Ship History

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The shocking true story of the USS Houston, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of the survivors who faced one of World War II’s most brutal ordeals—from the acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “Captivating [and]...

What happens when Blackbeard meets Jesse James? When a monstrous storm tears open time itself over Nassau Harbor, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Calico Jack Rackham are hurled from the Golden Age of Piracy into the brutal world of the American Wild West. San Francisco, 1873. Six-shooters rule the frontier. Outlaws rob the rails. The legends of the Caribbean mean little in a century ruled by gunslingers. To survive, the crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge must trade cutlasses for revolvers, outrun the pirate hunter who followed them through time, and chase a fortune across a lawless frontier. But ...

America’s most decorated warship of World War II, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire, earning the title “the fightingest ship” in the navy. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. Commissioned in 1938, her bombers sank a submarine just ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first Japanese vessel lost in the war.

The Black Death was one of the deadliest disasters in human history. It was also one of the strangest. In STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF THE BLACK DEATH, Guy Wann takes readers inside a medieval world suddenly overwhelmed by plague carts, mass graves, frightened cities, desperate doctors, bizarre cures, flagellant processions, quarantine ships, wild rumors, and one microscopic bacterium nobody knew existed. Follow the plague from Central Eurasia and the Black Sea to Sicily, Florence, Avignon, London, Cairo, Damascus, Constantinople, and beyond. Meet physicians blaming bad air and ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year “Gorgeous.... With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”—Madeline Miller, author of Circe Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous...

⛏️ REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION! ⛏️ ⛏️ THE MOST EPIC AND EXPANSIVE NORSE MYTHOLOGY BIBLE ON AMAZON!⛏️ ⛏️ DOUBLE THE PAGES OF OTHER BOOKS!⛏️ This sprawling thirty-chapter book includes all major tales of Norse Mythology. From Thor and mischievous Loki to the twilight of the gods known as Ragnarök. Also included is the decryption of Runes, exploring Spells, Ásatrú, European history, warfare, ancient inspirations, to even expansive pages from the ancient book known as Poetic Edda. Each chapter will include stunning paintings to kindle the ancient Viking dreams... To ...

The "unsinkable" Titanic was four city blocks long, with a French "sidewalk cafe," private promenade decks, and the latest, most ingenious safety devices—but only twenty lifeboats for the 2,207 passengers and crew on board. Gliding through a calm sea, disdainful of all obstacles, the Titanic...

John Wukovits tells of the most dramatic naval battle of the Pacific War and the incredible sacrifice of the USS Samuel B. Roberts. On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts, along with the other twelve vessels comprising its unit, stood between Japan's largest battleship force ever sent to sea...

In a chilling exploration of a nearly forgotten chapter of history, Marcus Rediker delves into the dark depths of slave ships in the 18th century. In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the...

An inspiring tale of how a scrappy little World War II aircraft carrier and its untested crew earned a distinguished combat record and beat incredible odds to earn 12 battle stars in the Pacific. "A jaw-dropping tale of American sailors at war overcoming every challenge they faced with loyalty...

When a sinkhole nearly swallows her whole, burned-out history professor Philippa Flynn takes it as a wake-up call. Leaving her carefully planned but unfulfilling life behind, she moves into an old seaside house she inherited from her grandmother, a bestselling author of swashbuckling romances. Philippa expects the clutter, disrepair, proximity to the family she deliberately moved away from, and reclusive writer she’ll be sharing the house with. She doesn’t expect that writer to also be the cover model who personified Iris Flynn’s bare-chested, cavalier-booted pirate king.

Two catastrophes. One unshakable truth: the moment humanity declares something invincible is the moment disaster starts writing its opening line. Great Disasters 2-in-1 brings together Dominic Haynes's gripping accounts of the Titanic and Chernobyl — two of history's most devastating reminders that confidence is not the same as safety.

“If you read only one American history book this summer . . . make it David S. Reynolds’s Two Ships.” —George Will, Washington Post “Brilliant, provocative . . . Essential reading for today’s polarized times.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "A dazzling survey of three centuries of...

“I presume we need make no Apology for giving the Name of a History to the following Sheets, though they contain nothing but the Actions of a Parcel of Robbers.” —from the book This work was published in 1724 under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson by an unknown British author, usually...

"Ryōma!" tells the life story of Sakamoto Ryōma, one of the great figures in the turmoil that engulfed Japan in the years before the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The novel is a masterwork by the prolific historical novelist Shiba Ryōtarō and has sold more than 24 million copies in Japan since publication in 1966—and still counting! The novel has everything: a winning main character, an action-packed plot, swordfights, and romance, but it is also a fascinating, easy-to-digest history lesson about Japan’s response to the shocking arrival of United States Commodore Matthew Perry’s “...

Hoist the mizzenmast and batten down those bloody hatches: Pirates! Scoundrels Who Shook the World tells the hilarious-but-true adventures of history’s most amazing pirates.

They survived capture—only to be imprisoned aboard ships designed for death. During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees were transported across the Japanese Empire aboard vessels that became known as hell ships. Packed into dark, airless cargo holds, the prisoners endured suffocating heat, starvation, disease, dehydration, beatings, and conditions so overcrowded that men could barely sit or breathe. There were few toilets, almost no medical supplies, and little hope of escape. Yet the greatest danger often came from above. Because many...

Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award · Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award · A Library Journal Best History Book of the Year A definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad’s long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent...

The Vikings were not just horned-helmeted raiders charging out of the fog. In fact, the horned helmets are mostly nonsense—and the real story is far stranger. STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS dives into the bizarre, brutal, funny, and often unbelievable world of the Norse. From runic graffiti scratched into ancient buildings and warriors who filed grooves into their teeth to berserkers, funeral ships, strange gods, seeresses, slave markets, royal feuds, and voyages that reached North America centuries before Columbus, this book uncovers the Viking Age beyond the usual ...

A Ship Was Lost. Her Name Endures Forever... On April 18, 1942, sixteen Army bombers roared off the deck of a brand-new aircraft carrier and flew straight into legend. USS Hornet had been at sea for barely six months. She would be on the ocean floor within a year and a half. In between, she helped turn the tide of the Pacific War—not once, but twice. The Carrier That Struck First tells the extraordinary story of the two ships that carried the name Hornet through the twentieth century's most consequential conflict. The first Hornet launched the Doolittle Raid, fought at the Battle of ...