Audiobooks by Douglas Brinkley

Published in commemoration of the centennial of President John F. Kennedy’s birth, here is the definitive compendium of JFK’s most important and brilliant speeches, accompanied by a commentary and reflections by leading American and internationals figures—including Senator Elizabeth Warren, David McCullough, Kofi Annan, and the Dalai Lama. Here is JFK at his best—thought-provoking, inspiring, eloquent, and wise—on a number of wide-ranging topics, including civil rights, the race to the moon, the environment, immigration, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and much more. Featuring archival audio from Kennedy's speeches, JFK demonstrates the deep relevance of his words today and his lasting power and influence as an outstanding American leader and orator. The august list of contributors includes: President Barak Obama, President George Bush, Secretary John Kerry, Ambassador Samantha Power, Congressman John Lewis, Senator John McCain, Senator Elizabeth Warren, The Dalai Llama, Robert Redford, Conan O’Brien, David McCullough, Fareed Zakaria, George Packer, Colum McCann, Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek, David Kennedy, Ted Widmer, Henry Lewis Gates, Drew Faust, Tariq Ramadan, Pastor Rick Warren, Jonathan Alter, E.J. Dionne, Ron Suskind, Paul Krugman, Kofi Anann, Governor Jerry Brown, Paul Farmer, Paul Theroux, and Jorge Dominguez, among others. They cover topics from civil rights, to the race to the moon, to the environment, to immigration, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to poetry, humor, and much more.

Douglas Brinkley, Stephen Kennedy Smith (Author), Jim Meskimen, Kirsten Potter, Paul Michael (Narrator)

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American Heritage History of the United States

Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States-a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes thirteen small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent, and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Eric Jason Martin, Eric Martin (Narrator)

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Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America

The acclaimed, award-winning historian, Americas new past master (Chicago Tribune), examines the environmental legacy of FDR and the New Deal. Douglas Brinkleys The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelts spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234 million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley turns his attention to the other indefatigable environmental leader, Teddys distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chronicling his essential yet under-sung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of Americas public lands. FDR built from scratch dozens of State Park systems and scenic roadways. Pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades, Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, Channel Islands, Mammoth Cave, and the slickrock wilderness of Utah were forever saved by his leadership. Brinkley traces FDR's love for the natural world from his youth exploring the Hudson River Valley and bird watching. As Americas president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt, consummate political strategist, established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and spearheaded the modern endangered species movement. He brilliantly positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to combat the severe unemployment of the Great Depression. During its nine-year existence, the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation projects, including building trails in the national parks, pollution control, land restoration to combat the Dust Bowl, and planting over two billion trees. Rightful Heritage is an epic chronicle that is both an irresistible portrait of FDR's unrivaled passion and drive, and an indispensable analysis that skillfully illuminates the tension between business and nature, exploiting our natural resources and conserving them. Within the narrative are brilliant capsule biographies of such environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Rosalie Edge. Rightful Heritage is essential reading for everyone seeking to preserve our treasured landscapes as an American birthright.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), William Dufris (Narrator)

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Cronkite

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Yet this very public figure was a remarkably private man. Drawing on unprecedented access to Cronkite's private papers as well as interviews with his family and friends, Douglas Brinkley now brings this American icon into focus as never before. Brinkley traces Cronkite's story from his roots in Missouri and Texas through the Great Depression, during which he began his career, to World War II, when he gained notice reporting with Allied troops from North Africa, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1950, Edward R. Murrow recruited him to work for CBS, where he covered presidential elections, the space program, Vietnam, and the first televised broadcasts of the Olympic Games. Cronkite was also witness to many of the most profound moments in modern American history, including the Kennedy assassination, Apollos 11 and 13, Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the Iran hostage crisis. Epic, intimate, and masterfully written, Cronkite is the much-anticipated biography of an extraordinary American life, told by one of our most brilliant and respected historians.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

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No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton

"Just as the necessary qualification for a good liar is a good memory, so the essential equipment of a would-be lie detector is a good timeline, and a decent archive." In NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO, a New York Times bestseller, Christopher Hitchens casts an unflinching eye on the Clinton political machine and offers a searing indictment of a president who sought to hold power at any cost. With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clinton's abject propensity for pandering to the Left while delivering to the Right, and he argues that the president's personal transgressions were ultimately inseparable from his political corruption. Hitchens questions the president's refusals to deny accusations of rape by reputable women and lambasts, among numerous impostures, his insistence on playing the race card, the shortsightedness of his welfare bill, his ludicrous war on drugs, and his abandonment of homosexuals in the form of the Defense of Marriage Act. Opportunistic statecraft, crony capitalism, "divide and rule" identity politics, and populist manipulations-these are perhaps Clinton's greatest and most enduring legacies.

Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Brinkley (Author), Simon Prebble (Narrator)

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The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960

A riveting history of America's most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska—Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes—from the extraction industries. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley traces the wilderness movement in Alaska, from John Muir to Theodore Roosevelt to Aldo Leopold to Dwight D. Eisenhower, with narrative verve. Basing his research on extensive new archival material, Brinkley shows how a colorful band of determined environmentalists created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just before John F. Kennedy became president. Brinkley introduces a lively gallery of characters influential in preserving Alaska's wilderness resources: the indomitable U.S. Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, who championed the Brooks Range; charming Ivy League explorer Charles Sheldon, who led the campaign to create Denali National Park; intrepid Bob Marshall, who cofounded The Wilderness Society; hermit illustrator Rockwell Kent, who lived in isolation on Fox Island like a modern Thoreau; nature photographer Ansel Adams, whose image Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake set off a tsunami of public interest in America's tallest peak; and U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Rachel Carson, who promoted proper ocean stewardship; among many more. Wildlife fervently comes to life in The Quiet World: Brinkley tells incredible stories about the sea otters in the Aleutians, moose in the Kenai Peninsula, and birdlife across the Yukon Delta expanse while exploring the devastating effects that reckless overfishing, seal slaughter, and aerial wolf hunting have wrought on Alaska's once-abundant fauna. While taking into account Exxon Valdez–like oil spills, The Quiet World mainly celebrates how the U.S. government has preserved many of Alaska's great wonders for future generations to enjoy.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Andrew Garman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama. First was the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150 mile per hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces. Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, and whole towns in southeastern Louisiana ceased to exist. And third, the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself. In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley, a New Orleans resident and professor of history at Tulane University, rips the story of Katrina apart and relates what the category 3 hurricane was like from every point of view, while recognizing the true heroes. Throughout the book, Brinkley lets the Katrina survivors tell their own stories, masterfully allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina. The Great Deluge investigates the failure of government at each level and breaks important new stories. Packed with interviews and original research, it traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the Katrina disaster to turn the Gulf Coast into a scene from a war movie or a third-world documentary.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Kyf Brewer (Narrator)

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Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism

Father Michael McGivney was a man to whom "family values" represented more than mere rhetoric, a man who has left a legacy of hope still celebrated around the world. In the late 1800s, discrimination against American Catholics was widespread. Called to action in 1882, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, an organization that helped to save countless families. It has since grown to an international membership of 1.7 million men. At heart, though, Father McGivney was never anything more than an American parish priest, and nothing less than that, either. In an incredible work of academic research, Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster re-create the life of Father McGivney, a fiercely dynamic and yet tenderhearted man. Moving and inspirational, "Parish Priest chronicles the process of canonization that may well make Father McGivney the first American-born parish priest to be declared a saint by the Vatican.

Douglas Brinkley, Julie M. Fenster (Author), Julie M. Fenster (Narrator)

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The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion

Acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author of Tour of Duty Douglas Brinkley brings the riveting account of the brave U.S. Army Rangers who stormed the coast of Normandy on D-Day and the President, forty years later, who paid them homage. U.S. and British warships poised in the English Channel had eighteen targets on their bombardment list for D-Day morning. The 100-foot promontory known as Pointe du Hoc -- where six big German guns were ensconced -- was number one. Under the bulldoggish command of Colonel James E. Rudder of Texas, these elite forces -- "Rudder's Rangers" -- took control of the fortified cliff. The liberation of Europe was under way. Based upon recently released documents, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc is the first in-depth, anecdotal remembrance of these fearless Army Rangers. With brilliant deftness, Brinkley moves between two events four decades apart to tell the dual story of the making of Reagan's two uplifting 1984 speeches, considered by many to be among the best orations the Great Communicator ever gave.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Douglas Brinkley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War

Covering more than four decades, Tour of Duty is the definitive account of John Kerry\'s journey from war to peace. Written by acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley, this is the first full-scale, intimate account of Kerry\'s naval career. In writing this riveting narrative, Brinkley has drawn on extensive interviews with virtually everyone who knew Kerry well in Vietnam, including all the men still living who served under him. Kerry also entrusted to Brinkley his letters home from Vietnam and his voluminous \"War Notes\" -- journals, notebooks, and personal reminiscences written during and shortly after the war. This material was provided without restriction, to be used at Brinkley\'s discretion, and has never before been published. John Kerry enlisted in the Navy in February 1966, months before he graduated from Yale. In December 1967 Ensign Kerry was assigned to the frigate U.S.S. Gridley; after five months of service in the Pacific, with a brief stop in Vietnam, he returned to the United States and underwent training to command a Swift boat, a small craft deployed in Vietnam\'s rivers. In June 1968 Kerry was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade), and by the end of that year he was back in Vietnam, where he commanded, over time, two Swift boats. Throughout Tour of Duty Brinkley deftly deals with such explosive issues as U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia. In a series of unforgettable combat-action sequences, he recounts how Kerry won the Purple Heart three times for wounds suffered in action and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy\'s Silver Star for gallantry in action. When Kerry returned from Southeast Asia, he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), becoming a prominent antiwar spokesperson. He challenged the Nixon administration on Capitol Hill with the antiwar movement cheering him on. As Kerry\'s public popularity soared in April-May 1971, the FBI considered him a subversive. Brinkley -- using new information acquired from the recently released Nixon tapes -- reveals how White House aides Charles Colson and H. R. Haldeman tried to discredit Kerry. Refusing to be intimidated, Kerry started running for public office, eventually becoming a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. But he never forgot his fallen comrades. Working with his friend Senator John McCain, he returned to Vietnam numerous times looking for MIAs and POWs. By the time Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, Kerry was the leading proponent of \"normalization\" of relations with Vietnam. When President Clinton officially recognized Vietnam in 1995, Kerry\'s three-decade-long tour of duty had at long last ended.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Douglas Brinkley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Rosa Parks

In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, had no idea she was changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus in segregated Alabama. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight. Who was she, before and after her historic act, and how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow? Historian Douglas Brinkley brings mid-20th century America alive in this brilliant examination of a celebrated heroine in the context of her life and tumultuous times. Here is the quiet dignity, hope, courage, and humor that have made this every-woman a living legend.

Douglas Brinkley (Author), Karen White (Narrator)

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