Books with author Samuel Eliot Morison

This spectacular fifteen-volume series that charts the U.S. Naval operations during World War II with an insider's perspective. Morison, a Harvard professor, was given a special rank and writing post by FDR. He had active duty aboard eleven different ships, allowing him to witness many crucial battles in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Volume Five-the third on the war in the Pacific-is devoted entirely to the Guadalcanal campaign, in which the United States Navy experienced more fighting than in any three previous wars. Filled with many maps and file photographs.

[This is Part 2 of a 2-part Audiobook CASSETTE Library Edition in vinyl case.][Part 2 has 8 cassettes][Read by Frederick Davidson]*Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Biography* Admiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed in Columbus' path to the New World could muster. Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus' Santa Maria and Niña. The result is this vivid and definitive biography that accurately details the voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world.

This fresh look at America's first sea warrior avoids both the hero worship of past biographies and the inaccurate and denigrating views of more recent accounts. Writing from the perspective of a naval officer with more than thirty years of experience and a seaman with a lifetime of sailing know-how, Callo examines Jones' extraordinary accomplishments by going beyond a narrow naval context to establish him as a key player in the American Revolution. He also analyzes his relationships with such civilian leaders as Benjamin Franklin. How Jones handled those often difficult dealings contributed to the nation's concept of civilian control of the military. The author also focuses on the fact that Jones was the first serving American naval officer who emphasized the role the Navy could play in the rise of the United States as a global power.

Few figures have entered the ranks of America's national heroes with a more mixed bag of credentials than the Scottish seaman variously known as John Paul, John Jones, Captain Paul, Captain John Paul Jones and Kontradmiral Pavel Ivanovich Jones. As the youthful master of a merchant ship in the West Indies, this short Scot with the towering temper was wanted for murder. As an officer in the Continental Navy, he became the new country's greatest naval hero. Yet he was a notorious complainer, impatient with superiors, haughty toward his peers and a tyrant among his crews (with considerable justification, it must be added). He described himself as "a free Citizen of the World" bent on defending "the violated rights of Mankind," but after the American Revolution he went on to battle Turks in the service of a Russian despot. Son of an unlettered gardener, he wrote letters which became a standard of style and deportment for generations of Annapolis middies. He was a man of powerful physical drives who, in the shrewd judgment of Abigail Adams, understood "all the etiquette of a lady's toilette as perfectly as he does the mast and sails and rigging of his ship." Yet he never married. He was, in brief, one of the most paradoxical and fascinating figures in all American history.