Audiobooks narrated by Christopher Grove

The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War

In 1945 the United States and Japan fought the largest and most devastating land battle of their war in the Pacific, a month-long struggle for the city of Manila. It was a key piece of the campaign to retake control of the Philippine Islands, which itself signified the culmination of the war, breaking the back of Japanese strategic power and sealing its outcome. In The Battle of Manila, Nicholas Sarantakes offers the first in-depth account of this crucial campaign from the American, Japanese, and, significantly, Filipino perspective. Their effective use of these weapons was an important factor in limiting U.S. casualties, even as it may also have contributed to a catastrophic loss of civilian lives. Among other aspects of the conflict, The Battle of Manila explores the importance of the Filipino guerillas on the ground, the use of irregular warfare, the effective use of intelligence, the impact of military education, and the limits of Japanese resistance. Ultimately, Sarantakes shows Manila to be a major turning in both World War II and American history. This fascinating account shines a light on one of the war's most under-represented and highly significant moments.

Nicholas Evan Sarantakes (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Buddhism: A Journey Through History

One of the world's leading scholars of Buddhism presents the story of its dramatic journey across the globe Over the course of twenty-five centuries, Buddhism spread from its place of origin in northern India to become a global tradition of remarkable breadth, depth, and richness. Donald S. Lopez Jr. draws on the latest scholarship to construct a detailed and innovative history of Buddhism—not just as a chronology through the centuries or as geographic movement, but as a dense matrix of interconnections. Beginning with the life and teachings of the Buddha, Lopez shows how a set of evolving ideas and practices traveled north and east to China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and Tibet, south and southeast to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and westward to Europe and the Americas. He provides insights on questions that Buddhism has asked and answered in different times and different places—about apocalypse, art, identity, immortality, law, nation, persecution, philosophy, science, sex, war, and writing. Vast in its erudition and expansive in its vision, this is the most complete single-volume history of Buddhism in its full historical and geographical range.

Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy

How the US policy of competition with China is detrimental to democracy, peace, and prosperity—and how a saner approach is possible For close to a decade, the US government has been preoccupied with the threat of China, fearing that the country will 'eat our lunch,' in the words of Joe Biden. The United States has crafted its foreign and domestic policy to help constrain China's military power and economic growth. Van Jackson and Michael Brenes argue that great-power competition with China is misguided and vastly underestimates the costs and risks that geopolitical rivalry poses to economic prosperity, the quality of democracy, and, ultimately, global stability. This in-depth assessment of the trade-offs and pitfalls of protracted competition with China reveals how such a policy exacerbates inequality, leads to xenophobia, and increases the likelihood of violence around the world. In addition, it distracts from the priority of addressing such issues as climate change while at the same time undercutting democratic pluralism and sacrificing liberty in the name of prevailing against an enemy 'other.' Jackson and Brenes provide an informed and urgent critique of current US foreign policy and a road map toward a saner, more democratically accountable strategy of easing tension and achieving effective diplomacy.

Michael Brenes, Van Jackson (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Now Is the Time to Collect: Daniel Giraud Elliot, Carl Akeley, and the Field Museum African Expediti

The rediscovery of a curator's lost journal illuminates the astonishing African journey that formed the basis of the Chicago Field Museum's famed collections After the extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever. Established in 1893, Chicago's Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection. On the trip was groundbreaking taxonomist Carl Akeley. Back in Chicago, Akeley created captivating lifelike dioramas of rare animal groups that enhanced the museum's fame and remain popular to this day. Now Is the Time to Collect is a case study in what author Paul D. Brinkman calls 'salvage zoology'—the practice of aggressively collecting rare animal specimens for preservation just prior to the birth of the modern conservation movement. It is a riveting account of the expedition, the travelers' experiences in Somalia during its colonial period, and the astonishing origins of one of Chicago's classic museum experiences.

Paul D. Brinkman (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an American Institution

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America. Pirates of the Slave Trade follows three figures whose fates would violently converge: John Conny, a charismatic leader of the Akan people who made lucrative deals with pirates and smugglers while fending off British and Dutch slavers; the infamous pirate Black Bart, who worked his way from an anonymous navigator to one of the British Empire's most notorious enemies in the region; and naval captain Chaloner Ogle, tasked by the Crown with hunting down and killing Black Bart at all costs. At the Battle of Cape Lopez, these three men and the massive historical forces at their backs would finally find each other—and the world would be transformed forever. In this landmark narrative history, historian Angela Sutton outlines the complex network of trade routes spanning the Atlantic Ocean trafficked by agents of empire, private merchants, and brutal pirates alike. Drawing from a wide range of primary historical sources, Sutton offers a new perspective on how a single battle played a pivotal role in reshaping the trade of enslaved people in ways that affect America to this day.

