This powerfully argued, objective history of the modern U.S. Navy explains how the Navy defined its purpose in the century after 1890. It relates in detail how the Navy formed and reformed its doctrine of naval force and operations around a concept articulated by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan - a concept of offensive sea control by a battleship fleet, and, new to America, the need to build and maintain an offensive battle fleet in peacetime.

However, there were many years, notably in the 1920's and after World War II, when there was no enemy at sea, when the country turned inward, when the Navy could not count on support for an expensive peacetime battle fleet. After 1945, especially, the inappropriateness of Mahanian principles strained a service that had taken them for granted, as did the centralization of the military establishment and the introduction of new weapons.

What, then, did the Navy do? It shrewdly adapted old ideas to new technology. To reclaim its position in a general war, and avoid being transformed into a mere transport service, the Navy (with the Marine Corps) proved it was capable of power projection onto the land through seaborne bombers armed with nuclear weapons and by building a ballistic missile-launching submarine force.

The growth of a Soviet sea force in the 1970's and 1980's revived the moribund sea power doctrine, but the Navy's bid for strategic leadership failed in the face of the war-avoidance policy of the Cold War. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Navy finally retired Mahan's doctrine that the defeat of the enemy fleet was the Navy's primary objective.

Having proven itself in the course of the century as ever adaptable, the service moved back from sea control to a doctrine of expeditionary littoral warfare. This volume, then, is a history of how a war-fighting organization responded - in doctrine, strategy, operations, preparedness, self-awareness, and force structure - to radical changes in political circumstance, technological innovation, and national needs and expectations.