Hardcover - 240 pages 1 Ed edition (September 22, 1999)

The Terrible Hours: May 23, 1939. Television was being advertised for the first time to American consumers. Europe was on the brink of war as Hitler and Mussolini signed an alliance in Berlin. These were the days before sonar and before the discovery of nuclear power revolutionized submarine design. Dependent on battery power, submarines were actually surface ships that "occasionally dipped beneath the waves." If a sub went down, "every man on board was doomed. It was accepted that there would be no deliverance."

Swede Momsen was, according to master storyteller Peter Maas, the "greatest submariner the Navy ever had," and he was determined to beat those odds. Momsen spent his career trying to save the lives of trapped submariners, despite an indifferent Navy bureaucracy that thwarted and belittled his efforts at every turn. Every way of saving a sailor entombed in a sub--"smoke bombs, telephone marker buoys, new deep-sea diving techniques, escape hatches, artificial lungs, a great pear-shaped rescue chamber--was either a direct result of Momsen's inventive derring-do, or of value only because of it." Yet on the day the Squalus sank, none of Momsen's inventions had been used in an actual submarine disaster.

In The Terrible Hours, Maas reconstructs the harrowing 39 hours between the disappearance of the submarine Squalus during a test dive off the New England coast and the eventual rescue of 33 crew members trapped in the vessel 250 feet beneath the sea. It's also the story of Momsen's triumph. Under the worst possible circumstances, Momsen led a successful mission and helped change the future of undersea lifesaving. Not only has Maas written a carefully researched and suspenseful tribute to a true hero, in the process he has salvaged a long-forgotten, riveting piece of American history. --Svenja Soldovieri

What If? :
The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
by Robert Cowley (Editor)

Hardcover - (September 1999) 336 pages

What If? Essays by Stephen E. Ambrose, John Keegan, David McCullough, James M. McPherson, and others

A fascinating collection of never-before-published essays on the great turning points in world history written by the most renowned historians at work today.

Historians and inquisitive laymen alike love to ponder the dramatic "what ifs" of history. In these twenty-two original essays, scholars ask the tantalizing question: Where might we be if history had not unfolded the way it did? Their answers are surprising, and sometimes frightening, but always entertaining.

David McCullough imagines George Washington's ignoble end at the hands of the British if he had not made his escape from Long Island in August 1776. Writing about the Civil War, James M. McPherson suggests General Robert E. Lee could have moved into Union territory and the ultimate crossroads-- Gettysburg--and won it all in 1862, if only his Special Order No. 191 had not been lost and turned over to General McClellan. Would the Union have been cleaved in half? Stephen Ambrose describes what might have happened if D-Day had failed. If the storm enveloping the Normandy coast in 1944 had become worse on June 6th, the invasion would have resulted in catastrophe.

Other essay topics include Alexander the Great's luck, the Spanish Armada's ill wind, Napoleon's overconfidence, Hirohito's missed opportunity, and Hitler's inflated ego. In addition to the twenty-two essays, fifteen "sidebars," or shorter pieces, cover even more "what ifs." Among the contributors are Stephen W. Sears, Thomas Fleming, Victor Davis Hanson, Lewis H. Lapham, William H. McNeill, Williamson Murray, Josiah Ober and Theodore K. Rabb.