The author, ADM James Stavridis USN (Ret) shares vignettes from 50 out of more than 5,000 books he had read during his naval career at sea. A combination of fiction and non-fiction, some are about the oceans of the world, some are about history, and some are books that are fundamental for sailors to learn and further hone their craft. But all are to introduce the splendor of the maritime world to those who do not know it well. ADM Stavridis says there is wisdom within the covers of these books that will certainly help anyone deepen their understanding and gain an appreciation of the blue world.

THE OCEANS

1. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester. Looking at the ocean through the prism of 7 ages of man from the play “As You Like It,” conjures the changing nature of the Atlantic Ocean. It begins with geology and science of the Atlantic ocean’s foundation. After discovering the Atlantic beyond Gibraltar, Cretans, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, and Egyptians still ignored it. No explorations occurred until after Columbus’ voyage. Only Vikings sailed the north Atlantic. Sailors feared the monsters drawn on charts. Slave trade is exposed.
2. Atlas of Remote Islands: 50 Islands I Have Never Set foot On and Never Will, by Judith Schalansky. Schalansky’s book is concerned with tiny, unknown islands scattered around the world. She selected them largely based on distance from the big continental land. Each of the 50 islands mentioned in her book has a distinct story that starts at discovery, a moment that frequently turns out badly for the indigenous island people who are often displaced by colonizing populations. The islands are in the Arctic (3), Atlantic (9), Indian (7), Pacific (27), and Antarctic (4) Oceans. No one has heard of most of the islands on her list.
3. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the Word, by Mark Kurlansky. With demand, there is a cost: overfishing. Cod numbered in the millions in the mid-20^th century in the Greenland-Iceland-UK corridor. Today, it is extinct in traditional fishing grounds caused by a 1,000-year fishing spree dating back to the Vikings. They hung-dried cod in the wintery air. They traded south into European markets, triggering demand and leading to the cod’s demise. By mid-1500, over half of the fish eaten in Europe was cod. Cod War between Iceland and UK in 1958-1972 continues, as part of oceanic warming and illegal fishing.
4. Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves, by James Nestor. Freediving requires the diver to hold their breath while reaching the deepest level possible in the ocean without scuba gear. Exceptional freedivers can stay down for over 10 minutes. It is a matter of training, experience, and basic physiology. Some divers have larger lung capacity or have muscles that can operate without oxygen. As a freediver descends beyond 30 feet deep, pressure begins to act on the human body. Freedivers can experience blackouts, nosebleeds, lung damage, and decompression sickness.
5. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel. ADM Stavridis was the first Admiral to serve as Commander of NATO, after a long line of Generals. As a midshipman at Annapolis, ADM Stavridis learned to use a sextant. Today, the Global Positioning System (GPS) renders locating your position trivial. Navigators determined how far north and south they were on the globe or latitude. The problem was knowing how far by east and west, or longitude, there is no fixed point. This is a story of the great technical challenge sailors faced 300 years ago.
6. Dutton’s Nautical Navigation, 15^TH Edition, by Thomas J. Cutler. When ADM Stavridis arrived at Annapolis to join the U.S. Naval Academy’s class of 1976, he had zero knowledge of navigation. His goal was to be a U.S. Marine infantry officer like his father. But once he stood on a ship’s bridge, that faded. There are problems in finding a position on earth using latitude and longitude. Various navigational equipment is discussed. Tides, navigation, currents, piloting, radar, and navigational astronomy emerge. The Navy reverted to electronic and paper charting. GPS is found vulnerable to attack via satellite or cyber.
7. Naval Shiphandler’s Guide, by Capt. James A. Barber Jr, USN (Ret). As a junior officer, ADM Stavridis served on a Spruance class destroyer which is highly responsive to the shiphandler’s commands on the bridge. To know the sea means to understand the power and glory of steering a ship. Each chapter begins with a short sea story. The stories reflect the experience, skill, and heart of sea captain James Barber. It concludes with special advice addressed to naval officers but broad enough to understand the skill of ship handling in high-pressure situations.
