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Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war’s naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy’s blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war’s early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports.

World War II had been raging for nearly a year. Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe's fate. Though the United States was still neutral, a few Americans decided they couldn't remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force - with the future of civilization hanging in the balance. The Few tells the dramatic story of these Americans who defied their own country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots.

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 masterful history encompasses the heart of the Pacific War - the period between mid-1942 and mid-1944 - when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan's far-flung island empire like a "conquering tide", concluding with Japan's irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas.