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Their stories needed to be told. And classmates working together, under a blanket of trust and friendship, was the only way to allow people to open up. It was a three year journey into the hearts and souls of America’s youngest heroes to gather these important historical accounts, but it was worth every hour spent. Inside this book are the voices the first Annapolis graduates into a decade of war and they remind us that America is in good hands.They were walking to class on 9/11, wearing Naval Academy “summer working blues”, when the towers were struck. The campus went to general quarters, battle stations. They would be the first class after this attack to graduate into a nation at war and would be faced, like so many past graduates, of rising to the challenge to keeping America great. President Bush and Vice President Cheney articulated a world at the crossroads, and the U.S. would preemptively in seek enemies who threatened the national interest, America would not again be terrorized.In the Shadow of Greatness addresses issues that go beyond one USNA class, it explains the trials of most military veterans of this era. Understanding how a young person enlists to serve, deploys to the fight, and returns home is unknown to most Americans. Veterans pack up their uniforms, but never lose the call for service when the return to civilian society.The profiles in this book represent the “Next Great Generation” of American leaders. Men and women who lost their innocence in battle and their youths to a decade of deployments, throughout which they never gave up hope. In exchange for down range scars, they gained an unbreakable sense of purpose to America’s ideals—freedom, equality, and democracy.The compilation is the most authentic and raw narrative to emerge from the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. The reader enjoys a spectrum of stories, each patriotic and honorable. The narratives are meant to inspire, educate, and reveal a world many don’t understand. Its contents are readable and easy to appreciate.The Class of 2002—and more broadly, the one million veterans of the Long War—are America’s leaders of tomorrow. Read this book to learn what they endured and why they are prepared.

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Leadership within the context of a given profession requires an informed understanding of a particular field of specialization. In maritime affairs, U.S. Navy Commodore Dudley Wright Knox provided a singular example of leadership in his chosen profession. Having graduated with the Naval Academy Class of 1897, he proceeded to command a variety of warships in peacetime. He also served in combat operations during the 1898 Spanish-American War, Boxer Rebellion, and the counterinsurgency in the Philippines. Knox gained perspective on the higher levels of command as a staff officer during two world wars. Ultimately, conditioning in the American naval service inspired Knox to envision an American Navy second to none. He also developed a mature understanding of the nexus between peace and war. Crafting a distinctly maritime approach to address questions of strategy and policy in global affairs, Knox argued that navies provided means, “not to make war but to preserve peace, not to be predatory but to shield the free development of commerce, not to unsettle the world but to stabilize it through the promotion of law and order.”

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This memoir of a CIA operations officer captures the spirit of the early years of the Agency, a period sometimes described as its 'finest hours.' Using the alias 'St. Martin,' Stuart Methven served in the CIA from the 1950s through the 1970s. The book opens by describing the author's training in the clandestine arts and subsequent assignment to Asia in a country he calls 'Bushido.' There he is involved in numerous operations, including one that takes him under the ocean, and earns his case officer's 'brevet.' A nation-building program in 'Cham' follows, which begins well enough and includes his gaining a tribal leader's confidence by parachuting badly needed supplies to his mountain village. It ends abruptly, however, with a coup d'etat and civil war that forces Methven's evacuation, the first of several during his career.His next assignment is in South Vietnam working to counter another budding insurgency. Methven spends four years in the mountain and delta provinces of Vietnam before being given a sabbatical for graduate work in international studies back in the states. After completing his studies, he returns to Southeast Asia as a deputy station chief with a focus on a large Soviet mission in Samudra and the recruitment of Soviet military officers. Promoted to station chief, his final assignment is in central Africa, where his station becomes center stage for a large covert operation that eventually involves the Soviets and Cubans. Glimpses of the CIA from the inside are rare, and Methven's recollections of his experiences during a formative period in the Agency's history will be of particular value to those with an interest in the CIA and international affairs and in spy stories.

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For better or worse, Navy captain William S. «Deak» Parsons made the atomic bomb happen. As ordnance chief and associate director at Los Alamos, Parsons turned the scientists' nuclear creation into a practical weapon. As weaponeer, he completed the assembly of «Little Boy» during the flight to Hiroshima. As bomb commander, he approved the release of the bomb that forever changed the world. Yet over the past fifty years only fragments of his story have appeared, in part because of his own self-effacement and the nation's demand for secrecy. Based on recently declassified Manhattan Project documents, including Parsons' logs and other untapped sources, the book offers an unvarnished account of this unsung hero and his involvement in some of the greatest scientific advances of the twentieth century.

