88 Books Like Seapower States

To understand China today—its ambitions, its assertiveness, and its strategy under Xi Jinping—we need to understand its history and philosophy.

In this book, Henry Kissinger draws on decades of firsthand dialogues and anecdotes he had with Mao and Zhou Enlai, to explain how China views the world. As China blends historical memory with long-term strategic vision, Kissinger shows that China doesn’t just play by different rules—it sees the game differently. This book is essential for anyone seeking to understand China today.

The world today feels like it's spinning off its axis. Practices many believed were buried in the past are making a forceful return: wars of annexation,  the redrawing of borders through violent conflict, and a resurgence of tariffs. At the same time, public discourse is becoming increasingly polarized, narrowing into black-and-white thinking.

While this may seem like something new, history tells a different story. In many ways, today’s events mirror the turbulence of the 19th century. I am convinced that major powers like the United States, Russia, and China—alongside influential regional players such as Iran and Turkey—are engaged in a deliberate effort to roll back the liberal legacy of the 19th century. If we want to understand the world in 2025, we have to understand the 19th century. 

This book explores how ideas of manhood have evolved, from ancient ideals of dominance to modern-day uncertainties. While the Enlightenment challenged traditional masculinity, the 19th century brought it roaring back through nationalism. In the 20th century, pacifist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ movements chipped away at these old codes, revealing a more fragile, unsettled sense of virility.

Now, we’re seeing a sharp pushback. Trump’s rise, Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, and the global surge in populism all draw on a nostalgic, aggressive vision of masculinity. This book helps make sense of the cultural roots behind today’s political shifts, showing that the struggle over manhood is also a geopolitical struggle over power.

In 2025, with rising tensions between the U.S. and China, growing political divides in the West, and a world order under strain, many fear global chaos is imminent. Drawing from 5,000 years of global history, this book shows that a world order didn’t begin with the West—and won’t end with it.

From ancient India to Islamic caliphates and Chinese dynasties, the book reveals how global norms, cooperation, and coexistence emerged independently across civilizations and cultures. As Western influence wanes, we’re not heading for collapse but transformation, and we should not be fearing it. 

The author’s first-hand interviews with the subjects, naval officers, crews, sailors, and naval pilots offered a front-row seat for me as a reader. Li brings China’s naval operations into a clear view and offers an insightful perspective on their navy’s operations in the South China Sea.

In short, he brings China’s naval history alive and offers us a better understanding of the current standoff between Washington and Beijing. I recommend it to anyone who wants a clear and unwavering picture of the evolving military balance in the Indo-Pacific region.

It’s not possible to understand the United States without understanding its maritime past. Rouleau takes us onto the forecastle to show just how important US mariners were (how could they not be when 100,00 departed the republic each year?) in a vivid account with lots of surprising details drawn from scrimshaw and logbooks. These working-class diplomats shaped the foreign perception of the United States in port cities around the world through their (often violent) encounters with foreign peoples, their onshore carousing, and their spread of black face minstrelsy around the globe.

Why do we overfish? A question simply stated but complex to answer is the central focus of much of Carmel Finley’s writing.

Finley, a journalist turned historian, points to the geopolitical imperatives of the Cold War to understand why, during the middle decades of the twentieth century, fishing emerged as a global industry with technologically sophisticated fishing vessels ranging across the world’s oceans.

While they ostensibly sought fish, these vessels expanded state power. They were built and operated by lavish subsidies from governments seeking to exert greater and greater control over the seas.

From the United States, to Japan, Iceland, the Soviet Union, and Samoa, Finley’s work spans the globe to explain the industrialization and modernization of fishing.

When I was a first-year student at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1972, every “plebe,” as we were called, was required to take a full-year course called simply Sea Power. It is in a sense four books in one: a history of the United States Navy and of American naval power; a history of the world’s navies; a study of the evolution of naval warfare; and a study of the part that sea power has played in the exercise of national power. It is also full of dozens of maps, charts, and, above all, detailed tactical depictions of individual battles, the latter ranging from the Bay of Salamis, where the Greeks and Persians fought 2,500 years ago, through Trafalgar at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, to the pivotal battles of Midway and Leyte Gulf in World War II.

I like this book because the author’s writing is cogent and clear. It has helped inform my own views about maritime strategy. More importantly, I admire the way the author blends military, economic, and technical insights in addressing the challenges America faces in the South China Sea.

The author, Droste Sadler, successfully tells me that the U.S. is most ill-prepared for the competition we are facing from China. He effectively sounds the alarm that we are at an inflection point, and we need to become more competitive now before it is too late.

So much has been written on Operation Hawaii, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, that I doubted initially that Takuma Melber’s slim volume would be much different from the many accounts I have read on this iconic event in the past. But I was wrong! Melber’s authoritative and persuasive book brings another vital and welcome dimension into play by revealing the Japanese side of the narrative. Explaining the necessity for an attack that would unleash war with the US without guaranteeing victory thereafter, Tōjō Hideki remarked in October 1941: “Once in a lifetime, one must show courage, close one’s eyes and jump from the terrace of the Kiyomizu-dera.” In other words, a proverbial ‘leap into the unknown’ in the hope that one might survive it. Japan didn’t.