Audiobooks narrated by Tom Brokaw

The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate

Bestselling author Tom Brokaw brings readers inside the White House press corps in this up-close and personal account of the fall of an American president. In August 1974, after his involvement in the Watergate scandal could no longer be denied, Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign from office in anticipation of certain impeachment. The year preceding that moment was filled with shocking revelations and bizarre events, full of power politics, legal jujitsu, and high-stakes showdowns, and with head-shaking surprises every day. As the country's top reporters worked to discover the truth, the public was overwhelmed by the confusing and almost unbelievable stories about activities in the Oval Office. Tom Brokaw, who was then the young NBC News White House correspondent, gives us a nuanced and thoughtful chronicle, recalling the players, the strategies, and the scandal that brought down a president. He takes readers from crowds of shouting protesters to shocking press conferences, from meetings with Attorney General Elliot Richardson and White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, to overseas missions alongside Henry Kissinger. He recounts Nixon's claims of executive privilege to withhold White House tape recordings of Oval Office conversations; the bribery scandal that led to the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew and his replacement by Gerald Ford; the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; how in the midst of Watergate Nixon organized emergency military relief for Israel during the Yom Kippur War; the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court that required Nixon to turn over the tapes; and other insider moments from this important and dramatic period. The Fall of Richard Nixon allows readers to experience this American epic from the perspective of a journalist on the ground and at the center of it all. Advance praise for The Fall of Richard Nixon "A divided nation. A deeply controversial president. Powerful passions. No, it's not what you're thinking, but Tom Brokaw knows that the past can be prologue, and he's given us an absorbing and illuminating firsthand account of how Richard Nixon fell from power. Part history, part memoir, Brokaw's book reminds us of the importance of journalism, the significance of facts, and the inherent complexity of power in America."-Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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The Time of Our Lives

Tom Brokaw, known and beloved for his landmark work in American journalism and for the New York Times bestsellers The Greatest Generation and Boom!, now turns his attention to the challenges that face America in the new millennium, to offer reflections on how we can restore America's greatness. "What happened to the America I thought I knew?" Brokaw writes. "Have we simply wandered off course, but only temporarily? Or have we allowed ourselves to be so divided that we're easy prey for hijackers who could steer us onto a path to a crash landing? . . . I do have some thoughts, original and inspired by others, for our journey into the heart of a new century." Rooted in the values, lessons, and verities of generations past and of his South Dakota upbringing, Brokaw weaves together inspiring stories of Americans who are making a difference and personal stories from his own family history, to engage us in a conversation about our country and to offer ideas for how we can revitalize the promise of the American Dream. Inviting us to foster a rebirth of family, community, and civic engagement as profound as the one that won World War II, built our postwar prosperity, and ushered in the Civil Rights era, Brokaw traces the exciting, unnerving changes in modern life-in values, education, public service, housing, the Internet, and more-that have transformed our society in the decades since the age of thrift in which he was raised. Offering ideas from Americans who are change agents in their communities, in The Time of Our Lives, Brokaw gives us, a wise, honest, and wide-ranging book, a nourishing vision of hopefulness in an age of dimished expectations.

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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A Long Way from Home

Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it, by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation. In this beautiful memoir, Tom Brokaw writes of America and of the American experience. From his parents’ life in theThirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a reflection on America in our time. Tom Brokaw writes about growing up and coming of age in the heartland, and of the family, the people, the culture and the values that shaped him then and still do today. His father, Red Brokaw, a genius with machines, followed the instincts of Tom’s mother Jean, and took the risk of moving his small family from an Army base to Pickstown, South Dakota, where Red got a job as a heavy equipment operator in the Army Corps of Engineers’ project building the Ft. Randall dam along the Missouri River. Tom Brokaw describes how this move became the pivotal decision in their lives, as the Brokaw family, along with others after World War II, began to live out the American Dream: community, relative prosperity, middle class pleasures and good educations for their children. "Along the river and in the surrounding hills, I had a Tom Sawyer boyhood," Brokaw writes; and as he describes his own pilgrimage as it unfolded–from childhood to love, marriage, the early days in broadcast journalism, and beyond–he also reflects on what brought him and so many Americans of his generation to lead lives a long way from home, yet forever affected by it.

