How did the U.S. Navy—the branch of the military tasked with patrolling the oceans—manage to produce the SEALS, elite commandos trained to operate on land? Tracing the history of American special operations as a whole, former SEAL Benjamin Milligan chronicles what motivated the Navy to create the ultimate special-ops force. Milligan also thrillingly captures the outsize feats of the SEALs' frogmen forefathers in World War II and the Korean War, even as he discusses into the inter-service rivalries and ambitions that shaped the SEALs' evolution.