Audiobooks narrated by Bill Caufield

Ending the World Wars: The History of the Events and Battles that Finished World War I and World War

For much of 1917, things went the Germans’ way. With the Bolshevik Revolution underway, the Germans were able to move soldiers to the Western front as the Russians quit the war. Moreover, the Allied powers had failed badly in its Nivelle Offensive in May 1917 and suffered a defeat in November against at the Battle of Caporetto in Slovenia. Unbelievably, the French and British had not bothered to coordinate their commands until after those defeats: they finally formed a Supreme Council to coordinate their armies’ movements and strategies. However, the Allied Powers began a counteroffensive known as the Hundred Days Offensive in August 1918 that was highly successful in pushing the Germans backward. In September, Bulgaria reached a separate armistice with the Allied powers, ceding control of the Balkans and cutting off German supplies. The defeated Ottoman Empire surrendered in late October. As the fortunes of the Central Powers waned, several lands in Austria-Hungary’s empire began declaring independence. Finally, in November, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced into exile, and the Germans reached an armistice with the Allied powers at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. World War I had finally ended. After the successful amphibious invasion on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies began racing east toward Germany and liberating France along the way. The Allies had landed along a 50 mile stretch of French coast, and despite suffering 8,000 casualties on D-Day, over 100,000 still began the march across the western portion of the continent. By the end of August 1944, the German Army in France was shattered, with 200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured. However, Adolf Hitler reacted to the news of invasion with glee, figuring it would give the Germans a chance to destroy the Allied armies that had water to their backs.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Warfare in Ancient Greece: The History of the Greeks’ Wars on Land and Sea in Antiquity

Although the armies of the ancient Greek, or “Hellenic”, city-states (poleis, singular polis) included both cavalry (hippeis) and light infantry (psiloi, peltastes, gymnetes), their mainstay was undoubtedly the heavy infantry known today as hoplites. Armed to the teeth with their distinctive round shield (aspis or hoplon), high-crested helmet (corys) and long spear (dory), the hoplites were some of the most efficient soldiers of their time. They fought in the tight phalanx formation, and beyond the confines of their small poleis, Greek hoplites were also prized as mercenaries throughout the ancient world. Most historians believe that the hoplite became the dominant infantry soldier in nearly all the Greek city-states around the 8th century BCE. Hoplites were responsible for acquiring their own equipment, so not every hoplite might have been equally armed, but considering the style of warfare, they needed as much uniformity as possible. Like most infantry outside of Greece, the hoplites also carried spears, but while the Persian weapons were short and light for example, the Greek spears were thick shafts anywhere between seven and nine feet long. These spears were topped by a 9-inch spearhead, with a “lizard-sticker” buttspike at the bottom which could be used as a secondary spearhead if the main weapon was snapped off, or to plant the spear upright when at rest. Each hoplite also carried a shortsword, designed specifically for thrusting in the close confines of a melee (the Spartan weapon, the xiphos, was so short as to be virtually a dagger, its blade barely over a foot long). It was only with the advent of the more mobile Roman legion, and the defeat of phalanxes in battles like Cynoscephalae (197 BCE) and Pydna (168 BCE), that the hoplite phalanx was finally outclassed

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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NASA’s Deadly Accidents: The History of the Disasters that Killed 17 Astronauts

As Apollo 11’s name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn’t until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons. There were no delusions regarding the dangers of manned space travel, but they were brought home on January 27, 1967, when all three astronauts were killed by a fire that ignited in the cabin during a launch rehearsal. To this day, there is still debate over what ignited the fire, but the disaster made clear that the modules being used by NASA had a series of fatal flaws. In the decades after the Apollo program, American Space Shuttles flew over 130 missions and successfully completed over 98% of them, but unfortunately, the two most famous missions were the ones that ended tragically aboard the Challenger and Columbia. The notorious date of the Challenger disaster was commemorated by the crew of the Columbia while they were in space in 2003, and a few days later, on February 1, the Columbia was due to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 09:16. At 08:59, 17 minutes before it was scheduled to land, Columbia was passing over Texas 37 miles above the ground and reentering the atmosphere. Mission Control was discussing a landing gear tire pressure issue with Mission Commander Rick Husband when radio transmission from the shuttle abruptly ceased. Within hours, it would become clear that Columbia had disintegrated over Central Texas, scattering debris and the remains of the seven people aboard over thousands of square miles of east Texas and southern Louisiana.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Moctezuma II and Tupac Amaru II: The Lives and Legacies of Latin America’s Most Famous Indigenous Le

From the moment Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés first found and confronted them, the Aztecs have fascinated the world, and they continue to hold a unique place both culturally and in pop culture. Nearly 500 years after the Spanish conquered their mighty empire, the Aztecs are often remembered today for their major capital, Tenochtitlan, as well as being fierce conquerors of the Valley of Mexico who often engaged in human sacrifice rituals. Ironically, and unlike the Mayans, the Aztecs are not widely viewed or remembered with nuance, in part because their own leader burned extant Aztec writings and rewrote a mythologized history explaining his empire’s dominance less than a century before the Spanish arrived. Naturally, Cortes and other Spaniards depicted the Aztecs as savages greatly in need of conversion to Catholicism. While the Mayans are remembered for their astronomy, numeral system, and calendar, the Aztecs have primarily been remembered in a far narrower way, despite continuing to be a source of pride to Mexicans through the centuries. As a result, even though the Aztecs continue to interest people across the world centuries after their demise, it has fallen on archaeologists and historians to try to determine the actual history, culture, and lives of the Aztecs from the beginning to the end, relying on excavations, primary accounts, and more. The Incas had consolidated their empire only a century before Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadores took control of Inca lands in the 1530s. The Incan heartland was the Andes Mountains from Ecuador down through Peru into parts of northern Chile, including what is now Bolivia, some of Argentina, and in the north, bits of what is now Colombia. It covered about 770,000 square miles, far larger than Spain, and held an estimated 14 million people, more than in Spain, comprised of many different indigenous groups.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Apollo 1 and the Space Shuttle Challenger: The History of NASA’s Two Most Notorious Disasters

As Apollo 11’s name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn’t until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons. There were no delusions regarding the dangers of manned space travel, but they were brought home on January 27, 1967, when all three astronauts were killed by a fire that ignited in the cabin during a launch rehearsal. To this day, there is still debate over what ignited the fire, but the disaster made clear that the modules being used by NASA had a series of fatal flaws. After the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA changed its plans by first running a series of unmanned missions to test the Saturn rockets and the different modules throughout 1967 and early 1968. and it would not be until Apollo 7 launched about 20 months after the disaster that NASA dared to conduct another manned mission. On the morning of January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched for the 10th time, beginning mission STS-51-L. Space shuttles had already successfully completed 24 missions, and no American spacecraft had ever failed to reach orbit during an official mission. On this mission, the Challenger was carrying a satellite for the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites system, which was to be deployed in orbit. The crew included Ronald McNair, who had already been the second African-American in space, and Ellison Onizuka, who had already been the first Asian-American astronaut in space. But the highlight of the mission was to be the “NASA Teacher in Space Project,” in which a civilian teacher would give teaching lessons to his or her class while onboard the space shuttle.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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The Fighting in Flanders Fields: The History of the Major Battles across the Region during World War

After an initial period of relatively rapid maneuver during which the German forces pushing through Belgium and the French and British forces attempting to stymie them made an endless series of abortive flanking movements that extended the lines to the sea, a stalemate naturally tended to develop. The infamous trench lines soon snaked across the French and Belgian countryside, creating an essentially futile static slaughterhouse whose sinister memory remains to this day. Until the war of maneuver returned in 1918 and led to a decisive outcome for the war, the nexus of this horror lay in the rainy, sodden levels and low ridges of Flanders, near the medieval town of Ypres. In this tiny fragment of Europe, half a million men died over the course of three major battles and the times of attrition between, perishing in a squelching pit of mud, blood-tinged water, and rotting human flesh. In fact, with the exception of a few hours on Christmas Day 1914, the shelling, sniping, raids, and bloodshed in Flanders never ceased from the moment of first contact between the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the Imperial German army. The Ypres salient bulged a few miles forward into Belgium, representing the only part of that nation the Germans had not occupied. Held by a mix of British, French, Canadian, Belgian, and colonial troops, this thorn in the Germans’ side had held off massive but clumsily handled attacks by barely-trained German volunteers and conscripts in late 1914 at the First Battle of Ypres. Each side had attempted to launch a major offensive through Ypres at the same time, leading to a blood-soaked encounter battle that, after weeks of futile butchery amid the small farms, hedgerows, canals, and tracts of woodland, devolved into a grim stalemate. Lines of trenches faced each other and sniping, artillery bombardment, and small actions led to an ongoing stream of casualties.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Sulla and Caesar: The History of the Roman Republic’s Final Dictators

