World Audiobooks | History

Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island: The World War II Battle That Saved Marine Corps Aviation

The pivotal true story of the first fifty-three days of the standoff between Imperial Japanese and a handful of Marine aviators defending the Americans dug in at Guadalcanal, from the New York Times bestselling author of Indestructible and Race of Aces. On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered in the 20th century, which prompted the abandonment of the Marines on Guadalcanal. The Marines dug in, and waited for help, as those thirty-one pilots and twelve gunners flew against the Japanese, shooting down eighty-three planes in less than two months, while the dive bombers, carried out over thirty attacks on the Japanese fleet. Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island follows Major John L. Smith, a magnetic leader who became America's top fighter ace for the time; Captain Marion Carl, the Marine Corps' first ace, and one of the few survivors of his squadron at the Battle of Midway. He would be shot down and forced to make his way back to base through twenty-five miles of Japanese-held jungle. And Major Richard Mangrum, the lawyer-turned-dive-bomber commander whose inexperienced men wrought havoc on the Japanese Navy. New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning depicts the desperate effort to stop the Japanese long enough for America to muster reinforcements and turn the tide at Guadalcanal. Not just the story of an incredible stand on a distant jungle island, Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island also explores the consequences of victory to the men who secured it at a time when America had been at war for less than a year and its public had yet to fully understand what that meant. The home front they returned to after their jungle ordeal was a surreal montage of football games, nightclubs, fine dining with America's elites, and inside looks at dysfunctional defense industries more interested in fleecing the government than properly equipping the military. Bruning tells the story of how one battle reshaped the Marine Corps and propelled its veterans into the highest positions of power just in time to lead the service into a new war in Southeast Asia.

John R Bruning (Author), Brian Troxell, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation

A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization-sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction. In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war's drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.

Victor Davis Hanson (Author), Bob Souer, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic

Brought to you by Penguin. In Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic, historian Tabitha Stanmore will transport the reader to a time when magic was used day-to-day as a way to navigate life's challenges and to solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance. Imagine it's the year 1500 and you've lost your precious silver spoons - or perhaps your neighbour has stolen them. Or maybe your child has a fever. Or you're facing trial. Or you're looking for a lover. Or you're hoping to escape a husband... At a time when nature's inner workings were largely a mystery, people from every walk of life - kings, clergy and commonfolk - who faced problems or circumstances they were powerless to control sought the help of 'cunning folk'. These wise women and men were often renowned for their skill at healing the sick or predicting the future, fortune-telling and divination, and for their knowledge of spells and potions. Occasionally and tragically, some were condemned as witches for using their powers for ill. But this has tended to obscure the fact that the magic they practised was a normal and accepted part of daily life. In Stanmore's richly peopled and highly entertaining history, we see how this practical or 'service' magic was used and why people put their faith in it. Each of the stories in the book acts as a micro-drama of medieval and early modern life with its pre-scientific worldview, animating vividly people's intimate fears, hopes and desires, many movingly familiar, some thrillingly strange. Told with great wit and warmth, these very human encounters help us to understand why, at that time, seeking magic was not necessarily irrational at all, and also bring into view the ways in which many of us rely on magical thinking today. ©2024 Tabitha Stanmore (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Tabitha Stanmore (Author), Anna Wilson-Jones, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sword Beach

Brought to you by Penguin. Filling a massive gap in D-Day literature, marine historian Stephen Fisher provides fresh insight and unrivalled coverage of one of the least well know of the D-Day landings. Although they are well known, coverage of the action on Sword, Juno and Gold beaches is relatively sparse and overshadowed by the more famous American landing at Omaha. In fact, the capture of all the beaches were events in their own right, full of drama and incident, and in particular, Sword Beach turned out to be crucial in securing the Normandy Landings. 'Stephen Fisher is one of the best kept secrets in military history. With his wealth of knowledge and exacting eye for detail, his book on D-Day is sure to impress a vast audience' Dan Snow 'Stephen Fisher... is a very rare beast - a man who can bring stunning research and scholarship hand-in-glove with the gifts of a fine story-teller' James Holland ©2024 Stephen Fisher (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Stephen Fisher (Author), Rory Alexander, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Made in Manchester: A people’s history of the city that shaped the modern world

