Audiobooks narrated by Mark Bramhall

Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World

The fascinating story behind the most consequential presidential transition in US history, from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman, and the legacy Truman struggled to overcome to lead America into a new, post-war world In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt selected as his next running mate a hardworking, uncontroversial senator from Missouri named Harry Truman. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died, and Truman, after only 82 days as vice president, was thrust into the presidency, a turning point that generations of historians have inexplicably addressed as shocking. Yet Roosevelt's failing health had been plain to staffers for at least a year. With the end of his life looming, FDR met alone only twice with his vice president, and failed to brief him on domestic issues or foreign affairs, most notably his intentions for ending World War II, including the existence of the atomic bomb program. It was, as author David L. Roll contends, one of the most irresponsible oversights in presidential history. As president, Truman was woefully unprepared. He immediately faced the surrender of Germany, a continent in ruins, and the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Most significantly, the Soviet Union, an ally during the war, was growing increasingly hostile towards US power. Truman inherited FDR's hope that peace could be maintained through cooperation with the Soviets, but he would soon learn that imitating his predecessor would lead only to missteps and controversy. Spanning the years of transition, 1944 to 1948, Ascent to Power explores Roosevelt's post-war illusions, and the very real challenges faced by Truman as a supposed "accidental president," including the revival of Western Europe, the reform of Japan, and the hotly-debated birth of Israel. Detailing the long shadow cast by FDR, this remarkable book reveals Truman's struggle to emerge as a president in his own right, and how the decisions made during these years of transition changed the world.

David L. Roll (Author), Mark Bramhall, TBD (Narrator)

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Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Ou

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reveals the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books. "It is my sincere hope that this compelling and submerged history is integrated into our understanding of our nation, and allows us to embrace new heroes of the past."-Imani Perry, professor, Harvard University, and National Book Award-winning author of South to America We all know how the Civil War was won: Courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But is there more to the story? As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Howell Raines shows, it was not only soldiers from northern states who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers-including at least one member of Raines's own family. Called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., this regiment of mountain Unionists, which included sixteen formerly enslaved Black men, was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy. The famed general hailed their skills and courage. So why don't we know anything about them? Silent Cavalry is part epic American history, part family saga, and part scholarly detective story. Drawing on the lore of his native Alabama and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade southerners-a key component of the Lost Cause effort to restore glory to white southerners after the war, even at the cost of the truth. In this important new contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, Raines tells the thrilling tale of the formation of the First Alabama while exposing the tangled web of how its wartime accomplishments were silenced, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League and a sanctimonious former keeper of the Alabama state archives. By reversing the erasure of the First Alabama, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of historians to destroy as well as to redeem.

Howell Raines (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War

Brought to you by Penguin. An intimate history of the most important month of World War II, as experienced by the people who lived through it, completely based on their diaries, letters and memoirs. At the beginning of November 1942, it looked as if the Axis powers could still win the Second World War; at the end of that month, everyone realized that it was just a matter of time before they would lose. In between was El Alamein, Guadalcanal, the French North Africa landings, the Japanese retreat in New Guinea, and the Soviet encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. It may have been the most important month of the 20th century. In this hugely innovative and riveting historical marvel, Peter Englund has reduced an epoch-making event to its basic component: the individual experience. Englund's narrative is based solely on what he learned from the writings of soldiers and citizens alike. Not a word is made up. It didn't have to be, because the material is incredible. In 30 memorable days we meet: a Soviet infantryman at Stalingrad; an American pilot on Guadalcanal; an Italian truck driver in the North African desert; a partisan in the Belarussian forests; a machine gunner in a British bomber; a 12-year-old girl in Shanghai; a university student in Paris; a housewife on Long Island; a shipwrecked Chinese sailor; a prisoner in Treblinka; a Korean sex slave in Mandalay; Albert Camus, Vasily Grossman, and Vera Brittain-40 characters in all. In addition, there are threads about the construction and launching of SS James Oglethorpe, a Liberty ship built in Savannah; the fate of U-604, a German submarine; the building of the first nuclear reactor in Chicago, and the making of Casablanca. Not since the publication of the author's The Beauty and the Sorrow, which similarly looked at World War I, have we had such a remarkable, mesmerizing work of history. ©2023 Peter Englund (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Peter Englund (Author), Mark Bramhall, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Exit Wounds: A Vietnam Elegy

Exit Wounds: A Vietnam Elegy is an intimate, boots-on-the-ground memoir that chronicles one captain’s brutal experience in the Vietnam War. On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat. Paralleling this story is his return in 1997 to find and help his Montagnard interpreter, Y-Kre Mlo, after ten years in a communist reeducation camp. This pilgrimage takes Hunter back to old haunts and battlegrounds—and to a war now seen through a very different lens. Peopled with those who were dedicated, courageous, gentle, proud, profane, and a little mad, this book explores what happens when leaders place personal ambition over honor, and America’s “moral high ground” is soaked with the blood of its young men and women. So much more than a memoir, Exit Wounds is a poetic and profound story that reflects on the human condition, duty, honor, faithfulness, and how the scars remain long after the war is over.

