Alfred Thayer Mahan

A history of the major and minor naval engagements of the Civil War on the Mississippi, the Red River, Mobile Bay and the Gulf, based on official records and eyewitness accounts. Originally published in 1883, so the author was able to ask direct questions of many of the participants.

This is Volume 16 of a 16 Volume set originally published in 1885 by Charles Scribners's & Sons. Written by 14 different authors such as Abner Doubleday, John Nicolay and Jacob D. Cox, these volumes present the Army and the Navy in the Civil war. The Army series covers causes and battles from the" Outbreak of Rebellion" to "Chancellorsville and Gettysburg" and on the "Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65. A volume of Statistical Records completes the Army set. The three volumes about the Navy include "The Blockade and the Cruisers," "The Atlantic Coast" and "The Gulf and Inland Waters." Each volume contains a wealth of information, with its own introduction, preface, index, appendix(s), illustrations and maps. As a set, it is in-depth view the Civil War.

The Problem of Asia, the celebrated American naval historian and strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, analyzes the geopolitical structure of world politics at the dawn of the twentieth century. Mahan wrote his book at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, having recently acquired overseas territories as a result of its victory in the Spanish-American War. It was a call to America and its leaders to break with the intellectual tradition of Washington's Farewell Address and to recognize that U. S. security was tied to the balance of power in Asia as well as Europe. For Mahan, the immediate "problem of Asia" was the threat of Russian expansion into Central Europe, Central Asia, East Asia,,and the Middle-East/Persian Gulf region. Mahan advocated an alliance consisting of Britain,. Japan, Germany, and the United States to counter the Russian threat. He also discussed the rise of Japan as a world power, the potential for China to emerge as a great power later in the twentieth century, and the increasing importance of the Middle East/Persian Gulf region to the global balance of power. The Problem of Asia contains geopolitical insights and analyses that remain relevant today. As recent events have reminded us, the world of the twenty-first century is still composed of nation-states and non-state actors that vigorously and sometimes brutally pursue their goals and self-interests. Mahan's approach in The Problem of Asia to the study and analysis of international politics in an anarchic world provides an important conceptual framework for understanding the fundamentals of global politics. This edition of Mahan's classic work includes a lengthy introduction by Francis P. Sempa that analyzes the book in the context of Mahan's life and other writings.

Four years before the outbreak of the First World War, Alfred Thayer Mahan, the world famous naval historian and strategist, warned of the approaching conflict in The Interest of America in International Conditions. Mahan's geo-historical approach compared Imperial Germany's early twentieth-century quest for hegemony to previous attempts by Napoleon's France, Louis XIV's France, and the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs to upset the European balance of power. Each previous bid for hegemony brought forth a coalition of powers that restored the balance of power. Mahan foresaw in the early twentieth century that a new coalition of powers, including Britain, France, Russia, and the United States, would be needed to prevent German domination of the continent.