Julius Caesar is still remembered for winning a civil war and helping bring about the end of the Roman Republic, leaving a line of emperors in its place, but it’s quite possible that none of what Caesar did would’ve happened without the template for such actions being set 40 years earlier. At the time, when Caesar was in his teens, war was being waged both on the Italian peninsula and abroad, with domestic politics pitting the conservative, aristocratic optimates against the populist, reformist populares, and this tension ultimately escalated into an all-out war. One of the leading populares was Caesar’s uncle, Gaius Marius, a military visionary who had restructured the legions and extended the privileges of land ownership and citizenship to legionaries on condition of successful completion of a fixed term of service. In the late 2nd century B.C., Marius had waged a successful campaign against several Germanic tribes, and after earning eternal fame in the Eternal City, Marius was appointed a consul several times. In 88 B.C., he entered into conflict with his erstwhile protégé, the optimate Sulla, over command of the army to be dispatched against Mithridates VI of Pontus, a long-time enemy of Rome and its Greek allies. Ironically, Marius’s reforms had made the legions fiercely loyal to their individual generals rather than the state, which allowed Sulla to march his army against Rome and force Marius into exile. With that, Rome’s first civil war was officially underway, but Sulla’s triumph proved short-lived. Just as Sulla departed for a campaign, Marius returned at the head of a scratch army of veterans and mercenaries, taking over the city and purging it of Sulla’s optimate supporters, and though Marius died in 86 B.C., his party remained in power. After Sulla finished mopping up the last scraps of resistance, he intended to take back Rome for himself at the head of his legions.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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World War II in 1944: The History of the War’s Penultimate Year

With Allied forces firmly established in Italy, the British and Americans began to plot a much more massive invasion to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis. In December 1943, President Roosevelt appointed General Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Allied Commander for the upcoming invasion, with General Montgomery as the top British commander coordinating with Eisenhower. During the first half of 1944, the Americans and British began a massive buildup of men and resources in England, while the military leaders devised an enormous and complex amphibious invasion of Western Europe. Though the Allies used misinformation to try deceiving the Germans, the sensible place for an invasion was just across the narrow English Channel. The Germans had built coastal fortifications throughout France to protect against just such an invasion, requiring the Allies to use an elaborate battle plan that would include naval and air bombardment, paratroopers, and even inflatable tanks that would be able to fire on fortifications from the coastline, all while landing nearly 150,000 men across nearly 70 miles of French beaches. The Allies would then use their beachhead to create an artificial dock, eventually planning to land nearly 1 million men in France. From the very beginning of June 6, 1944, events were not going as the Allies had planned. Though the weather was good enough to carry out the amphibious invasion, low cloud-cover caused the Allies’ planes to mostly miss German fortifications on their bombing runs. Furthermore, the plan called for tens of thousands of paratroopers to land directly behind German lines, but bad visibility caused many of them to be dropped out of place. And basically none of the operations on the integral Omaha Beach went according to plan. Allied leaders would have likely been astounded to hear that victory in Europe would be achieved in 11 months.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Ancient and Medieval Warfare in the West: The History of Western Europe’s Changing Military Tactics

For the Greeks, a hoplite was only as strong as the hoplite next to him; without hoplites on the sides, both flanks were exposed, and heavy infantry units are not mobile. Thus, they implemented the phalanx formation, one of history’s most important military innovations. The phalanx was a line of infantry as wide across as the battlefield dictated, anything from five to 30 men deep, with each rank of men officered by a veteran. The formation also included an additional, expert file-closer at the back of each file, to keep the formation cohesive. The phalanx advanced slowly to maintain its tight formation and unit cohesion, speeding up in unison just before reaching combat. While the Roman army is rightly famed as an institution, the image of the individual legionary is also an iconic one. The uniformed, disciplined soldier of the late Republic and early Empire is one of the first things many people imagine when they think of Rome. They are the ultimate image of the ancient soldier, their arms and armor instantly recognizable. Their abilities, not only as warriors but also as engineers and administrators, have made them role models for other soldiers through the centuries. In the same vein, their commanders are still celebrated and studied, and generals the world over have tried to emulate the likes of Julius Caesar. If anything, the one aspect of the Middle Ages that has been romanticized is medieval warfare. Indeed, the Middle Ages have long sparked people’s imaginations thanks to imagery of armored knights battling on horseback and armies of men trying to breach the walls of formidable castles. What is generally forgotten is that medieval warfare was constantly adapting to the times as leaders adopted new techniques and technology, and common infantry became increasingly important throughout the period. By the end of the period, warfare was radically changing thanks to the rise of gunpowder weapons and artillery.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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World War II in 1945: The History of the Battles Fought During the War’s Final Year

