An award-winning journalist delivers a thrilling inside look at the history and heroism of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Since its founding more than two hundred years ago, the United States Coast Guard has rescued over a million people. On any given day, "Coasties" respond to 125 distress calls and save over a dozen lives. Yet despite having members on every ocean and on our nation's coasts, great lakes, and rivers, most of us know very little about this crucial branch of the military.

In Rescue Warriors, David Helvarg brings us into the daily lives of Coasties, filled with a salty maritime mix of altruism and adrenaline, as well as dozens of death-defying rescues at sea and on hurricane-ravaged shores.

Helvarg spent two years with the men and women of the Coast Guard, from the halls of their academy in New London, Connecticut, to the frigid, storm-tossed waters of Alaska's Bering Sea, to the northern Persian Gulf, where they currently guard Iraqi oil terminals. The result is a masterpiece of adventure reporting, and the definitive book on America's "forgotten heroes."