Military Audiobooks | History

Dagger 22: U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan

Level Zero Heroes, Michael Golembesky's bestselling account of Marine Special Operations Team 8222 in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan, was just the beginning for these now battle-hardened special operations warriors. The unforgiving Afghan winter has settled upon the 22 men of Marine Special Operations Team 8222, callsign Dagger 22, in the remote and hostile river valley of Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters in the region would have liked nothing more than to once again go dormant and rest until the new spring fighting season began. No chance of that this winter would be different. Along with Afghan and International Security Forces (NATO), the Marines of Dagger 22 continued their fight throughout the harsh winter to shape the battlefield before the Afghan ground began to thaw. From one firefight to the next, the noose began to tighten around the village of Daneh Pasab and the Taliban command cell operating there. On April 6, 2010, a ground force consisting of U.S. Army Special Forces, Afghan Commandos and Marine Corps special operations conducted a night assault to destroy the heavily entrenched Taliban force, breaking their grip on the valley and stopping the spring offensive before it even began. But nothing in Bala Murghab comes easily as combat operations wear on the operators of Dagger 22 as they lean on each other once again in order to complete their mission in one of the most brutal environments on earth.

Michael Golembesky (Author), Peter Berkrot (Narrator)

Audiobook

Danger Close: My Epic Journey As a Combat Helicopter Pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan

Amber Smith flew into enemy fire in some of the most dangerous combat zones in the world. One of only a few women to fly the Kiowa Warrior helicopter, Smith rose to Pilot-in-Command and Air Mission Commander in the premier Kiowa unit in the Army, repeatedly flying into harm's way during her 2005 and 2008 deployments with the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. Smith takes you into the heat of battle, enabling readers to feel, hear, and smell the experience of serving as a combat pilot in high-intensity warfare. She learned to perform under pressure and persevere under extreme duress-both in action against an implacable enemy and within the elite boy's club of Army aviation.

Amber Smith (Author), Rachel Fulginiti (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Honor Was Mine

A young combat veteran hides in his closet under a pile of clothes on bad nights. Another, home for five days, can't figure out how to talk to his wife. And a com¬mander's spouse recounts the soul-draining effect of attending nearly one hundred memorial services... When therapist Elizabeth Heaney left her private practice to counsel mil¬itary service members and their families, she came face-to-face with unheard-of struggles and fears. Emotions run deeply-and often silently- in the hearts of combat veterans in this eye-opening portrait of the complex, nuanced lives of service personnel who return from battling the enemy and grapple with readjusting to civilian life. Presenting the soldiers' stories-told in their own words-as well as her own story of change, Heaney offers an intimate perspective, not of war itself but of its emotional aftermath. Some of these stories scrape the bone; others are hope¬ful, even comical. Every one reveals the sacrifices of those on the front lines and the courage, grace, and honor with which they serve. "In this deeply moving book, Elizabeth Heaney gives voice to war veterans and their families who otherwise would keep painfully hidden what she recognizes as their 'terrible knowledge.' Listening to their stories is an essential first step toward healing the wounds of 15 years of war." -David Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and author of the forthcoming book What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest War

Elizabeth Heaney, Elizabeth Heaney Ma Lpc, MA Elizabeth Heaney (Author), Joyce Bean (Narrator)

Audiobook

Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy

Earl J. Hess (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Game of Spies: The Secret Agent, the Traitor and the Nazi, Bordeaux 1942-1944

Spies, bed-hopping, treachery and executions - this story of espionage in wartime Bordeaux is told for the first time. Game of Spies uncovers a lethal spy triangle at work during the Second World War. The story centres on three men - on British, one French and one German - and the duels they fought out in an atmosphere of collaboration, betrayal and assassination, in which comrades sold fellow comrades, Allied agents and downed pilots to the Germans, as casually as they would a bottle of wine. In this thrilling history of how ordinary, untrained people in occupied Europe faced the great questions of life, death and survival, Paddy Ashdown tells a fast-paced tale of SOE, betrayal and bloodshed in the city labelled 'la plus belle collaboratrice' in the whole of France.