After resisting the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge, the Allied armies began advancing, and with that, the race to Berlin was truly on. While much has been written of the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa, Midway, Stalingrad, and many other conflicts of the Second World War, the Battle for Berlin has remained in the shadows for many historians. Its importance in toppling Hitler cannot be denied, despite the fact that some thought its strategic value unnecessary to the war itself. The capture of the city and the red Soviet banner hanging victorious over the Reichstag is one of history’s most famous (an ominous) images. In the weeks it took for the Battle of Berlin to be fought, an American president passed away, a British Prime Minister had to make concessions he did not desire, a Russian leader fought his way into Western Europe to stay, and a German one took his own life. The battle’s implications would be felt for the next 50 years. The Battle of Iwo Jima, code name “Operation Detachment,” is more of a misnomer than anything. It was fought as part of a large American invasion directed by steps toward the Japanese mainland, and it was more like a siege that lasted 36 days from February-March 1945, with non-stop fighting every minute. In fact, the iconic flag-raising photo was taken just four days into the battle, and as that picture suggests, the battle was not a pristine tactical event but an unceasing horror with no haven for protection. Okinawa witnessed every conceivable horror of war both on land and at sea. American ground forces on Okinawa had to deal with bad weather (including a typhoon), anti-tank moats, barbed wire, mines, caves, underground tunnel networks, and fanatical Japanese soldiers who were willing to use human shields while fighting to the death. Allied naval forces supporting the amphibious invasion had to contend with Japan’s notorious kamikazes, suicide pilots who terrorized sailors.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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The Crusades in Europe: The History of the Catholic Crusaders’ Campaigns against the Ottomans and Ch

Christianity was not a state religion for its first three centuries, and it was only when Emperor Constantine the Great declared it so in the early 4th century that the Church was faced with the thorny problem of state-sanctioned violence. The first major Christian authority to justify the use of arms in defense of Church and State was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who wrote in the 5th century, “They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” This opinion gained increasing influence in Western Christianity, though in the East, the attitude was (and continues to be) more nuanced. War was tolerated as a regrettable necessity in a world wounded by sin but never blessed. Canon law enacted in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire tended to treat soldiers who had killed as sinners needing to repent, and Bishop Basil of Caesarea (d. c. 330) believed that they needed to abstain from receiving communion for three years after battle. It was not that that the Eastern Roman Empire was a particularly peaceable state–far from it, in fact: it was engaged in almost continuous warfare for its entire existence. However, its conflicts were mostly defensive in character, fighting barbarians, Persians, or Muslims, and the idea of consecrating arms for the cause of Christianity was considered alien to its spirit. At the Council of Clermont in July 1095, Pope Urban II canonized religious war by urging Western Europe's nobility to take up arms in defense of the Byzantine Empire against the Muslims, thus launching the Crusades, and religious military orders such as the Knights of Saint John, the Templars, and the Hospitallers arose.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Cochise and Geronimo: The Lives and Legacies of the Most Famous Apache Warriors

Among all the Native American tribes, the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans learned the hard way that the warriors of the Apache were perhaps the fiercest in North America. Based in the Southwest, the Apache fought all three in Mexico and the American Southwest, engaging in seasonal raids for so many centuries that the Apache struck fear into the hearts of all their neighbors. An article in the Arizona press dated Oct. 22, 1869, summed up the majority opinion of Arizona’s citizens by describing Apache as “low set, ugly powerful beings of a dark copper color covered with tiny black hair and so unstable of character that between a couple hours they will slip away from the military camp and carry off all the horses.” At the same time, Cochise’s name became mythical in its telling. His exploits and escapes were described as everywhere when least expected and nowhere when pursued. There are no known photos, and the scarcity of reliable quotes are excused by the erroneous belief of the day that any man close enough to talk to him never lived to tell about it. The name Cochise became so widely known throughout Arizona Territory that it became indiscriminately linked with all depredations both large and small. The name “Geronimo” evokes a number of different emotions. Those who believed in 19th century America’s “Manifest Destiny” viewed Geronimo and all Native Americans as impediments to God’s will for the nation. Descendants of people killed by “hostile” Natives certainly considered warriors like Geronimo to be murderers and thieves whose cultures and societies held no redeeming values. Even today, many Americans associate the name Geronimo with a war cry, and the name Geronimo itself only came about because of a battle he fought against the Mexicans. Over time, however, the historical perception of the relationship between America and Native tribes changed drastically. With that, Geronimo, or Goyahkla, was viewed in a far different light.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Bill Caufield