Authors at Sea

Seven Pulitzer Prize winners and three Bancroft Prize winners are among the authors featured in this collection of works by eminent American writers who shared a common experience: service in the U.S. Navy or Coast Guard during World War II. Best-selling novelists, historians, science writers, and journalists, most of these authors are well known - Herman Wouk, James Michener, Alex Haley, C. Vann Woodward, Russell Baker, Edward L. Beach, Carl Rowan, Ben Bradlee, Louis Auchincloss, and Samuel Eliot Morison, to name a few. But readers may not be aware of their wartime naval service. . The authors write about duty on all kinds of ships - from carriers to submarines to LSTs - and service in all theaters and at all periods of the war, from beginning to end. They recount a variety of experiences: submarine attacks, kamikaze hits, storms, homesickness, nights on the town, leadership challenges, personality conflicts. Most wrote after years of reflection and decades spent developing writing skills.