Books in CLASSICS OF NAVAL LITERATURE series

This is a vivid, minute-by-minute account of one of the worst shipwrecks in naval history. Edward Beach's father commanded the Memphis, one of the largest battle cruisers built by the U.S. Navy up to that time--bigger and faster than a battleship. The Memphis (originally Tennessee) was demolished by monstrous tsunami waves in Santo Domingo Harbor in August 1916, killing forty-three sailors, and Beach Jr. literally grew up with the tragedy and its effects, which are as profound today as they were eighty years ago.Based on his father's reminiscences and private papers, official documents, and interviews with survivors, Beach's reexamination of the disaster and his father's court-martial ranks among the finest analyses of the responsibilities and demands placed on the commanding officer of a U.S. Navy ship. A record-setting submarine skipper himself and the acclaimed author of Run Silent, Run Deep, Beach brought personal knowledge to a story that has become a classic in the years since its original publication in 1966. His prose was never more incisive and vigorous. In an introductory essay written for this new edition, Beach discusses the design of the Memphis, her role in the fleet that fought in World War I, and object lessons that have influenced U.S. naval history since the disaster.

Delilah is a sea story unlike any ever written, although in reading it one is reminded of Ahab?s single-minded quest for the great white whale, of Joseph Conrad and his men of the sea, of the struggles of epic myth and the real battles that have become mythic within the imaginations of men. The novel is in all ways extraordi­nary. The story, which occurs on the eve of the first World War, is that of a U.S. Navy destroyer on detached duty in the South Seas and of the men who serve in her. In the tiny world of a de­stroyer in a vast universe of the sea, the officers and men of Delilah carry out their orders heroically, according to the code of the fighting man, to patrol their assigned area, to inspect remote islands, to show the flag, to carry out diplomat­ic missions, and to prepare for the impending war. From the beginning, the men aboard Delilah face severe trials. A voracious eater of coal, she must be fed con­stantly. A typhoon provides a test that all but the hardiest must fail. When the novel was first published in 1941, Sinclair Lewis noted that it was “more real than reality.? The New York Times called it an “extraordinarily lovely novel of a fighting ship?; and Clifton Fadiman referred to it in the New Yorker as a “mature work of imagi­nation on a subject ordinarily left to writers of adventure yarns.?

Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty and sublimity which language could barely capture. Words, he said, were inadequate to convey to those who have not visited the inter-tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences'. Yet in a travel journal which takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to South Sea Islands, Darwin's descriptive powers are constantly challenged, but never once overcome. In addition, The Voyage of the Beagle displays Darwin's powerful, speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relation between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself.

Gretel looked at her [mother] in troubled silence, wondering whether it were very wicked to care more for one parent than for the other-and sure, yes, quite sure, that she dreaded her father, while she clung to her mother with a love that was almost idolatry. -from Hans Brinker A beloved childhood favorite for a century and a half-and a book that readers continue to enjoy and appreciate long into adulthood-Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates went through more than 100 editions during the author's lifetime alone. First published in 1865, this replica of the 1917 edition features the exquisite illustrations by Alice Carsey, whose sensitive eye and delicate pen-and-ink lines enliven the tale of the poor but virtuous Dutch boy in a way that few other artists have achieved. This replica edition brings the enchanting work of Dodge and Carsey to a new generation of children. Author and editor Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) was born in New York City. She served as editor of the children's magazine St. Nicholas, to which she attracted such writers as Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Rudyard Kipling. She also authored the short-fiction collection Irvington Stories (1864).