8. Sea Power: A Naval History, edited by E.B. Potter and Chester W. Nimitz. As a plebe at the Naval Academy, ADM Stavridis was required to take a full-year course on Sea Power. In his class of 1,200, only 900 graduated -an attrition rate of 25%. Stavridis was a student of Prof. Potter. In 2017, ADM Stavridis wrote a book on Sea Power as an homage to Prof. Potter. Key themes of Sea Power: (1) influence of Mahan; (2) strategic reasoning at sea; (3) successful leadership; (4) evolution of naval weapons; (5) evolution of naval tactics; and (6) evolution of amphibious doctrine and alliance of Navy and Marine Corps.
9. The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain’s Journey, by Linda Greenlaw. This book is about Greenlaw’s deep love of the ocean and the challenging work of longline-swordfish hunting. It is about fishing and command at sea as a swordboat captain. She masterfully illuminates how hard the task of fishing is for the crew of her ship. It is a rough, demanding, and harsh life at sea, especially aboard small boats. Making unpopular decisions is part of being the captain. This is true for any boss in any profession, however, the oceans are a particularly difficult setting to apply standard leadership skills.
10. The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, by Ian Urbina. The problem in addressing-sea crimes is caused by the lack of clear laws and enforcement mechanisms. Norms for policing international waters are laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Restrictions on criminal behaviors are addressed but in general terms. There is no global maritime police to punish illegal maritime activity. Criminals are apprehended by coast guards or navies, but unable to bring them to trial. Poachers turn off identification systems to go dark, making oceans the largest crime scenes.
11. The Sea Around Us, by Rachel L. Carson. Part I of this book focuses on the rising sea levels as part of global climate change today. Part II focuses on the interaction between mankind and the oceans. There is a complex relationship among tide, wind, sun, and moon; and how they influence global shipping. The book is 70 years ahead of the climate conversation in discussing the relationship of warming oceans to global warming. The connection between sea temperature and air temperature is crucial to the creation of weather. Oceans dominate the air. The long trend is toward a warmer earth.
12. The World is Blue: How Our Fate and The Oceans Are One, by Sylvia A. Earle. Our destructive behavior in the past 50 years is leading us down an apocalyptic course. Overfishing and extinction of thousands of species of ocean-dwellers; pollution from dumping plastics and radioactive materials; and damages from rising ocean temperatures are disconcerting. The death of coral reefs results from changes in ocean chemistry and temperature. Half of the coral reefs are dying due to decreasing ocean oxygen. The Pacific Ocean has a field of floating debris. Aquaculture and protected marine sites help reverse these.
13. Watch Officer’s Guide, 16^TH Ed., by Adm. James Stavridis USN (Ret), RAdm Robert P. Girrier USN (Ret), Capt. Tom Ogden USN, and Capt. Jeff Hearnes USN. A naval officer is trained to assume the watch on a ship at sea. The Watch Officer’s Guide shows a valuable set of checklists for the conduct of operations. Naval operations are very precisely orchestrated. The basics of watch-standing apply to the Navy, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines. Good watchstanders pull out these checklists to ensure the entire team is in synch. They have forehandedness, intuition, vigilance, experience, judgment, and high energy.

EXPLORERS

14. Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage, by James P. Delgado. ADM Stavridis sailed the waters in the high north as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Doing operations in the Arctic entailed grave difficulty. As global warming causes more ice to melt, the Northwest Passage is turning navigable. Each year brings in more countries -Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and China. As Northwest Passage gets more accessible, it gets more countries mired in geopolitics. This book should be required reading for sailors to know the history and tensions in the high north.
15. Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz. As a brand new Ensign in the Navy, ADM Stavridis’s first job was as an anti-submarine warfare officer on a Spruance-class destroyer of around 8,000 tons, USS Hewitt. We sailed close to 50,000 nm in 6 months. Each chapter of Horwitz’s book begins with a set piece from the voyages of Captain Cook, then shifts to the present day in the same locale. This is about how the vast Pacific contains and shapes so many places and cultures, making a fine voyage for any sailor.