A rich and vivid history of the city that made the modern world Made in Manchester is the tale of England’s second city; a metropolis that exported industry and commerce to all others and whose culture is celebrated globally. Like Brian Groom’s bestselling Northerners, this definitive history expertly combines pacey narrative with vividly drawn portraits. Manchester was the ‘shock city’ of the Industrial Revolution. Visitors arrived from foreign lands, who saw in it a foretaste of the world’s future. But no one knew whether the upheaval would lead to prosperity or starvation. ‘From this filthy sewer pure gold flows,’ wrote French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville. It was a hotbed of politics too. The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 is immortalised in British folklore. The city was a centre for radical movements such as Chartism, yet also spawned the employer-led Anti-Corn Law League, which made free trade Britain’s economic orthodoxy. It became the centre of the global cotton industry and a pioneer in engineering. But Made in Manchester will also tell the untold story of the pre-industrial age: Manchester’s Roman fort was manned by soldiers from across the empire, prefiguring the cosmopolitanism of the present day. Here can be found the scientists who produced the world’s first stored-program computer; industrialists who laid the foundation of modern mass production; campaigners like Emmeline Pankhurst; writers Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Burgess; composers like Peter Maxwell Davies; and artists such as L.S. Lowry. Manchester’s music scene produced iconic bands including Joy Division and Oasis. Made in Manchester will tackle the city’s sometimes spiky relations with its neighbours and its reputation for arrogance, asking whether the city’s inhabitants have a definable character. And it will ask whether Manchester, through economic decline and recent recovery, has lived up to its early promise, and whether it can still do so today.

Brian Groom (Author), David Judge, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness

Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what they saw (and what they missed) reflects how we perceive and understand the natural world. Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating great art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible, obsessed with trying to outdo his rival, Alexander Wilson. George Ord, a fan and protégé of Wilson, held a bitter grudge against Audubon for years, claiming he had faked much of his information and his scientific claims. A few of Audubon's birds were pure fiction, and some of his writing was invented or plagiarized. Other naturalists of the era, including Charles Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon), John Townsend, and Thomas Nuttall, also became entangled in the scientific derby, as they stumbled toward an understanding of the natural world—an endeavor that continues to this day. Despite this intense competition, a few species—including some surprisingly common songbirds, hawks, sandpipers, and more—managed to evade discovery for years. Here, renowned bird expert and artist Kenn Kaufman explores this period in history from a new angle, by considering the birds these people discovered and, especially, the ones they missed. Kaufman has created portraits of the birds that Audubon never saw, attempting to paint them in that artist's own stunning style, as a way of examining the history of natural sciences and nature art. He shows how our understanding of birds continues to gain clarity, even as some mysteries persist from Audubon's time until ours.

Kenn Kaufman (Author), Mack Sanderson, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite

From the bestselling author of Home Comforts comes the story of our wedding vows—what they mean and why they still matter. In the West, marrying is so thoroughly identified with ceremonial promises that "taking vows" is a synonym for getting married. So, it's a surprise to realize that this custom is actually a historical and anthropological oddity. Most of the world, for most of history, married without making promises. And there's a reason for that. Marriage by vow presupposes free choice, and free choice makes a love-match possible. It is a very modern arrangement. Vows is both a moving memoir of two marriages and a thoughtful meditation on marriage itself. Cheryl Mendelson tackles the sociology of commitment through our most traditional promises and shows why they endure. In considering the kind of marriage these vows entail, she helps answer some of life's most urgent and personal of questions: Could I, would I, or should I make these promises to someone? Using history and literature, the book describes the parameters of the behavior that traditional vows promise and, in doing so, answers a whole series of other questions: Why did wedding-by-vow arise only in the West? Why are they recited in weddings around the world today? Why have these vows lasted for nearly a thousand years? Why does the kind of marriage promised in the vows survive?

