Behind the SEALs' improbable rise lies the most remarkable underdog story in American military history-and former Navy SEAL Ben Milligan captures it as never before. Told through the eyes of remarkable leaders and racing from one longshot, hair-curling raid to the next, it's a tale of the unit's heroic naval predecessors, and the evolution of the SEALs themselves. But it's also the story of the forging of American special operations as a whole-and how the SEAL emerged from its fires as America's first permanent commando force, when again and again some other unit seemed predestined to seize that role. Here Milligan thrillingly captures the outsized feats of the SEALs' frogmen-forefathers in World War II, the Korean War, and elsewhere, even as he plunges us into the second front of interservice rivalries and personal ambition that shaped the SEALs' evolution.