Paddy Ashdown (Author), Paddy Ashdown (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi

The Last Punisher is a bold, no-holds-barred first-person account of the Iraq War. With wry humor and moving testimony, Kevin Lacz tells the story of his tour in Iraq with SEAL Team Three, the warrior elite of the Navy. This legendary unit, known as "The Punishers," included Chris Kyle (American Sniper), Mike Monsoor, Ryan Job, and Marc Lee. These brave men were instrumental in securing the key locations in the pivotal 2006 Battle of Ramadi, told with stunning detail in this book. Minute by minute, Lacz relays the edge-of-your-seat details of his team's missions in Ramadi, offering a firsthand glimpse into the heated combat, extreme conditions, and harrowing experiences they faced every day. Through it all, Lacz and his teammates formed unbreakable bonds and never lost sight of the cause: protecting America with their fight. The Last Punisher brings the listener into the life and mind of a SEAL, demonstrating the tough realities of war. At the same time, Lacz shares how these experiences made him a better man and how proud he is of his contributions to one of this country's most difficult military campaigns.

Ethan E. Rocke, Kevin Lacz, Lindsey Lacz (Author), Timothy Phillips (Narrator)

Audiobook

Way of the Reaper: My Greatest Untold Missions and the Art of Being a Sniper

From the legendary special operations sniper and bestselling author of The Reaper comes a rare and powerful audiobook on the art of being a sniper. Way of the Reaper is a step-by-step accounting of how a sniper works, through the lens of Irving's 10 most significant kills - none of which have been told before. Each mission is an in-depth look at a new element of eliminating the enemy, from intel to luck, recon to weaponry. Told in a thrilling narrative, this is also a heart-pounding true story of some of The Reaper's boldest missions including the longest shot of his military career on a human target of over half a mile. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Nick Irving earned his nickname in blood, destroying the enemy with his sniper rifle and in deadly firefights behind a .50 caliber machine gun. He engaged a Taliban suicide bomber during a vicious firefight, used nearly silent sub-sonic ammo, and was the target of snipers himself. Way of the Reaper attempts to place the listener in the heat of battle, experiencing the same dangers, horrors and acts of courage Irving faced as an elite member of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, while also examining the personal ramifications of taking another life. Listeners will experience the rush of the hunt and the dangers that all snipers must face, while learning what it takes to come an elite manhunter. Like the Reaper himself, this explosive audiobook blazes new territory and takes no prisoners.

Gary Brozek, Nicholas Irving (Author), Jeff Gurner (Narrator)

Audiobook

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

The first serious book to examine what happens when the ancient boundary between war and peace is erased. Once, war was a temporary state of affairs—a violent but brief interlude between times of peace. Today, America’s wars are everywhere and forever: our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon. As war expands, so does the role of the US military. Today, military personnel don’t just “kill people and break stuff.” Instead, they analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol for pirates. You name it, the military does it. Rosa Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war from an unconventional perspective—that of a former top Pentagon official who is the daughter of two anti-war protesters and a human rights activist married to an Army Green Beret. Her experiences lead her to an urgent warning: When the boundaries around war disappear, we risk destroying America’s founding values and the laws and institutions we’ve built—and undermining the international rules and organizations that keep our world from sliding towards chaos. If Russia and China have recently grown bolder in their foreign adventures, it’s no accident; US precedents have paved the way for the increasingly unconstrained use of military power by states around the globe. Meanwhile, we continue to pile new tasks onto the military, making it increasingly ill-prepared for the threats America will face in the years to come. By turns a memoir, a work of journalism, a scholarly exploration into history, anthropology and law, and a rallying cry, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything transforms the familiar into the alien, showing us that the culture we inhabit is reshaping us in ways we may suspect, but don’t really understand. It’s the kind of book that will leave you moved, astonished, and profoundly disturbed, for the world around us is quietly changing beyond recognition—and time is running out to make things right.

Rosa Brooks (Author), Gabra Zackman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Please Enjoy Your Happiness: A Memoir

“The most romantic memoir you’re likely to read in a lifetime.” —Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of Here’s to Us An evocative memoir. A beautiful journey to half a century and half a world away. An ageless love story. Pulitzer Prize–winning war correspondent Paul Brinkley‑Rogers has lived an adventurous life all over the world. But there is one story he cannot forget: that of his haunting love affair with a mysterious older Japanese woman in 1959. Paul was a sailor aboard the USS Shangri‑La that long‑ago summer when he met Kaji Yukiko in the seaport of Yokosuka. A fierce intellectual, Yukiko shared her astonishing knowledge of literature, film, and poetry with Paul and encouraged, even demanded, that he use his gifts to become the writer he is today. But theirs was not a quiet love story. When a member of the yakuza, Japan’s brutal crime syndicate, attempted to kidnap Yukiko, Paul realized that there was much more to her—and to Japan in the devastating wake of World War II—than he saw at first glance. Through the searing letters that Yukiko wrote to him and Paul’s vivid telling of a history made all the more powerful and poignant by the weight of time, Please Enjoy Your Happiness reaches across decades and continents, inviting us all to revisit those loves of our lives that never do end.