16. Captain Cook: Master of the Seas, by Frank McLynn. Captain James Cook was born in England in 1728 and had only 5 years of formal education. He was self-taught in almost all things. He became a merchant sailor, learning the mathematical skills needed for celestial navigation and charting. By 1755, Cook joined the Royal Navy, beginning his career at the bottom of the maritime ladder, working himself upward. He made 3 commissioned voyages. The first was onboard HMS Endeavor.
17. Kon-Tiki: Six Men Cross the Pacific on a Raft, by Thor Heyerdahl. As NATO Supreme Allied Commander, one of the highlights was visiting the Museum in Oslo, Norway. The vessel that took ADM Stavridis’ breath away was the raft Kon-Tiki built by a Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl who set out to prove ancient Polynesians were the first settlers of South America. He constructed the raft out of balsa wood and other Polynesian indigenous materials. The raft was 50 ft in length with a mangrove main mast of 30 ft in height. On 28-Apr-1947 he sailed for 101 days, covering 4,300 nm, from Peru to Raroia Island.
18. Sailing Alone Around the World, by Captain Joshua Slocum. At Annapolis, every midshipman is given a basic course in sailing, so at age 17, ADM Stavridis learned the theory and commands to handle a very small single mast boat called a Knockabout. He is a good crewman who can bring an 8,000-ton destroyer smoothly into a berth but admits he cannot be a sailing captain who can read maddening winds, rig just the right mix of sails, and tweak a course to pick up an extra knot or two. In contrast, Slocum was a great pure sailor. He completed the first documented circumnavigation of the world, alone in a sailboat.
19. The Conquest of the Ocean: An Illustrated History of Seafaring, by Brian Lavery. Polynesians sailed using the sun, stars, wind, and currents. In 3,000 BC, Eastern Mediterranean mariners used sails for coastal trips. Greeks, Phoenicians, and Egyptians combined sail and oars. In 700 BC, hybrid warships emerged. In 480 BC, Greece triumphed over Persia at the Bay of Salamis; Vikings voyaged from Scandinavia to North America; and Chinese ADM Zhen led fleets in the 1400s. Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the earth in the 1500s. Conquest of the oceans enabled slavery. Great sea battles took place later.
20. The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition, by Caroline Alexander. Sir Ernest Shackleton set out with a crew of 27 and sailed south through the deep Atlantic to Antarctica. They sailed through the freezing Weddell Sea and were about 100 miles from their goal when their 3-mast barquentine sailing ship, Endurance, got trapped in the ice pack and was crushed. Shackleton and a hand-picked crew made an 800-mile voyage on an open boat, Jaimes Caird, to South Georgia Island. There, Shackleton organized the rescue of the rest of his crew. It took 20 months for all crew to be rescued.
21. The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, by the First Men to Swim at Record Depths with the Freedom of Fish, by Jacques Yves Cousteau with Frederic Dumas. Cousteau attended Ecole Navale and began as a naval officer. In Toulon, he experimented with underwater equipment and primitive versions of the Aqua-Lung. Upon departing the French Navy in 1949, he took command of the now famous research vessel and floating laboratory, Calypso, which became the center of his life’s work undersea. This book won Cousteau a Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956.

SAILORS IN FICTION

22. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. Ships around the world reported sightings of a giant sea monster. Aronnax, Conseil, and Landfall overboard in confronting the monster, which turns out to be the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s submarine. They board the sub and begin the 20,000-league voyage under the sea, but are not allowed to ever leave the Nautilus. They are attacked by a giant squid and battle it. Later, the Nautilus is attacked by a warship from a nation that caused Capt Nemo much suffering. So he rams and destroys the warship. The 3 men escaped. Nautilus was later caught in a maelstrom and sunk.
23. Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian. ADM Stavridis received a box of the complete set of Patrick O’Brian’s novels. His EO, Mike Franken, pulled out the final volume titled The Commodore. It was the next logical step for then Captain Stavridis, to command not a single destroyer but a squadron. The plot of Master and Commander revolves around a series of set pieces to sea, culminating in the battle warship Sophie fights against a much larger Spanish warship. It is partly about the lifelong friendship between Aubrey and Maturin, and more about the relationship among Jack, Stephen, and the sea.
24. Mister Roberts, by Thomas Heggen. As a green Ensign, ADM Stavridis was assigned to the Spruance-class USS Hewitt. The Operations Officer, LT Jerry Farrell was from Annapolis, and he mentored Stavridis, who would later also mentor young ensigns later in his naval career. Mentorship is the heart of this novel, which is extremely comic at times but also has a very serious heart to it. The central theme is the value of ideals and character that are essential for the most important role of any leader, which is to make new leaders in a confined environment of a ship at sea. The spirit of leadership at sea lives on.
25. Moby-Dick or The Whale, by Herman Melville. ADM Stavridis considers this the greatest novel of the sea. The central storyline is based on the destruction in 1820 of the whaling ship, Essex. It is not an easy read but once you get to the heights of Moby-Dick, it will stay with you forever in terms of understanding the oceans. The themes include the relationship of mankind with the oceans; the ultimate victory of nature; the racial mix of the U.S. in the mid-19^th century; the nature of obsession, and how it can doom our lives. It must be read in the context of the human spirit and the human voyage through life.
26. Moods of the Sea: Masterworks of Sea Poetry, by George C. Solley & Eric Steinbaugh. To ADM Stavridis, poetry and the sea have always been intertwined. Compiled by a pair of US Marine Corps junior officers in the English Literature faculty at Annapolis, this book is a near-perfect compendium of sea poetry. Two sea poems stand out for ADM Stavridis as a former Captain. They are “The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the Loss of the Titanic,” by Thomas Hardy; and “Ulysses,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Sea poems are all about the heart yearning to be in the vast expanse of the sea.
27. Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall. In 1994, ADM Stavridis was a ship captain on the navy destroyer USS Barry. It revolves around the tyranny and abusive leadership of Captain William Bligh. Bounty sailed for the South Pacific in 1787 to gather breadfruit trees and conduct navigation and language research. Bounty made it to Tahiti and the Caribbean. A mutiny ensues led by Fletcher Christian after Captain Bligh accuses the crew of stealing coconuts. Bligh and 19 loyalists are set on a small launch without a chart, but they remarkably survived and reached Timor Island in 1789.
28. Run Silent, Run Deep, by Edward L. Beach. This is written as a transcript of a taped interview of CDR Ed Richardson discussing his medal for performance in combat. As CDR Richardson and LT Bledsoe head out to sea, they encounter a Japanese destroyer captained by Bungo Pete who had sunk many diesel boats. This leads Richardson to reverse his recommendation for Bledsoe for performance failure and for having an extramarital affair. Richardson takes command of the Eel and sinks the Japanese flotilla. He receives a Medal of Honor with the hope of seeing Lara, Bledsoe’s wife, and the object of his desire from the start.
29. Short Stories of the Sea, by George C. Solley & Eric Steinbaugh, with introduction & biographies by David O. Tomlinson. Each of the stories in this collection is superbly told, and thematically important to understanding the oceans and our relationship to them. They are written by known authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, John Masefield, Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, C.S. Forester, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Nicholas Monsarrat, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, and Joseph Conrad.
30. The Bedford Incident, by Mark Rascovich. The U.S. anti-submarine destroyer Bedford is in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. A Soviet submarine is lurking. Finally, the submarine surfaces for air and Captain Finlander targets it with an ASROC nuclear depth charge affixed to missiles. He says to his crew, “if he fires one, I’ll fire one.” His ensign only hears “fire one,” destroying and sinking the submarine. To hide this from the Soviets, the German commodore onboard climbs on one of the ASROC missiles and detonates it. Bedford sinks while Novo Sibirsk searches for its missing submarine.
