Authors at Sea

the long version

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.