In this book Phillip Kaplan traces the history of the submarine beginning with the ingenious but impractical proposals of the seventeeth-century European inventors. He describes the increasing sophistication of the designs of a succession of American (with others)pioneers.But though the book fully describes the subsequent development of the submarine from the 75 ton Holland to the nuclear powered submarines of today, the real focus is on the men who go to sea in them, and their predecessors who fought in the two great wars of the twentieth-century. Drawing upon interviews with submariners, past and present, and their journals and memoirs, and with the help of hundreds of illustrations, many previously unpublished, Kaplan paints a vivid portrait of their lives and experiences.