The first world war was one of the most devastating conflicts in our history. The death toll was like nothing experienced before, and it is estimated that over 11 million soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing, and many of those bodies have never been found. Regardless of how people remember the first world war, and whether or not they romanticize the life of a soldier on the front lines, it is important that the world never forgets this brutal and bloody conflict. This book sets out to provide a coherent history of the fortunes of this ship-type in the twentieth century, beginning with a brief summary of development before the first world war and an account of a few notable cruiser actions during that conflict that helped define what cruisers would look like in the post-war world. The core of the book is devoted to the impact of the naval disarmament treaty process, which concentrated to a great extent on attempting to define limits to the numbers and size of cruisers that could be built, in the process creating the "treaty cruiser" as a type that had never existed before and that existed solely because of the treaty process. In the half-century between the civil war and world war i, dreams of spiritual, moral, and physical rebirth formed the foundation for the modern united states. Inspired by imperial ambition, presidents and entrepreneurs—from theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson to andrew carnegie—helped usher the nation into the modern era, but sometimes the consequences of their actions failed to match the grandeur of their hopes.