Though dismissed from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1861, William Barker Cushing soon rejoined the service and transformed himself from a renowned rabble-rouser into a living legend who embodied the special qualities that the Navy demands of those who undertake its most hazardous and secret tasks. By the end of the Civil War, he had amassed four commendations from the Navy Department and earned the thanks of Congress and President Lincoln. Employing his customary readable style, Robert J. Schneller focuses on Cushing's meteoric naval career and those aspects of his personality that affected it. His concise account of this remarkable man reveals some of the most astonishing combat missions of the American Civil War.  ROBERT J. SCHNELLER JR., PH.D., is a historian in the Contemporary History Branch of the U.S. Naval Historical Center. Schneller’s first book, A Quest for Glory: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, received the 1996 John Lyman Book Award in Biography from the North American Society for Oceanic History. He also wrote (with Edward J. Marolda) Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War, which received the prestigious Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize from the Navy League of the United States. Schneller’s other books include an edition of John W. Grattan’s Civil War memoir, Under the Blue Pennant, or Notes of a Naval Officer, 1863–1865, and Farragut: America’s First Admiral (Brassey’s, Inc., 2002), the initial volume in Brassey’s Military Profiles series. He lives in Lake Ridge, Virginia. Used Book in Good Condition