31. The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk. A Navy lieutenant and mentor to ADM Stavridis in the process of applying at the Naval Academy, said, “Queeg is the captain you don’t want to be. But you don’t want to be Keefer either.” Stavridis worked hard not to be a failure either as a leader or follower. LT CDR Philip Queeg is a poor shiphandler and tactician, whose behavior during combat off one of the Philippine islands, causes deep shame for the crew. Seeds of mutiny are sown and LT Steve Maryk stands accused of mutiny. LT Greenwald destroys Queeg on the stand, then bullies LT Tom Keefer, who is now Captain of the Caine.
32. The Cruel Sea, by Nickolas Monsarrat. It is in The Cruel Sea that ADM Stavridis finds just the right evocation of the mix of reliability, resilience, and selflessness that personifies a servant captain at sea. The novel occurs during the Battle of the Atlantic which shaped the outcome of WWII. The plot revolves around a young sub-lieutenant Lockhart and his captain LT CDR George Ericson of HMS Compass Rose. They crossed the Atlantic over and over on convoy duty. In 1943, their ship was sunk but they survived. This book will help anyone understand a sea captain’s suffering under supreme sea cruelty, especially in war at sea.
33. The Good Shepherd, by C.S. Forester. Upon graduation from the Naval Academy, being an anti-submarine warfare officer aboard the destroyer USS Hewitt was ADM Stavridis’ first job. A combat commander makes the hardest of decisions on a minute-by-minute basis, knowing that his choices will have life-and-death consequences for the convoy ships and the warships under his command. Finally, CDR George Krause, an Annapolis graduate, brings through 30 of 37 merchant ships despite a full-blown wolf pack of U-boats surrounding him. He loses 1 destroyer but sinks 2 or 3 U-boats, then collapses into slumber.
34. Life of Pi, by Yan Martel. Pi, his family, along with zoo animals board the Japanese freighter Tsimtsum bound for Canada but sinks. Pi says “Fear is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary.” As Pi escapes, he learns survival skills in a lifeboat with a hyena, tiger, zebra, and orangutan. When the lifeboat washed ashore, the Japanese investigators submitted a brief report on the sinking of the vessel. In summary, it said, “Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Pi Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal Tiger.” This sea story is magical realism.
35. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. Santiago sails out into the Gulf Stream and catches a big marlin on the 85^TH day. He straps It to the side of his boat. The blood of the marlin sends a call to sharks along the Gulf. Santiago harpoons a Mako. By morning, the marlin is but a skeleton. Santiago knows he is defeated, with all his strength gone, but he makes it to shore and falls asleep. It is Santiago’s story of struggle, defeat, and resilience. Hemingway believes in the ability to overcome challenges. Man is not made for defeat. We are all defeated and broken, but we can choose to dream and fight on.

SAILORS IN NON-FICTION

36. Turner & the Sea, by Christine Riding & Richard Johns. The first 4 decades of JMW Turner’s work had a backdrop of war at sea. One of Turner’s most evocative oil paintings shows one of the warships at Trafalgar being unceremoniously pulled up the Thames by a steam tug. The backdrop of the ship is the symbolic setting sun which seems to connote the passing of the age of sail, and a view of British sea power. In addition to his brilliant work in oils. Turner is a superb watercolorist. His watercolors are the very best of his work. His patrons steadily grew in the early 1800s. ADM Stavridis tried his best to paint and gave them to colleagues. He never improved, despite all his great efforts.
