After showing the familial roots of Mahan’s faith, Geissler follows Mahan’s time as a student at the Naval Academy, young officer, and ultimately writer and professor at the Naval War College and beyond. Geissler’s book traces Mahan’s faith to his family, beginning with his father, Dennis, and uncle, Milo. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand Mahan” (195). As Geissler contends in her conclusion, “ny discussion of Mahan’s life, career, and writings is incomplete without taking into account his deep Christian faith and how he applied it to everything he did as an officer, historian, strategist, Churchman, son, husband, and father. Suzanne Geissler has provided just such a background in her God and Sea Power, which documents Mahan’s relationship to his Christian faith throughout his life. While one does not necessarily need to know Mahan’s biography or religious life to understand his naval thought, this background does certainly flesh out his perspective and sheds light on the man behind the still-acclaimed Influence of Sea Power Upon History, published in 1890. Mahan’s personal, religious convictions were, unsurprisingly, not discussed in relation to his writing and influence. Mahan was studied in-depth and championed as the premier naval historian and strategist of the modern world. I first encountered Alfred Thayer Mahan as an undergraduate student in Professor Paul Kennedy’s “Military History of the West Since 1500” course at Yale. ![]() Reviewed by ENS Sean Bland, USNR (Chaplain Candidate)
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