History Audiobooks

Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World

"Picasso's War sheds light on the conflict that was an ominous prelude to WWII and delivers an unforgettable portrait of a genius whose visionary statement about horror and terrible wounds of war still resonates today."

Russell Martin (Author), Oliver Wyman (Narrator)

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The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

"By the Author of the Bestselling Pulitzer Prize Finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN THEY WENT WEST TO CHANGE THEIR LIVES AND IN THE BARGAIN THEY CHANGED THE WORLD. THIS IS THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE GOLD RUSH. When gold was first discovered on the American River above Sutter's Fort in January 1848, California was sparsely populated frontier territory not yet ceded to the United States from Mexixo. The discovery triggered a massive influx as hundreds of thousands of people scrambled to California in search of riches, braving dangerous journeys across the Pacific, around Cape Horn, and through the Isthmus of Panama, as well as across America's vast, unsettled wilderness. Cities sprang up overnight, in response to the demand for supplies and services of all kinds. By 1850, California had become a state -- the fastest journey to statehood in U.S. history. It had also become a symbol of what America stood for and of where it was going. In The Age of Gold, H. W. Brands explores the far-reaching implications of this pivotal point in U.S. history, weaving the politics of the times with the gripping stories of individuals that displays both the best and the worse of the American character. He discusses the national issues that exploded around the ratification of California's statehood, hastening the clouds that would lead to the Civil War. He tells the stories of the great fortunes made by such memorable figures as John and Jessie Fremont, Leland Stanford and George Hearst -- and of great fortunes lost by hundreds now forgotten by history. And he reveals the profound effect of the Gold Rush on the way Americans viewed their destinies, as the Puritan ethic of hard work and the gradual accumulation of worldly riches gave way to the notion of getting rich quickly."

H.W. Brands (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 3 of a 3-Part Recording)

"Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.   It was during these years that all Johnson's experience-from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine-came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate's hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the "unchangeable" Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.   Caro demonstrates how Johnson's political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust-or at least the cooperation-of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson's ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson's amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.   Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro's peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself-the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing-and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power."

Robert A. Caro (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 2 of a 3-Part Recording)

"Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.   It was during these years that all Johnson's experience-from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine-came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate's hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the "unchangeable" Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.   Caro demonstrates how Johnson's political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust-or at least the cooperation-of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson's ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson's amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.   Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro's peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself-the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing-and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power."

Robert A. Caro (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Roughing It

"Two American originals, Mark Twain and the West, come together in this documentary of the author's seven-year 'pleasure trip' to the silver mines of Nevada. Twain had originally planned the trip to be a three-month 'vacation;' not surprisingly for someone of Twain's temperament, the trip lasted seven years. His journey, like his book, has a way of taking ever-unexpected turns."

Mark Twain (Author), Norman Dietz (Narrator)

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Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 1 of a 3-Part Recording)

"Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.   It was during these years that all Johnson's experience-from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine-came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate's hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the "unchangeable" Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.   Caro demonstrates how Johnson's political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust-or at least the cooperation-of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson's ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson's amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.   Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro's peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself-the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing-and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power."

Robert A. Caro (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Voices of Black America

"This unique collection, compiled especially for Naxos AudioBooks, features original recordings from 1908-1946 of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address, the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes, the rarely heard humour of Charley Case, readings from God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson, and much much more."

Various Authors (Author), Various Readers (Narrator)

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Rites of Passage: Odyssey of a Grunt

"A raw, powerful account of an infantryman’s life during wartime– complete with all the horrors and the heroism . . . Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges. Daily he and his fellow grunts put their lives on the line, forced to follow orders blindly from higher-ups solely interested in reaping their personal glory. Yet out of the deadly hell of Vietnam came a brotherhood–forged in blood and courage, sacrifice and survival–of men who continuously risked their lives for one another, whatever the odds. Rites of Passage is a shining testament to their valor."