Lanny Hunter (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians

The gripping and remarkable true story of author Ralph White's desperate effort to save the entire staff of the Saigon branch of Chase Manhattan bank and their families before the city fell to the North Vietnamese Army. In April 1975, Ralph White was asked by his boss to transfer from the Bangkok branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Saigon Branch. He was tasked with closing the branch if and when it appeared that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese army and ensure the safety of the senior Vietnamese employees. But when he arrived, he realized the situation in Saigon was far more perilous than he had imagined. The senior staff members there urged him to evacuate the entire staff of the branch and their families, which was far more than he was authorized to do. Quickly he realized that no one would be safe when the city fell, and it was no longer a question of whether to evacuate but how. Getting Out of Saigon is the remarkable story of a city on the eve of destruction and the colorful characters who respond differently to impending doom. It's about one man's quest to save innocent lives not because it was ordered but because it was the right thing to do.

Ralph White (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Gatekeepers comes a revelatory, news-making look at how President Joe Biden and his seasoned team have battled to achieve their agenda—based on the author's extraordinary access to the White House during two years of crises at home and abroad. In January of 2021, the Biden administration inherited the most daunting array of challenges since FDR's presidency: a lethal pandemic, a plummeting economy, an unresolved twenty-year war, and the aftermath of an attack on the Capitol that polarized the country. Waves of crises followed, including the fallout from a divisive Supreme Court, raging inflation, and Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Now, in The Fight of His Life, prizewinning journalist Chris Whipple takes us inside the Oval Office as the critical decisions of Biden's presidency are being made. With remarkable access to both President Biden and his inner circle—including Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and CIA Director William Burns—Whipple pulls back the curtain on the internal power struggles and back-room compromises. Featuring shocking new details about how renegade Trump officials enabled the transfer of power, which key staffers really make the White House run (it's probably not who you think), why Joe Biden no longer speaks freely around his security detail, and what he really thinks of Vice President Kamala Harris, the press, and living in the White House, The Fight of His Life delivers a stunning portrait of politics on the edge.

Chris Whipple (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy

From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil War—and the Union agent resolved to stop him. In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a Confederate, the other his Union rival—were dispatched to neutral Britain, each entrusted with a vital mission. The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was to acquire a cutting-edge clandestine fleet intended to break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme. Opposing him was Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. He was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal. If Dudley failed, Britain would ally with the South and imperil a Northern victory. The battleground was the Dickensian port of Liverpool, whose dockyards built more ships each year than the rest of the world combined, whose warehouses stored more cotton than anywhere else on earth, and whose merchant princes, said one observer, were “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.” From master of historical espionage Alexander Rose, The Lion and the Fox is the astonishing, untold tale of two implacable foes and their twilight struggle for the highest stakes. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Alexander Rose (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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Advocate: On History's Front Lines from Watergate to the Keating Five, Clinton Impeachment, and Beng

For more than half a century, James Hamilton has been an active participant and an inside observer of some of the most consequential moments in modern US history. He has been involved in investigations concerning Watergate, the Kennedy assassination, 'Debategate,' the Keating Five, the Clinton impeachment, Vince Foster's suicide, the Valerie Plame affair, Benghazi, and the Major League Baseball steroids scandal. Advocate discusses the travails of prominent politicians and other well-known individuals, focusing particularly on high-profile congressional and other investigations. Credited with developing the modern system for vetting Democratic vice-presidential candidates, Hamilton recounts his extensive vetting of vice-presidential, cabinet, and Supreme Court candidates-including Joe Biden, John Edwards, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Much more than a memoir from a seasoned lawyer, Advocate is a richly detailed history of some of the most sensational and controversial events in Washington politics over the past fifty years. By sharing information and insights known only to him, Hamilton fills in the gaps of historical events while advising the public on lessons that can be learned from the past. Anyone interested in the uniquely American intermingling of law and politics will find this an engaging book.

