The New York Times bestseller from master biographer Evan Thomas brings to life the tumultuous story of the father of the American Navy. John Paul Jones, at sea and in the heat of the battle, was the great American hero of the Age of Sail. He was to history what Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey and C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower are to fiction. Ruthless, indomitable, clever; he vowed to sail, as he put it, “in harm’s way.” Evan Thomas’s minute-by-minute re-creation of the bloodbath between Jones’s Bonhomme Richard and the British man-of-war Serapis off the coast of England on an autumn night in 1779 is as gripping a sea battle as can be found in any novel. Drawing on Jones’s correspondence with some of the most significant figures of the American Revolution—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson—Thomas’s biography teaches us that it took fighters as well as thinkers, men driven by dreams of personal glory as well as high-minded principle, to break free of the past and start a new world. Jones’s spirit was classically American.

"This biography also looks at some interesting but lesser-known aspects of Jones's naval career, among them his relationships with such civilian leaders as Benjamin Franklin. How Jones handled those often-difficult dealings, Callo maintains, contributed to the nation's concept of civilian control of the military. The author focuses on the fact that Jones was the first serving American naval officer who emphasized the role naval power would play in the rise of the United States as a global power, thus earning him the epithet America's first apostle of sea power. Further, Callo analyzes Jones's brief tour in the Russian navy, a revealing chapter of his life that has been underreported in the two hundred years since Jones's death." "Rather than looking at Jones in a rearview mirror, Callo illuminates how this unique naval hero is linked to the nation's present and future. As a result, the author gives us a sea saga that tells much about our own lives and times."--BOOK JACKET.

This 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning book vividly portrays the illustrious career of John Paul Jones, from his early training at sea in the British West Indian merchant trade to his command in the newly independent American Navy and his eventual award of flag status.

Illustrated by period artwork and photographs of historical artifacts, a biography of John Paul Jones describes how the Scots immigrant served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolution and led his men to victory over the world's greatest sea power.