing craft of every possible size and function. The obstacles to success were many. In addition to divergent strategic views and cultural frictions, the Anglo-Americans had to overcome German U-boats, Russian impatience, fierce competition for insufficient shipping, training disasters, and a thousand other impediments, including logistical bottlenecks and disinformation schemes. Symonds includes vivid portraits of the key decision-makers, from Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill, to Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who commanded the naval element of the invasion. Indeed, the critical role of the naval forces--British and American, Coast Guard and Navy--is central throughout. In the end, as Symonds shows in this gripping account of D-Day, success depended mostly on the men themselves: the junior officers and enlisted men who drove the landing craft, cleared the mines, seized the beaches and assailed the bluffs behind them, securing the foothold for the eventual campaign to Berlin, and the end of the most terrible war in human history.

Co-winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize, Lincoln and His Admirals, provides an original account of how Lincoln managed the men who ran the naval side of the Civil War, and how the activities of the Union Navy affected the course of the war. Abraham Lincoln began his presidency as well as the war with virtually no knowledge of naval affairs, lacking both exposure and interest given his upbringing in the Midwest. Despite his inexperience, he quickly came to preside over the largest national armada of the century, not eclipsed until World War I. Craig L. Symonds demonstrates the larger political and diplomatic impact of naval operations and offers fresh insight into Lincoln's overall strategic vision, showing how it ultimately determined the outcome of the war and the young nation's fate.