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation

“I cannot go anywhere in America without people wanting to share their wartime experiences….The stories and the lessons have emerged from long-forgotten letters home, from reunions of old buddies and outfits, from unpublished diaries and home-published memoirs….As the stories in this album of memories remind us, it truly was an American experience, from the centers of power to the most humble corners of the land.” —Tom Brokaw In this beautiful American family album of stories from the Greatest Generation, the history of life as it was lived during the Depression and World War II comes alive and is preserved in people’s own words. Photographs and time lines also commemorate important dates and events. An Army Air Corps veteran who enlisted in 1941 at age seventeen writes to describe the Bataan Death March. A black nurse tells of her encounter with wartime segregation. Other members of the Greatest Generation describe their war—in such historic episodes as Guadalcanal, the D-Day invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and Midway—as well as their lives on the home front. Starting with the Depression and Pearl Harbor, moving on through the war years in Europe, in the Pacific, and at home, this unique book preserves a people’s rich historical heritage and the legacy of a nation’s heroism in war and its courage in peace—in the shaping of their lives and of the world we have today.

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars

War Letters is the most dramatic, impassioned, and comprehensive anthology of American war letters ever assembled. In November 1998, Dear Abby announced the aim of the Legacy Project. Since then, over 20,000 letters have come in from all around the country, all previously unpublished. The book features the most extraordinary letters received (approximately 150), written during America's wars, including the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. Included here are breathtaking eyewitness accounts of famous battles; intimate declarations of love and longing; poignant final letters written only days or even hours before soldiers were killed; incredible personal encounters with distinguished military leaders; and humorous anecdotes and gripes about insufferable conditions and commanding officers. The majority of the letters are written by combatants, but there are also many by war nurses, family members writing from home, draft resisters, and others affected by the ravages of war. The book is arranged chronologically by war, and each letter is preceded by an enlightening headnote, providing historical background and biographical detail. The most profound and memorable expressions of fear, loneliness, whimsy, exasperation, anger, exhilaration, and patriotism, these letters are more immediate than a memoir and will capture the hearts of readers everywhere.

Andrew Carroll (Author), Joan Allen, Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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The Greatest Generation Speaks

The heartwarming New York Times bestseller by the author of The Greatest Generation "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of the Depression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices in World War II and then returned home to begin building the world we have today … it was my way of saying thank you. I was not prepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off by that book. "I had written a book about America, and now America was writing back." Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those who gave the world so much — and who left an enduring legacy of heroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out of the vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager to share their personal memories and experiences of a momentous time in America’s history. These letters and reflections cross time, distance, and generations as they give voice to lives forever changed by war: eighty-year-old Clarence M. Graham, who recounts his harrowing experience as a soldier captured by the Japanese — and provides a gripping eyewitness account of the dropping of the atomic bomb; Patricia Matthews Dorph, a soldier’s daughter who shares the love letters her parents exchanged during the war, a lasting legacy of passion, devotion, and enduring love; Rabbi Judah Nadich, the first Jewish chaplain to serve in the war; Lorraine Davis, a civilian who helped form the Club of ’44, a group of wartime wives who still meet today. From the front lines of battle to the back porches of beloved hometowns, The Greatest Generation Speaks brings to life the hopes and dreams of a generation who fought our most hard-won victories, and whose struggles and sacrifices made our future possible.

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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The Greatest Generation

In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today.In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out), friends for life.

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartwarming gift for the holidays-a powerful selection of the letters Tom Brokaw received in response to his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation. "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of the Depression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices in World War II and then returned home to begin building the world we have today-the people I called the Greatest Generation-it was my way of saying thank you. But I was not prepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off by that book. I had written a book about America, and now America was writing back."-Tom Brokaw In the phenomenal bestseller The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw paid affecting tribute to those who gave the world so much-and who left an enduring legacy of courage and conviction. The Greatest Generation Speaks collects the vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from men and women eager to share their intensely personal stories of a momentous time in America's history. Some letters tell of the front during the war, others recall loved ones in harm's way in distant places. They offer first-hand accounts of battles, poignant reflections on loneliness, exuberant expressions of love, and somber feelings of loss. As Brokaw notes, "If we are to heed the past to prepare for the future, we should listen to these quiet voices of a generation that speaks to us of duty and honor, sacrifice and accomplishment. I hope more of their stories will be preserved and cherished as reminders of all that we owe them and all that we can learn from them."

Tom Brokaw (Author), Tom Brokaw (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Tom Brokaw