Robert Peterson (Author), Eric Conger (Narrator)

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War Paint: The 1st Infantry Division's LRP/Ranger Company in Fierce Combat in Vietnam

"The men who served with in the 1st Infantry Division with F company, 52nd Infantry, (LRP) later redesignated as Company I, 75th Infantry (Ranger) --engaged in some of the fiercest, bloodiest fighting during the Vietnam War, suffering a greater relative aggregate of casualties that any other LRRP/LRP/ Ranger company. Their base was Lai Khe, within hailing distance of the Vietcong central headquarters, a mile inside Cambodia, with its vast stockpiles of weapons and thousands of transient VC and NVA soldiers. Recondo-qualified Bill Goshen was there, and has written the first account of these battle-hardened soldiers. As the eyes and ears of the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry, these hunter/killer teams of only six men instered deep inside enemy territory had to survive by their wits, or suffer the deadly consequences. Goshen himself barely escaped with his life in a virtual suicide mission that destroyed half his team. His gripping narrative recaptures the raw courage and sacrifice of American soldiers fighting a savage war of survival: men of all colors, from all walks of life, warriors bonded by triumph and tragedy, by life and death. They served proudly in Vietnam, and their stories need to be told."

Bill Goshen (Author), Jake Robards (Narrator)

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Global Jihad: Understanding September 11

"A Middle East scholar writes in a clear straightforward manner, carefully explaining who the terrorists are, where they come from, how they justify killing civilians in the name of God, and why the United States has become the latest target. 'Grover Gardner is flawless in some difficult pronunciations, measured in his speed as if listeners were taking notes, and clearly committed to explanations of complex issues.'"

Quintan Wiktorowicz (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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[French] - Les plus belles Histoires de Haim - Vol 4: Comme si vous y étiez

"Vivez comme si vous y étiez de merveilleuses histoires juives jouées pour vous par des comédiens professionnels. 1 - Le héros de Burgwald 2 - Rabbi 'Hanina et les poules perdues 3 - Le secret de Tzvi 4 - La guerre des éponges 5 - La 'hanoucciah d'argent"

Haim Nisenbaum, Yossef Brami (Author), Yossef Brami (Narrator)

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World War II: The Pacific

"Relive history as the men who experienced some of the most intense battles of World War II share their stories. The WWII Battle Classics, produced as major TV specials by Lou Reda Productions for the past twenty years, have been brilliantly adapted for thrilling audio presentation. It's more than fascinating listening, it's essential history, told in the words of the eyewitness heroes who were there and the historians who recorded their deeds. World War II: The Pacific features full orchestration and the deadly clamor of desperate battle. The Road to Infamy: The Countdown to Pearl Harbor features the fascinating unseen story of the violent decade of miscalculation that brought the U.S. and Japan into fatal confrontation. Rare archival material from the secret vaults of many nations highlight the tragic blunders on both sides. The surprises come thick and fast. Unsung Heroes of Pearl Harbor: America's mythmakers don't like to look into defeats for their heroes. The disaster at Pearl Harbor was such a national humiliation that its chroniclers didn't care to remind the home front of its dead and ravaged. Japanese War Crimes & Trials: Murder Under the Sun War reigned around the world between 1932 and 1945. During this rampage of insanity, over 320,000 allied prisoners were captured by the Japanese forces. Their survival rate was dismal -- one in three died. From the Bataan Death March, to Changi and Palembang prisons, the atrocities were everywhere. Dateline Tarawa: Correspondents from Hell: Part I and The Flag Raisers of Iwo Jima: Part II The battle for the Pacific island of Tarawa was one of the most ferocious of the war. At the center of it all were warriors whose only weapons were cameras, notebooks and sketchbooks -- the unknown combat journalists sent to communicate to Americans the vital importance of defeating the Japanese war machine. Part II: One of the most famous American flags ever flown was the one that six men lifted up on a mountain overlooking the blood stained Pacific island of Iwo Jima. As this riveting account reveals, the heroes of Iwo Jima included not only the men who planted that flag, but also the countless, nameless others who fought and died to make that unforgettable moment possible."

The History Channel (Author), Edward Herrmann, Fritz Weaver (Narrator)

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