Paul Brinkley-Rogers (Author), James Langton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Moondrop to Gascony

On a cold, moonlit night in January 1944, Anne-Marie Walters, just twenty years old, parachuted into southwest France to work with the Resistance in preparation for the long-awaited Allied invasion. The daughter of a British father and a French mother, she was to act as a courier for George Starr, head of the "Wheelwright" circuit of the Special Operations Executive. Over the next seven months, Walters crisscrossed the region, carrying messages, delivering explosives, arranging the escape of downed airmen, and receiving parachute drops of arms and personnel in the dead of night-living in constant fear of capture and torture by the Gestapo. Then, on the very eve of liberation, she was sent off on foot over the Pyrenees to Spain, carrying urgent dispatches for London. Anne-Marie Walters wrote Moondrop to Gascony immediately after the war, while the events were still vivid in her mind. It is a tale of high adventure, comradeship and kindness, of betrayals and appalling atrocities, and of the often unremarked courage of many ordinary French men and women who risked their lives to help drive German armies from French soil. And through it all shines her's quiet courage, a keen sense of humor and, above all, her pure zest for life. For this new edition, David Hewson, a former regular-army officer interested in military history, adds biographical details for the main characters, identifies the real people behind the code names, and provides background information. He also tells about Anne-Marie Walters' early life and what happened to her in the postwar years. "One of the outstanding surveys of the real life of a secret agent."-M. R. D. Foot, former British military historian and WWII British Army intelligence officer

Anne-Marie Walters (Author), Nicola Barber (Narrator)

Audiobook

California

Henry Vizetelly, writing under the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, recalls an expedition to California he took between 1847-1848 . Originally, he planned to enlist as a surgeon for the US Army during the Mexican war, but conflicts had ended by the time he applied. In a quick change of plans, he joined a group of prospectors on their way to the newly found gold fields of California. While he might not find service in the military, his training as a physician made him a valuable addition to the ragtag team of explorers. His training as a physician gives us an exacting perspective of the events and people who struck out from more sedate routines to prospect gold in the Californian wilderness. However, he is unprepared to find a cure for the gold fever that has depopulated the surrounding towns. Only one member of the group, an experienced fur-trapper, is able to resist the lustrous lure of nuggets, flakes and gold richly deposited in the dusty desert. Like the others who have left jobs to prospect for gold, he learns how to live on the land and struggle through hardship away from the security of city life. His motley group of changing characters ride through sudden fortunes and disasters while meeting Mormons, Indians and not least of all a bountiful harvest of gold. Before he returns to his home in England, another quick change of fortune undoes his plans for a comfortable retirement and shows us the extent of greed that has sprung up in the mining camps.

J. Tyrwhitt Brooks (Author), LivelyHive (Narrator)

Audiobook

The 15:17 to Paris:The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes

On August 21, 2015, Ayoub al-Khazzani boarded the 15:17 train in Brussels, bound for Paris. Khazzani's mission was clear: he had an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter, and enough ammunition to obliterate every passenger on the crowded train. Slipping into the bathroom in secret, he armed his weapons and prepared to launch his attack. But when he emerged, he encountered something he hadn't anticipated: three Americans who refused to give in to fear. Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone were childhood friends, taking a vacation together. They had some relevant training: Stone was a martial arts enthusiast and Airman First Class in the US Air Force; Skarlatos was an active duty member of the Oregon National Guard; and not one of the three was afraid of a fight. But their decision-to charge the gunman, then overpower him even as he turned first his gun, then his knife on Stone-would never have happened if they hadn't had a lifetime of trust, support, and loyalty between them. This audiobook is the gripping, true story of a terrorist attack that would have killed more than 500 people if not for their actions, but it is also the story of three American boys and their friendship. Using each hero's point of view in sequence, The 15:17 to Paris skillfully builds the drama of the attack, while weaving in the stories of the protagonists' lives, the friendship and loyalty that would come to define them, and the events that led them, inexorably, to that fateful day. The 15:17 to Paris is an amazing true story of unparalleled, unexpected courage, and people coming together against fear rather than splitting apart. It is a story of near tragedy averted by three young men who found the heroic unity and strength inside themselves that we all aspire to.

Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Jeffrey E. Stern, Spencer Stone (Author), Alek Skarlatos, Peter Ganim, Spencer Stone (Narrator)

Audiobook

Military Audiobooks in History