World Audiobooks | History

Practicing History: Selected Essays Audiobook

The critically-acclaimed historian's insights, sense of humor, and sharp pen take on everything from Vietnam, Israel, and the Great War to writing history and its meaning. Includes these essays: Why Policy-Makers Do Not Listen; When Does History Happen?; Is History a Guide to the Future?; America as an Idea; How We Entered World War I; and more

Barbara W. Tuchman (Author), Aviva Skell (Narrator)

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World War I: The Great War and the World It Made

"The Great War" as it was known at the time was also said to be the "war to end all wars." It seized all of Europe and much of the rest of the world in its grip of death and destruction. The first truly modern war, it changed how war-and peace-would be conducted throughout the remainder of the twentieth century and even to the present. The Great War was a time of "firsts" and opened the door to the modern era. Almost all the major developed countries had a role to play in this war, as they never had before. This was the first time for fighting on land, at sea, and in the air. Modern weapons and munitions were developed in previously unimaginable quantities. By the end of the war, international politics, the relationships between the individual and the state, gender relations, and the role of artists and the media were all drastically changed. World War I laid the foundation for the modern world. This course examines the major events of the war to further understand how they led to the shaping of this new world.

John Ramsden, Professor John Ramsden (Author), John Ramsden, Professor John Ramsden (Narrator)

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The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

Barbara W. Tuchman (Author), Davina Porter (Narrator)

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Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.” From the Hardcover edition.

Joseph E. Persico (Author), Harry Chase (Narrator)

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Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes' Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control - not in ancient times, but in the late nineteenth century. For more than fifty years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States. The scheme to dismantle the newborn Italian nation involved not only the cardinals and the Curia but also attempts to exploit the rivalries among France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and England.

David I. Kertzer (Author), Alan Sklar (Narrator)

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Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism

"Most Americans living today never heard Ed Murrow in a live broadcast. This book is for them. I want them to know that broadcast journalism was established by someone with the highest standards. Tabloid crime stories, so much a part of the lust for ratings by today's news broadcasters, held no interest for Murrow. He did like Hollywood celebrities, but interviewed them for his entertainment programs; they had no place on his news programs. My book is focused on this life in journalism. I offer it in the hope that more people in and out to the news business will get to know Ed Murrow. Perhaps in time the descent from Murrow's principles can be reversed." -Bob Edwards Long before the era of the news anchor, the pundit, and the mini-cam, one man blazed a trail that thousands would follow. Edwards brings to life the great stories Murrow covered and brought into American living rooms for the first time - the rooftop reports of the London Blitz, bombing raids over Berlin, and the 1954 broadcast that helped bring down Senator Joe McCarthy - as well as the ups and downs of his career at CBS. Edwards reveals how Murrow dramatically impacted public opinion and how the high standards he lived by influenced an entire generation of broadcasters.

Bob Edwards (Author), Bob Edwards (Narrator)

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Lost and Found Sound

Jay Allison, The Kitchen Sisters (Author), Noah Adams (Narrator)

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Lost and Found Sound and Beyond: Stories from NPR's All Things Considered

Jay Allison, The Kitchen Sisters (Author), Francis Ford Coppola (Narrator)

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Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800

It was a contest of titans: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two heroes of the Revolutionary era, once intimate friends, now icy antagonists locked in a fierce battle for the future of the United States. The election of 1800 was a thunderous clash of a campaign that climaxed in a deadlock in the Electoral College and led to a crisis in which the young republic teetered on the edge of collapse. Adams vs. Jefferson is a gripping account of a true turning point in American history, a dramatic struggle between two parties with profoundly different visions of how the nation should be governed.

John E. Ferling, John Ferling (Author), Jack Garrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered-more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous-among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers' lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war's last hour. Persico recounts the war's bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called "the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought."

Joseph E. Persico, Joseph Persico (Author), Jonathan Marosz (Narrator)

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We The People: Jefferson Lives

When Thom Hartmann bought an old farmhouse in Vermont, he found a complete twenty-volume set of the complete writings of Thomas Jefferson, published in 1904, hidden away in the attic. The discovery led Hartmann to explore our founding fathers' true vision for America, and how that vision is and is not reflected in the government and society we see today. His observations are at once disturbing and hopeful.

Thom Hartmann (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

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Kings and Queens of England

Richard Hampton (Author), Derek Jacobi (Narrator)

Audiobook

World Audiobooks in History