Cheryl Mendelson (Author), Cassandra Campbell, TBD (Narrator)

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The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World

Brought to you by Penguin. This remarkable book recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians in Damascus. Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule. The once mighty empire was under pressure from global economic change and European imperial expansion. Reforms in the mid-nineteenth century raised tensions across the empire, nowhere more so than in Damascus. A multifarious city linked by caravan trade to Baghdad, the Mediterranean and Mecca, the chaos of languages, customs and beliefs made Damascus a warily tolerant place. Until the reforms began to advantage the minority Christian community at the expense of the Muslim majority. But in 1860 people who had generally lived side by side for generations became bitter enemies as news of civil war in Mount Lebanon arrived in the city. Under the threat of a French expeditionary force, the Ottomans dealt with the disaster effectively and ruthlessly - but the old, generally quite tolerant Damascene world lay in ruins. It would take a quarter of a century to restore stability and prosperity to the Syrian capital. This is both an essential book for understanding the emergence of the modern Middle East from the destruction of the old Ottoman world, and a uniquely gripping story. ©2024 Eugene Rogan (P) 2024 Penguin Audio

Eugene Rogan (Author), Ronan Summers, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present

Brought to you by Penguin. How the modern world has understood the ancient Greeks and why they matter today The study of ancient Greek history has been central to the western conception of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which each generation has reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary world, through times of revolution, conflicting ideologies and warfare. It aims to offer a new history of Greek historiography from the Enlightenment to the present, and to acknowledge the continuing spiritual importance of the ancient Greeks for European culture in the twentieth century under totalitarian persecutions. Through the study of different historians, many of them unjustly forgotten, it shows the problematic nature of the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the importance of ideas from the continent of Europe, the ambiguities of democracy, and the impossibility of understanding the past or the present outside our common European heritage. It ends by offering suggestions for the future of the study of the Greeks in the context of world history. ©2024 Oswyn Murray (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Oswyn Murray (Author), Justin Avoth, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Why the Nineties Matter

In Why the Nineties Matter, Terry Anderson provides a broad-ranging history of America in that decade. Not simply a chronological account, the book focuses on key trends that either began or gained steam then and which have had lasting effects until this day. Threading together politics, economic transformations, and sociocultural trends, he focuses on what mattered most in retrospect. Violent and extremist white nationalism intensified greatly in that decade, evidenced by the Oklahoma City bombing and the rise of the militia movement. The defection of the white working class from the Democratic Party began then as the Democrats expanded free trade and tried to cultivate professional-class Americans. Racial and gender politics transformed, birthing new movements that would grow in influence in the next century. Social media first emerged in the 1990s too, and its impact on all aspects of life cannot be underestimated. In foreign policy, America's long wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan have roots in US policies in the 1990s. And the current standoff between the US and Russia traces back to disagreements over NATO expansion a quarter century ago. A pithy interpretive history of a decade that matters more than most think, this book will be an essential guide to anyone trying to understand that era.

Terry H. Anderson (Author), David Marantz (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline

Based on the podcast with over 100 million downloads, Fall of Civilizations brilliantly explores how a range of ancient societies rose to power and sophistication, and how they tipped over into collapse. Across the centuries, we journey from the great empires of Mesopotamia to those of Khmer and Vijayanagara in Asia and Songhai in West Africa; from Byzantium to the Maya, Inca and Aztecs of Central America; from Roman Britain to Rapa Nui. With meticulous research, breathtaking insight and dazzling, empathic storytelling, historian and novelist Paul Cooper evokes the majesty and jeopardy of these ancient civilizations, and asks what it might have felt like for a person alive at the time to witness the end of their world.

Paul Cooper (Author), Paul Cooper (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Bourbon Drinker’s Companion: A Guide to American Distilleries, with Travel Advice, Folklore, and

This insider's guide to American distilleries offers colorful lore, regional history, and tasting notes for bourbon, whiskey, and rye. The Bourbon Drinker's Companion is a narrative journey into the heart of American craft distilleries, taking listeners from the well-known Jim Beam Booker Noe plant to craft whiskey brewers on the West Coast to the emerging new traditional distillers of the South, in search of America's best whiskey. Bestselling author Colin Spoelman is back to celebrate all things whiskey as he explores the effect branding, taste, region, and distilling processes have on America's beloved and most notorious drink. Head down to Louisville to visit Angel's Envy Distillery, go east to Jeptha Creed Distillery in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and then be sure to hit one of America's oldest distilleries, Buffalo Trace, in nearby Frankfurt, as you follow the road of spirits. Complete with sidebars highlighting key whiskies, bourbons, and ryes from each distillery, as well as tasting notes, pricing information, distilling methods, and more, The Bourbon Drinker's Companion is the perfect plus one to bring along.

Colin Spoelman (Author), Chris Abernathy (Narrator)

Audiobook

World Audiobooks in History