James Hamilton (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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His Masterly Pen: A Biography of Jefferson the Writer

As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer. In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson’s genius with language and his ability to use the power of words to inspire and shape a nation. A man renowned for many talents, writing was one of the major activities of the statemen’s life, though much of his best, most influential writing—with the exception of the letters he wrote up to his death, numbering approximately 100,000—was done by 1789, when Jefferson was just forty-six. All of his works—from his earliest correspondence; his essays and proclamations, including A Summary View of British America, The Declaration of Independence, and Notes on the State of Virginia; his religious and scientific writings; his inaugural addresses; his addresses to Indian nations; and his exchanges with Washington, Madison, Hamilton, John and Abigail Adams, and dear friends such as Maria Cosway—demonstrate his remarkable intelligence, prescient wisdom, and literary flair and reveal the man in all his complex and controversial brilliance. In His Masterly Pen, readers will find a new appreciation of Jefferson as a whole, of his strengths and weaknesses, and particularly of the degree to which his writing skills—which James Madison admired as “the shining traces of his pen”—are key to his personality and public career. Though Jefferson could wield his pen with unrivaled power, he was also a master of using words to both reveal and conceal from others and himself the complications, the inconsistencies, and the contradictions between his principles and his policies, between his head and his heart, and between his optimistic view of human nature and the realities of his personal situation and the world he lived in. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Fred Kaplan (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior

From John Mack, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, an intimate personal memoir and riveting business story, recounting how he helped grow the company from 300 to 50,000 employees over four decades, transformed a notoriously competitive culture into a successful and collaborative one, and lead the company through the 2008 financial crisis. During his thirty-four-year tenure at Morgan Stanley, John Mack's goal was to build the strongest and most productive team on Wall Street. His ability to motivate his employees to do their best work, especially in times of crisis, was fostered by his willingness to slash through bureaucracy and stand up to powerful interests. A forceful personality, one journalist said Mack was "described as 'charismatic' so regularly that it could be part of his name." In Up Close and All In, Mack traces his personal journey from a one-stoplight North Carolina mill town to a fortieth-floor corner office on Wall Street—and shares the life lessons he learned along the way. He developed a titanium-strength stomach for risk, stress, and competition while landing accounts early in his career, as investment banks fought like wolfpacks to take advantage of new deregulation, fielding business raids, booms, and busts. As he rose through the ranks, he never forgot where he came from, relying on his instincts, doing what was right, and listening to his people on the front lines. This culture of trust and collaboration helped Morgan Stanley anticipate future trends before other firms, adapt quickly, and achieve record profits. This gripping memoir includes both humbling lows—like when Mack made the difficult decision to leave Morgan Stanley in 2001—and exhilarating highs—such as when he made an eleventh-hour agreement with the Japanese bank Mitsubishi to save the company during the 2008 financial crisis, having refused to give in when top regulators pressured him to sell the firm for $2 per share. With humor and honesty, Mack shares advice on both business and life: how to create a culture of team players, how to keep perspective during crises, how to make difficult decisions when all eyes are on you, and more. From a singular man who's as unafraid to cry publicly as he is to anger some of the most powerful people in the world, this is an indispensable guide to living and leading well.

John Mack (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Ronnie Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots that the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

Jesse Sublett (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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When Women Were Dragons: an enduring, feminist novel from New York Times bestselling author, Kelly B

'Completely fierce, unmistakably feminist, and subversively funny. When Women Were Dragons brings the heat to misogyny with glorious imagination and talon-sharp prose.' - Bonnie Garmus, LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY In a world where girls and women are taught to be quiet, the dragons inside them are about to be set free ... In this timely and timeless speculative novel, set in 1950s America, Kelly Barnhill exposes a world that wants to keep girls and women small - and examines what happens when they rise up. Alex Green is four years old when she first sees a dragon. In her next-door neighbour's garden, in the spot where the old lady usually sits, is a huge dragon, an astonished expression on its face before it opens its wings and soars away across the rooftops. And Alex doesn't see the little old lady after that. No one mentions her. It's as if she's never existed. Then Alex's mother disappears, and reappears a week later, one quiet Tuesday, with no explanation whatsoever as to where she has been. But she is a ghostly shadow of her former self, and with scars across her body - wide, deep burns, as though she had been attacked by a monster who breathed fire. Alex, growing from young girl to fiercely independent teenager, is desperate for answers, but doesn't get any. Whether anyone likes it or not, the Mass Dragoning is coming. And nothing will be the same after that. Everything is about to change, forever. And when it does, this, too, will be unmentionable... Perfect for fans of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, VOX, and THE POWER.

Kelly Barnhill (Author), Kimberly Farr, Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Mark Bramhall