Authors at sea : modern American writers remember their naval service / edited by Robert Shenk.

from What Shall We Wear to This Party? The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Twenty Years Before and After / Sloan Wilson -- from Growing Up / Russell Baker -- from The History of the Ginger Man / J. P. Donleavy -- from Subchaser / Edward P. Stafford -- from Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket's World War II Odyssey / Alvin Kernan -- "The Ship Ahead Just Disappeared" / Walter Sullivan -- from A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures / Ben Bradlee -- from The United States Navy: 200 Years / Edward L. Beach -- "The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met" / Alex Haley -- from The World Is My Home: A Memoir / James A. Michener -- from "Our Hot War for Iceland" / Daniel V. Gallery -- "Training Flight" / Gordon Forbes -- from All the Ship's at Sea / William J. Lederer -- from A Writer's Capital / Louis Auchincloss -- from All at Sea: Coming of Age in World War II / Louis R. Harlan -- from Breaking Barriers: A Memoir / Carl Rowan -- from Vistas of History / Samuel Eliot Morison --

from "Historian at War: Chronicling American Naval Operations in World War II" / Henry Salomon, Jr. -- from Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History / C. Vann Woodward -- from The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher / Lewis Thomas -- "The Bread of Ochiltree: A Reminiscence of the War" / Herman Wouk -- from Now Hear This: The Memoir of a Junior Naval Officer in the Great Pacific War / Douglas Leach -- from The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form / Henry G. Bugbee, Jr. -- from Submarine! / Edward L. Beach -- from Little Ship, Big War / Edward P. Stafford -- from A Letter Home / Kenneth Dodson -- from To the War / Robert Edson Lee -- from A Writer's Capital / Louis Auchincloss.

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.