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One of the key concerns of naval strategists and planners today is the nature of the Chinese geostrategic challenge. Conceding that no one can know for certain China s intentions in terms of future conflict, the editors of this hot-topic book argue that the trajectory of Chinese nuclear propulsion for submarines may be one of the best single indicators of China s ambitions of global military power. Nuclear submarines, with their unparalleled survivability, remain ideal platforms for persistent operations in far-flung sea areas and offer an efficient means for China to project power.This collection of essays presents the latest thinking of leading experts on the emergence of a modern nuclear submarine fleet in China. Each contribution is packed with authoritative data and cogent analysis. The book has been compiled by four professors and analysts at the U.S. Naval War College who are co-founders of the college s recently established China Maritime Studies Institute.Given the opaque nature of China s undersea warfare development, readers will benefit from this penetrating investigation that considers the potential impact of even the most revolutionary changes in Chinese nuclear submarine capabilities. The editors believe that to ignore such possibilities would be the height of strategic folly and represent inexcusable negligence in terms of U.S. national defense.Anyone who is interested in the future of the U.S. Navy and the defense of the United States will find this book to be essential reading.

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Most Americans know little about their Navy and learning about it can be daunting. But this informative yet highly accessible guide explains the sometimes strange ways of the U.S. Navy in terms civilians can understand. It addresses such things as the many titles military people have, the alphanumeric designations used to identify military personnel, the organization of the Navy and its many missions, the origin and practice of such things as saluting, flag etiquette, and side boys. Also included are an overview of the Navy's colorful history, a primer on Navy ships and aircraft, a guide to «reading» a uniform, and the demystification of the phonetic alphabet and military time. Designed as a quick read for those who want the full story, this handbook can also be used as a handy reference full of essential facts.

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This collection of biographical essays delves into the careers of thirteen colorful naval leaders who guided the U.S. Navy through four turbulent decades of transition.

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During World War I, the United States Navy conducted at the Portsmouth, NH Naval Prison what many penal scholars consider the most ambitious experiment in the history of progressive prison reform. Cell doors remained opened, prisoners governed themselves and thousands of rehabilitated prisoners were returned to the fleet. This humanitarian experiment at Portsmouth prison stood in stark contrast to the inhumane flogging of prisoners that had dominated naval discipline until 1850. The Navy’s journey between these two extremes in naval discipline included the development of a much needed naval prison system.When congress abolished flogging in 1850, the Navy was left with few punishment options. Flogging had been a harsh, but very effective and efficient discipline tool. Various conditions of confinement appeared to be the most logical substitute for flogging, but the Navy had few cells ashore and confinement onboard a nineteenth century man-of-war sailing vessel was impractical. Onboard space was limited and all hands were needed to sail and fight the ship. Subsequent naval directives that merely suggested punishments for various offenses led to inconsistent interpretation and application of punishments throughout the fleet. At the same time, courts-martial prisoners were sporadically confined in various marine barracks, navy yard jails, naval station guard houses, prison ships and state prisons. The Navy’s discipline system was in disarray. A naval prison system was needed to consolidate and provide for consistent treatment of prisoners. The Navy’s efforts to gain congressional approval for a prison in the 1870s were unsuccessful. In the late 1880s, the Navy took matters into its own hands and established a prison system centered on makeshift prisons at the Boston and Mare Island Navy Yards. An ever-increasing need for cells, primarily driven by high desertion rates, eventually resulted in the construction of the Navy’s first real prison at Portsmouth, which opened in 1908. A consolidation of naval prisons in 1914 left Portsmouth as the dominant centerpiece of the naval prison system.At this point Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose the most celebrated prison reformer of his era, Thomas Mott Osborne, to assume command of the Portsmouth prison. His reforms at Portsmouth went well until Vice Adm. William S. Sims and others became convinced that too many trouble makers were being returned to the fleet. Under mounting pressure from senior naval officers, FDR personally led an on-site investigation of conditions at Portsmouth prison, which included charges of gross mismanagement and rampant homosexual activity. Although exonerated by FDR’s team, Osborne resigned from the Navy shortly after the investigation. Osborne’s reform initiatives were quickly reversed as the Navy returned to a harsher punishment system more inclined toward deterrence than humanitarian considerations and prisoner comforts.

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Originally published in 1972, Christopher McKee's biography of Edward Preble remains the most authoritative source on this influential early shaper of the U.S. naval tradition. McKee (Grinnell College) documents Preble's rise from obscurity to become Thomas Jefferson's chief administrator, his relationship with Jefferson and the president' policies and strategies during the war, and also the Tripolitan activities and attitudes which confronted Preble as he sought to bring the war to an end. This Classic of Naval Literature work includes illustrations and a new introduction by the author.

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Foreword by Admiral Sir John Woodward. When published in hardcover in 1997, this book was praised for providing an engrossing education not only in naval strategy and tactics but in Victorian social attitudes and the influence of character on history. In juxtaposing an operational with a cultural theme, the author comes closer than any historian yet to explaining what was behind the often described operations of this famous 1916 battle at Jutland. Although the British fleet was victorious over the Germans, the cost in ships and men was high, and debates have raged within British naval circles ever since about why the Royal Navy was unable to take advantage of the situation. In this book Andrew Gordon focuses on what he calls a fault-line between two incompatible styles of tactical leadership within the Royal Navy and different understandings of the rules of the games.

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