Naval Forces

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania....

The planning, the strategy, the sacrifices and heroics - on both sides - illuminating the greatest naval war in history....

The Barb sank the greatest tonnage of any American sub in World War II. This is a gripping adventure chock-full of "you-are-there" moments....

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power....

Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables....

In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat, complete with its crew of 60 men, not too far off the New Jersey coast....

The devastation of Pearl Harbor and the American victory at Midway were prelude to a greater challenge: rolling back the vast Japanese Pacific empire island by island....

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....

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she is sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. For the next five nights, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, nearly 900 men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other....

The Ice Diaries tells the incredible true story of Captain William R. Anderson and his crew's harrowing top-secret mission aboard the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine....

This is an unforgettable narrative that captures the essence of heroism, the power of loyalty, and the way in which the unadorned truth is more stirring than legend itself....

The story of Tang and her gallant crew ranks with the most amazing of naval history....

A groundbreaking history of the Black Joke, the most famous member of the British Royal Navy’s anti-slavery squadron, and the long fight to end the transatlantic slave trade....

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway....

Interweaving the stories of three survivors - the captain, the ship's doctor, and a young marine - journalist Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life....

Craig Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection....

The definitive and previously untold account of Operation Vengeance, the American military operation to kill Japanese Naval Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the man who devised the attack on Pearl Harbor....

Hear the enthralling story of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's largest ever warship....

A riveting and wide-ranging story, full of dramatic, unexpected turns, In the Hurricane's Eye reveals that the fate of the American Revolution depended, in the end, on Washington and the sea....

The Admirals tells the story of how history's only five-star admirals triumphed in World War II and made the United States the world's dominant sea power....

Called a great book worthy of a great man, this definitive biography of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet in World War II is considered the best book ever written about Admiral Chester W. Nimitz....

Daniel J. Boorstin, former librarian of the Library of Congress, gives a fascinating history of world civilization.....

From Brandon Webb, Navy SEAL sniper and New York Times best-selling author, comes his account of the eight friends and fellow SEALs who made the ultimate sacrifice....

This riveting chronicle of submarine warfare is the first to cover all the major submarine campaigns of the war, describing, in detail, the operations of the British, American, Japanese, Italian, and German submarine and anti-submarine forces....

Bernard Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting chronicle of every dramatic moment from Napoleon's daring escape from Elba....

Sixty-five thousand tons, 280 metres long. A flight deck the size of 60 tennis courts. A giant piece of Sovereign British territory that's home to up to 50 aircraft. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the biggest ship in the Royal Navy's history and one of the most ambitious and exacting engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. But it's her ship's company of 700, alongside an air group of 900 air and ground crew, that are Big Lizzie's beating heart. And How to Build an Aircraft Carrier tells their story.

The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s brig Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Sailing after the spectacular fall of Napoleon in France, yet before the rise of Queen Victoria’s England, Black Joke was first a slaving vessel itself, and one with a lightning-fast reputation; only a lucky capture in 1827 allowed it to be repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.  

If you like Max Hastings and World War II naval history, then you will love this autobiography, which gives an easy-to-understand insider view of life in the Royal Navy during the war. Ronnie Turner had set his sights on a career with the Royal Navy, and like Ant Middleton, he wouldn't stop until he'd achieved his goal of having "a smack at the boche". Drawn from Ronnie's illegal war diary, this enjoyable tale of pocket battleships, torpedoed crews, and Admiral Harwood's tattoos, all sprinkled with Spike Milligan-like humor, make this a story you won't want to put down.

America's Few delves into the history of US Marine Corps aviation in World War II, following the feats of the Corps’ top-scoring aces in the skies over Guadalcanal. Marine Corps aviation began in 1915, functioning as a self-contained expeditionary force. During the interwar period, the support of USMC amphibious operations became a key element of Marine aviation doctrine, and the small force gradually grew. But in December 1941 came the rude awakening. Within hours of Pearl Harbor, heroic Marine aviators were battling the Japanese over Wake Island.  

Horatio Nelson can be seen as one of the most courageous, strategic, and valiant British generals in history. His tactics in the Navy led their empire to glorious victories in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. During the wars against Napoleon, the Scandinavians, and in the West Indies, he was an exemplary leader, strategist, and combatant. The British Empire stretched all the way from the Caribbean to Egypt and beyond. Needless to say, much help was needed in various areas in the world.