You've probably heard any amount of folklore regarding what's really happened between US subs and Russian subs in the last half of the 20th century. Well, this is, by all accounts, what the real poop is. The book is a chronicle of the sub aspect of the cold war, and is very well done: it isn'trepetitive, doesn't get old, and tries to refrain from overglorifying the subjects. I've talked to some actual sub people and they say "yup, it's pretty much spot on." (They don't say that about, eg, the movie Crimson Tide.)