The British origins of the US Navy -- American Revolution on river, lake, and sea -- Alexander Hamilton and the early navalists -- British blockade and the war of 1812 -- Pirates of the Barbary Coast and Caribbean -- Navy expeditions from Antarctica to Japan -- Civil War ironclads, torpedoes, and submarines -- Union gunboats on Confederate rivers -- Union victories from Charleston to Cape Fear -- Mahan's Navy and the Spanish-American War -- Teddy Roosevelt and the battleship age -- The Naval threats of Nazi Germany and Japan -- Big aircraft carrier battles of the Pacific -- U-boats, convoys, and radar in the Atlantic -- Amphibious warfare from Sicily to Saipan -- Kamikazes, atomic bombs, and America's triumph -- The birth of NATO and new cold war threats MacArthur's bold landing at Incheon, Korea -- Hyman Rickover and the nuclear Navy -- The Gulf of Tonkin and war in Vietnam -- How the Navy reformed after Vietnam -- Projecting naval power in the Middle East -- America's 21st-century missions at sea -- China's threats to US Naval supremacy.