Drawing on Dahlgren's meticulously kept diaries and records and recently uncovered family papers author Robert Schneller describes with a biographer's sensitivity and a historian's perspective the admiral's many technical triumphs as well as the plots duels intrigues and betrayals that plagued Dahlgren's life.

Robert J. Schneller Jr. received a PhD in military history from Duke University in 1991. He then worked more than twenty years as an official historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington D.C. An award-winning author, Schneller published eight books during his career. He is now retired and living in northeastern Pennsylvania.