Audiobooks by Alex Kershaw

Patton's Prayer: A True Story of Courage, Faith, and Victory in World War II

From Alex Kershaw, author of the New York Times bestseller Against All Odds, comes an epic story of courage, resilience, and faith during the Second World War General George Patton needed a miracle. In December 1944, the Allies found themselves stuck. Rain had plagued the troops daily since September, turning roads into rivers of muck, slowing trucks and tanks to a crawl. A thick ceiling of clouds had grounded American warplanes, allowing the Germans to reinforce. The sprint to Berlin had become a muddy, bloody stalemate, costing thousands of American lives. Patton seethed, desperate for some change, any change, in the weather. A devout Christian, he telephoned his head chaplain. "Do you have a good prayer for the weather?" he asked. The resulting prayer was soon printed and distributed to the 250,000 men under Patton's command. "Pray when driving," the men were told. "Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle. . . . Pray for victory. . . . Pray for Peace." Then came the Battle of the Bulge. Amid frigid temperatures and heavy snow, 200,000 German troops overwhelmed the meager American lines in Belgium's Ardennes Forest, massacring thousands of soldiers as the attack converged on a vital crossroads town called Bastogne. There, the 101st Airborne was dug in, but the enemy were lurking, hidden in the thick blanket of fog that seemed to never dissipate. A hundred miles of frozen roads to the south, Patton needed an answer to his prayer, fast, before it was too late.

Alex Kershaw (Author), Rob Shapiro, TBD (Narrator)

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Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II

The national bestselling author of The First Wave tells the untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II-all Medal of Honor recipients-from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler's own mountaintop fortress As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice "Footsie" Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than six hundred days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be-and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?

Alex Kershaw (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of WWII's Most Decorated Platoon

December 1944: Deep in the Ardennes forest, a platoon of eighteen men under the command of twenty year old lieutenant Lyle Bouck huddle in their foxholes. Under attack and vastly outnumbered, they repulse three German assaults in a fierce day-long battle, killing over five hundred Germans. Only when Bouck's men run out of ammunition do they surrender. As POWs, Bouck's platoon experience an ordeal far worse than combat: trigger-happy German guards, Allied bombing raids, and a daily ration of thin soup. Somehow, the men of Bouck's platoon all miraculously survive. Alex Kershaw brings to life the story of America's most decorated small unit of the war, and one of the most inspiring stories in American history.

Alex Kershaw (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in N

The best-selling author of The Liberator brings to life the incredible true story of an American doctor in Paris, and his heroic espionage efforts during World War II The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris's hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son Phillip at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high. Just down the road at Number 31 was the "mad sadist" Theodor Dannecker, an Eichmann prot

Alex Kershaw (Author), Mark Deakins (Narrator)

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The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of

The true story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War: the battlefield odyssey of a maverick U.S. Army officer and his infantry unit as they fought for over five hundred days to liberate Europe - from the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau. From July 10, 1943, the date of the Allied landing in Sicily, to May 8, 1945, when victory in Europe was declared - the entire time it took to liberate Europe - no regiment saw more action, and no single platoon, company, or battalion endured worse, than the ones commanded by Felix Sparks, who had entered the war as a greenhorn second lieutenant of the 157th "Eager for Duty" Infantry Regiment of the 45th "Thunderbird" Division. Sparks and his fellow Thunderbirds fought longest and hardest to defeat Hitler, often against his most fanatical troops, when the odds on the battlefield were even and the fortunes of the Allies hung in the balance - and when the difference between defeat and victory was a matter of character, not tactics or armor. Drawing on extensive interviews with Sparks and dozens of his men, as well as over five years of research in Europe and in archives across the US, historian Alex Kershaw masterfully recounts one of the most inspiring and heroic journeys in military history. Over the course of four amphibious invasions, Sparks rose from captain to colonel as he battled from the beaches of Sicily through the mountains of Italy and France, ultimately enduring bitter and desperate winter combat against the diehard SS on the Fatherland's borders. Though he lost all of his company to save the Allied beach-head at Anzio and an entire battalion in the dark forests of the Vosges, Sparks miraculously survived the long bloody march across Europe and was selected to lead a final charge to Bavaria to hunt down Adolf Hitler. In the dying days of the Third Reich, Sparks and his men crossed the last great barrier in the West, the Rhine, only to experience some of the most intense street fighting and close combat suffered by Americans in WWII. When they finally arrived at the gates of Dachau, Hitler's first and most notorious concentration camp, the Thunderbirds confronted scenes that robbed the mind of reason. With victory within grasp, Sparks confronted the ultimate test of his humanity: after all he had faced, could he resist the urge to wreak vengeance on the men who had caused untold suffering and misery? Written with the narrative drive and vivid immediacy of Kershaw's previous bestselling books about American infantrymen in WWII, The Liberator is a story for the ages, an intensely human and dramatic account of one of history's greatest warriors and his unheralded role in America's finest achievement - the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Alex Kershaw (Author), Fred Sanders (Narrator)

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The Envoy: The Epic Rescue of the Last Jews of Europe in the Desperate Closing Months of World War I

Hailed as “a master storyteller” (Booklist), Alex Kershaw routinely climbs best-seller lists with his narrative histories. In the waning months of World War II, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann sent over half a million Hungarians to their deaths at Auschwitz. But one Jewish ghetto remained, and only one man——a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg—could stop Eichmann.

Alex Kershaw (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

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Escape from the Deep: A Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew

Alex Kershaw is widely praised for his enthralling nonfiction. In this harrowing war saga, he recounts the incredible story of the U.S. Navy's deadliest World War II submarine, the USS Tang. Across the Pacific theater, dodging mines and depth charges, the 80 men of the Tang became legends. By 1944, they had sunk more Japanese ships than any other Allied submarine.

Alex Kershaw (Author), Richard Poe (Narrator)

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The Few

It was the summer of 1940, and World War II had been raging for nearly a year. Buoyed by his successes on the Continent, Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe's fate. Though the United States was still a neutral country, a few Americans decided they couldn't remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force to defend the country - with the future of civilization hanging in the balance. The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of these Americans who defied their own country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" who, with minimal training but plenty of guts, dueled the skilled and fearsome aces of Germany's Luftwaffe. By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. Some five years later, at war's end, just one of them would be alive. Winston Churchill once said famously of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." These daring Americans were the few among the "few."

Alex Kershaw (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice

The Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of twenty-one young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed-no other town in America suffered a greater loss in one day. It is an unforgettable story of triumph, courage, and tragedy based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as diaries and letters. Alex Kershaw's remarkable book brings to vivid, heartbreaking life the hitherto untold story of one small American town, their sons, and the brutal, bloody war that deprived them of their futures. "A powerful reminder of the human cost of war."--Washington Post

Alex Kershaw (Author), William Dufris (Narrator)

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