Military historian John Keegan’s gripping history of naval warfare’s evolution. In The Price of Admirality, leading military historian John Keegan illuminates the history of naval combat by expertly dissecting four landmark sea battles, each featuring a different type of warship: the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland in World War I, the Battle of Midway in World War II, and the long and arduous Battle of the Atlantic. “The best military historian of our generation.”—Tom Clancy “The Price of Admirality stands alongside Mr. Keegan’s earlier works in its power to impart both the big and little pictures of war.”—The New York Times

John Keegan, widely considered the greatest military historian of our time and the author of acclaimed volumes on ancient and modern warfare--including, most recently, The First World War, a national bestseller--distills what he knows about the why’s and how’s of armed conflict into a series of brilliantly concise essays. Is war a natural condition of humankind? What are the origins of war? Is the modern state dependent on warfare? How does war affect the individual, combatant or noncombatant? Can there be an end to war? Keegan addresses these questions with a breathtaking knowledge of history and the many other disciplines that have attempted to explain the phenomenon. The themes Keegan concentrates on in this short volume are essential to our understanding of why war remains the single greatest affliction of humanity in the twenty-first century, surpassing famine and disease, its traditional companions.

In Battle at Sea, Sir John Keegan applies to maritime warfare the technique that he put to such brilliant effect in his classic of war on land, The Face of Battle. He concentrates on four key conflicts: Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway and the Battle of the Atlantic. He takes us into the very heart of the fighting while providing a remarkable panoramic view of naval warfare through the centuries.

As the United States grew into an empire in the late nineteenth century, notions like "sea power" derived not only from fleets, bases, and decisive battles but also from a scientific effort to understand and master the ocean environment. Beginning in the early nineteenth century and concluding in the first years of the twentieth, Jason W. Smith tells the story of the rise of the U.S. Navy and the emergence of American ocean empire through its struggle to control nature. In vividly told sketches of exploration, naval officers, war, and, most significantly, the ocean environment, Smith draws together insights from environmental, maritime, military, and naval history, and the history of science and cartography, placing the U.S. Navy's scientific efforts within a broader cultural context. By recasting and deepening our understanding of the U.S. Navy and the United States at sea, Smith brings to the fore the overlooked work of naval hydrographers, surveyors, and cartographers. In the nautical chart's soundings, names, symbols, and embedded narratives, Smith recounts the largely untold story of a young nation looking to extend its power over the boundless sea.

Admiralty Jurisdiction and Practice is the definitive work on litigation in the Admiralty Court. It provides unrivalled commentary and analysis of the key principles of admiralty law, from jurisdiction and procedure to forms and precedents, and is firmly established as the leading reference guide for today’s maritime practitioner. The authors also deal with several topics not covered elsewhere, including the impact of insolvency, the interplay between jurisdiction and practice, limitation periods, the role of international conventions, and collision action rules. The fifth edition has been fully updated to include new case law and vital changes in Commercial Court practice and procedure. It also includes brand new material on the topical jurisdictions of Hong Kong and South Africa, including a comparison to English law and expert commentary on important issues such as ship arrest. This book is a first choice for all those concerned with admiralty law.

The maritime law of the United States is harmonious in broad outline with the laws of other maritime nations, but it has a unique structure--tied to the U.S. Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789--entailing a special set of intellectual challenges. Admiralty and Maritime Law in the United States is a leading casebook that reveals the areas of international harmony and explores U.S. law's special features. Each of the authors is an admiralty expert, but the book strives for a generalist's perspective. It aims to tie the admiralty field into the students' other studies while providing the fundamental professional tools necessary to the advanced study or practice of U.S. maritime law. Instructors new to admiralty found the first edition of Admiralty and Maritime Law to be an orderly and user-friendly introduction to the field. Experienced admiralty professors found the book to be well organized and thorough. In the second edition, the authors have drawn on these reports and their own teaching experiences. The book's basic organization and approach have been retained, but much of the second edition is brand-new. Older cases have yielded to leading new ones, new textual material has been added, and older textual material has been deleted or streamlined. Many of the cases that carried over from the first edition have been edited into shorter versions. The second edition incorporates the body of admiralty statutes that came into effect in October 2006 and the reformulated ("plain English") Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that took effect in December 2007. It includes the Supreme Court's dramatic new decisions in Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co., Norfolk Southern Railway v. Kirby, Norfolk Southern Railway v. Sorrell, and even--in a stop-the-press one-page summary--the June 2008 Exxon Valdez punitive damages case. When asked to identify the best new feature of the second edition, the authors respond: "There are 70 fewer pages of text." In three semester hours, one can teach all of it. For shorter or more ruminatively paced courses, the Teacher's Manual provides suggestions on what to omit. A 2012 Teacher's Manual is available as of July 2012; there is also a 2013-14 Supplement.

A masterly look at the value and limitations of intelligence in the conduct of war from the premier military historian of our time, John Keegan. Intelligence gathering is an immensely complicated and vulnerable endeavor. And it often fails. Until the invention of the telegraph and radio, information often traveled no faster than a horse could ride, yet intelligence helped defeat Napoleon. In the twentieth century, photo analysts didn’t recognize Germany’s V-2 rockets for what they were; on the other hand, intelligence helped lead to victory over the Japanese at Midway. In Intelligence in War, John Keegan illustrates that only when paired with force has military intelligence been an effective tool, as it may one day be in besting al-Qaeda.

John Keegan's new book applies to maritime warfare the technique he put to such dazzling effect in his classic of war on land, The Face of Battle. His analysis concentrates on four key battles - Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway and the Battle of the Atlantic. The result not only illustrates the development of naval warfare through the sailing warship, the battleship, the aircraft carrier and the submarine, thereby giving a panoramic view, but takes the reader into the heart of the fighting, reminding us that the price of battle, whether on sea or land, is measuring in men's lives.