is a landmark work of naval history—the most comprehensive and authoritative narrative account of American sea power written in recent times. From John Paul Jones’s defiant cry "I have not yet begun to fight," to the war in the Persian Gulf, Stephen Howarth chronicles the epic story of the United States Navy. Here are the first engagements of the tiny Continental Navy, the fight against the Barbary pirates, the watershed clash of the Monitor and the Merrimack, the development—from blueprint to battleship—of the U.S. Navy’s first modern capital ships and submarines, the great battles of World War II in the Pacific, and the navy’s deployment in Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf. For this edition, Howarth provides a new afterword discussing recent developments in the U.S. Navy.