Audiobooks by S. C. Gwynne

S.C. Gwynne’s New York Times bestselling historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West is now available from Encore for the first time and at a great low price. Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although listeners may be more familiar with the names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Material**

S. C. Gwynne (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

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The Perfect Pass

New York Times bestselling, award-winning historian S.C. Gwynne tells the incredible story of how Hal Mumme and Mike Leach-two unknown coaches who revolutionized American football in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s-changed the way the game is played at every level, from high school to the NFL. Hal Mumme is one of a handful of authentic offensive geniuses in the history of American football. In 2015 ESPN Magazine, the nation's leading sports magazine, called him the single most influential football coach in the last quarter century. Mumme spent fourteen mostly losing seasons coaching football before inventing a potent passing offense strategy that would revolutionize the game. That transformation began at a tiny college called Iowa Wesleyan, where Mumme was head coach and Mike Leach his assistant. It was there that Mumme invented the purest and most extreme passing game in the 145-year history of football, where his quarterback once completed 61 of 86 passes (both national records). His teams played blazingly fast-faster than any team ever had before. They rarely punted on a fourth down, and routinely beat teams with ten or twenty times Iowa Wesleyan's students. Mumme did it all with average athletes and without even a playbook. In The Perfect Pass, S.C. Gwynne explores Mumme's genius and the stunning performance of his teams, as well as his leading role in changing football from a run-dominated sport to a pass-dominated sport. He also shares the history of a moment in American football when the game changed fundamentally and transformed itself into what tens of millions of Americans now watch on television every weekend. Whether you're a casual or ravenous football fan, this is a truly compelling story of American ingenuity, innovation, and how a set of revolutionary ideas made their way into the mainstream of sports culture that we celebrate today. **Please Contact Customer Service for Additional Documents**

S. C. Gwynne, S. C. Gwynne (Author), Santino Fontana (Narrator)

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Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

General Stonewall Jackson was like nothing anyone had ever seen. Secretive and self-contained, he often withheld his plans from his own Confederate officers. He could be maddeningly abrupt and dismissive, even with other generals. He had famous running fights with a number of them. He court-martialed officers, including powerful, dominant generals, whom he believed had failed do to their duty. He court-martialed anyone who was shirking, or who retreated without being ordered to do so. He drove his men mercilessly, marching them in ways that men had never been marched before, until they were beyond the brink of exhaustion. He seemed completely insensitive to their suffering. He had nothing but contempt for stragglers. He refused furloughs even to men whose children were dying. Duty, above all, was his code. He demanded the impossible of his men. When his exhausted troops reached the battlefield, he threw them into combat with little regard for losses, and when it was all over and he had won he gave thanks only to God, almost never to any of the men who had bled and died and risked everything. If the enemy had been slaughtered at Front Royal or Fredericksburg, its bloody evisceration was due to the “blessings of an Ever-Kind Providence.” He referred to his regiments and divisions as “the army of the living God.” He never took credit for himself and was annoyed whenever anyone gave it to him even when it came to him, as it often did, in the form of wildly cheering soldiers. In the winter of 1863, he personally launched the massive wave of Christian revivals that would sweep through the rebel army. He was loved by his men but in an oddly impersonal way. As one of his officers observed: “No one could love the man for himself. He seems to be cut off from his fellow men and to commune with his own spirit only.” He was, on the other hand, perhaps the most charismatic general in either army. For all these reasons, Stonewall Jackson has come down to us as a great and tragic hero, second only to Robert E. Lee in the Confederate pantheon. He is now, as he was then, a figure of legend and romance. As much as any Confederate figure, even Lee, he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. He is also considered, without much argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures, a difficult genius cited as inspiration by such later figures as George Patton and Erwin Rommel, and a man whose brilliance at the art of war transcends the Civil War itself.

S. C. Gwynne (Author), Cotter Smith (Narrator)

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