37. The Autobiography of Dewey: Admiral of the United States Navy and Hero of the Spanish-American War, by George Dewey with Frederick Palmer. George Dewey was born in 1837 in Vermont. For the remaining years of his life, he was on active duty, ending as an Admiral of the Navy, a rank only he had ever held. He was a student at Norwich University, the oldest military college in the U.S. founded in 1819. For drunkenness and herding sheep into the barracks, he was expelled but was not an impediment to getting into the Naval Academy. He is famous for winning the lopsided Battle of Manila Bay against Spain in 1898.
38. Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, by Roger Crowley. This book focuses on the sea battles and sieges against the islands of Cyprus and Malta. The centerpiece is the Battle of Lepanto, a Mediterranean sea battle that changed history across the Mediterranean, from the Aegean and Adriatic to the Gibraltar Strait, by shutting the door to Ottoman expansion into the central and western Mediterranean. The mortal fear of southern Europeans to fight the “invincible Turks” was shattered.
39. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick. The Essex crew hacked a hole on the whale’s side and inserted a giant hook suspended from the mast, dripping with blood and oil. Essex was later attacked by an enraged sperm whale in the deep Pacific. After Essex is destroyed, the crew took the longboats and decided to sail east to the coast of South America, 2000 miles upwind, than sail west to the Marquesas which were only 1000 miles away and downwind. They feared cannibalism, but it was largely a decision of arrogance. They still ended up with cannibalism.
40. Lady in the Navy: A Personal Reminiscence, by Joy Bright Hancock. Born in 1898, Joy Bright Hancock is a U.S. Navy veteran of WWI and WWII and was instrumental in the rise of the WAVES –Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, commanding nearly 7000 women. She enlisted in the Navy as a yeoman during WWI, after which she worked at the Bureau of Aeronautics, founding a magazine on naval aviation. In WWII, she was commissioned in the WAVES, rising to commander and captain in 6 years. She brought WAVES in as regular Navy, rather than reservists, her most important naval career contribution.
41. One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander, by ADM Sandy Woodward with Patrick Robinson. During the Falklands war, ADM Stavridis was at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, midway into a graduate program in International Relations. On 2-April-1982, Argentina gambled the British would not risk much to recapture islands where sheep outnumbered people. A British task force led by Sandy Woodward had 130 ships led by carriers Hermes and Invincible headed south. The British retook Falklands in 80-days. The loss of military warships and aircraft was high on both sides.
42. Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945, by Evan Thomas. Four commanders reflect qualities of leadership in their command at sea: the crudeness, recklessness, impulsiveness, and determination of ADM William Halsey; the willfulness of ADM Matome Ugaki to lead the final kamikaze raid himself; the thoughtfulness and pragmatism of ADM Takeo Kurita in his unwillingness to sacrifice his men’s lives in a futile gesture of nobility; and the raw courage of CAPT Ernest Evans to torpedo a Japanese heavy cruiser off Samar. The 4 commanders collide at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
43. She Captains – Heroines and Hellions of the Sea, by Joan Druett. Queen Tomyris of the Black Sea fought the Persians and beheaded Cyrus. Cleopatra of Egypt and Queen Artemisia of Caria were worthy female commanders at sea. Valkyria women sailed and fought alongside Viking men. Rover queen, Alfhild, preferred a life of valor to one of ease. Grace O’Malley of Gaelic nobility was an Irish commander in the mid-1500s. Mary Read and Anne Bonny were accused of piracy under threat of capture and execution in the 1700s. Mariner Betsy Miller weathered the storms of the deep where male-commanded ships broke.
44. The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece and Western Civilization, by Barry Strauss. The battle of Salamis was fought in 480 BC. It was delayed by the heroic efforts of the Spartan land forces –the legendary 300 Spartans– at Thermopylae. The battle was eventually fought in narrow straits between the island of Salamis and the mainland as a result of Greek tactical subterfuge by providing false intelligence to the enemy. The Persians were tricked into fighting in the narrows, losing their advantage of massive ship numbers.
45. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1600-1783, by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mahan points out: how sea power enabled the rise of Great Britain and often protected it from continental foes; the need for attention and resources for national maritime fleets; the criticality of protecting sea lanes of communication, the trade routes around the world oceans; the need for forward operations through a system of logistic and resupply bases; and the potential value of blockades in warfare. If the U.S. ends up in a conflict with China, it will likely be fought in ways along the lines of Mahan’s theory and practice.
46. The Navy as a Fighting Machine, by Bradley A. Fiske. The central objective of the Navy is sea control and power projection. Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske was a capable mariner, tactician, inventor, innovator, thinker, and writer who commanded ships and fleets. He invented over 130 devices that in every case was successful and revolutionary such as the telescopic gunsight and the early microfilm reader. This book is his principal manifesto which is still read and studied by naval professionals and security analysts, seeking to understand the impact of the oceans on military strategy and fleet operations.
47. The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, by Sebastian Junger. ADM Stavridis had studied naval architecture at the Naval Academy, which made him deeply aware of the dangers of exceeding the maximum roll his big ships were designed to handle. As Sebastian Junger says, “Every boat has a degree of roll from which she can no longer recover.” In the fall of 1991, Hurricane Grace moved from northeast to mid-Atlantic, then back to New England, creating waves well over 30 feet but a weather buoy recorded a wave of over 100 feet at sea.
48. The Seafarers, Time-Life 22-Volume series, 1978-81, by various expert authors and editorial staff of Time-Life Books. Here are the subjects in each volume: Ancient Mariners; Armada; Atlantic Crossing; Clipper Ships; Dreadnoughts; East Indiamen; Explorers; Fighting Sail; Frigates; Great Liners; Luxury Yachts; Men of War; Northwest Passage; Pacific Navigators; Pirates; Racing Yachts; Spanish Main; U-Boats; Venetians; Vikings; Whalers; and Windjammers. Each volume may be between $5-$15 depending on used or brand-new status.
49. Trailblazer: The U.S. Navy’s First Black Admiral, by VADM Samuel L. Gravely Jr USN, with Paul Stillwell. ADM Stavridis had a deep respect for VADM Sam Gravely for all his firsts as a Black Naval officer: first Black officer on a U.S. Navy warship; Navy commander; Warship commanding officer; Captain; Rear Admiral while in command of USS Jouett; and finally Vice Admiral. At the height of race discrimination in the 50s & 60s, the trail must have been hard for VADM Gravely to blaze. In 2010, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer was named USS Gravely, as well as an elementary school was named after him.
50. Two Years before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, by Richard Henry Dana Jr. This is a sailor’s journal in 1840 and remains in print today about a young man’s 2-year voyage from Boston to California, and back. ADM Stavridis loved this book since his early teens, and it played no small role in his eventual conversion to a sailor. He would often recommend it to friends as an introduction to the sea, a window into a young man’s journey to maturity, an early treatise on civil rights, and a portrait of California before it became the mega-state it is today. But above all, the power and glory of the wind and waves are so moving particularly for a young man learning the ropes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR. A 1976 distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, ADM James Stavridis spent more than 35 years on active service in the U.S. Navy. He commanded destroyers and a carrier strike group in combat and served for 7 years as a 4-star admiral, culminating with 4 years as the 16^TH Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, the first Admiral to hold the post. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and is Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Admiral Stavridis has written 10 books and hundreds of articles on global security issues and leadership.

RECOMMENDATION. The Sailor’s Bookshelf, authored by ADM James G. Stavridis USN (Ret), and published by USNI is a gem not only for readers who know and love the sea but also for those who know little of the sea. He has essentially given us a checklist of the best maritime books to read. He features the 50 books he feels most worthy to be on every sailor’s bookshelf. For each book, Stavridis provides a synopsis as well as his personal reflections and recollections of his experiences at sea as a midshipman; junior officer after graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis; and as he rose the naval ladder until he became the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. The maritime books he recommends to deeply get to know the seas and the oceans cover topics on world politics, great sea battles, leadership at sea, exploration of the deep and the arctic, circumnavigation, environmentalism, and history.