Angela C. Sutton (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live acts of the rock era. Performing more than 2,300 shows between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead's reputation as a 'live band' was—and continues to be—sustained by thousands of live concert recordings from every era of the group's long and colorful career. In Live Dead, musicologist John Brackett examines how live recordings—from the group's official releases to fan-produced tapes, bootlegs to 'Betty Boards,' and Dick's Picks to From the Vault—have shaped the general history and popular mythology of the Grateful Dead for more than fifty years. Drawing on a diverse array of materials and documents contained in the Grateful Dead Archive, Live Dead details how live recordings became meaningful among the band and their fans not only as sonic souvenirs of past musical performances but also as expressions of assorted ideals, including notions of 'liveness,' authenticity, and the power of recorded sound.

John Brackett (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion

Finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations. Thirty years later it was organized into states and territories and bound into the nation and world by an infrastructure of rails, telegraph wires, and roads and by a racial and ethnic order, with its Indigenous peoples largely dispossessed and confined to reservations. Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West's extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed. Continental Reckoning guides the listener through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life.

Elliott West (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic

A complex and captivating portrait of Mark Antony that offers a fresh perspective on the fall of the Roman Republic In his lifetime, Mark Antony was a famous man. Ally and avenger of Julius Caesar, rhetorical target of Cicero, lover of Cleopatra, and mortal enemy of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), Antony played a leading role in the transformation of the Roman world. Ever since his and Cleopatra's demise at the hands of Octavian, he has remained famous, or infamous, a figure of recurring fascination. His life—variegated, passionate, sensual, bold, and tragic—inspires vigorous reactions. Nearly everyone has a view on Antony. For Cicero, he was a distasteful though talented man. Octavian fashioned him a dangerous failure, a Roman noble corrupted by his appetites and his lust for Cleopatra. Later historians adopted and adapted these themes, delivering their readers an Antony who was irresistibly depraved, startlingly brave, sometimes cunning, but almost always constitutionally incapable of choosing the right side of history. From these, especially Plutarch's compelling portrait, Shakespeare gave us the chivalrous and unstudied Antony of Antony and Cleopatra. A Noble Ruin allows listeners to freshly assess his conduct, ambitions, and attainments, as well as the turbulent age in which he lived.

W. Jeffrey Tatum (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean

A theoretical physicist takes listeners on an awe-inspiring journey—found in 'no other book' (Science)—to discover how the universe generates everything from nothing at all: 'If you want to know what's really going on in the realms of relativity and particle physics, read this book' (Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe). In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter? The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one. Much like water and air, it ripples in various ways, and we ourselves, made from its ripples, can move through space as effortlessly as waves crossing an ocean. Deftly weaving together daily experience and fundamental physics—the musical universe, the enigmatic quantum, cosmic fields, and the Higgs boson—Strassler shows us how all things, familiar and unfamiliar, emerge from what seems like nothing at all.

Matt Strassler (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Riding with Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch

John Barletta was a Vietnam veteran and Secret Service agent who spent over a decade with the Reagans, poised to give his own life at any moment to save the fortieth president of the United States. His superior riding skills made Barletta the perfect choice to protect Reagan during his frequent visits to the ranch. Over time, he got to know Reagan as few others did. In Riding With Reagan, John Barletta shares his one-of-a-kind memories of the President, painting a picture of a relaxed Reagan at his very best. Through his eyes, we see a rugged man who thrived outdoors, deeply loved his wife and children, and was a prankster at heart. Barletta also recalls the sad times: watching a once-robust Reagan fade into the dark shadows of Alzheimer's disease, and the painful moment when he had to tell the former president that his days of horseback riding had come to an end. Poignant and candid, Riding With Reagan is an intimate portrait of the man who remains one of the most popular presidents in our nation's history. A stirring ode to friendship, brotherhood, and the great outdoors, it celebrates a true hero whose life and spirit are the embodiment of what it means to be an American.

John R. Barletta (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Bloody Tuesday: The Untold Story of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa

The dramatic story of one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement and its role in the ongoing reckoning with racial injustice in the United States. On Tuesday, June 9, 1964, police attacked more than 600 Black men, women, and children inside First African Baptist Church (Tuscaloosa, Alabama), where Reverend Martin Luther King had launched the Tuscaloosa campaign for integration three months earlier. As the group gathered to march, they faced over seventy law enforcement officers and hundreds more deputized white citizens and Klansmen eager to end their protests for good. Police smashed the historic church's stained-glass windows with water hoses and fired rounds of tear gas inside. As demonstrators streamed from the church, many choking and soaked, they beat them with nightsticks, cattle prods, and axe handles, arrested nearly a hundred, and sent over thirty to the hospital. Here this event is recounted through the eyes of locals-a charismatic Black preacher trained by Rev. King, an aging police chief, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Black women who were the backbone of the protests. In Bloody Tuesday, John Giggie powerfully recovers one of the last great untold stories of the civil rights movement and its role in the reckoning with America's ongoing struggle for racial justice.

John M. Giggie (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Alcatraz: The Last Escape

When Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin boldly escaped from Alcatraz prison on June 11, 1962, it is widely believed that they succumbed to the waters of San Francisco Bay, though no trace of the men has ever been found, only their makeshift raft. In this reexamination of the escape and its aftermath, the Anglin brothers' nephew presents compelling evidence that his uncles did in fact survive and eventually made their way to Brazil, where they married and had children. Using official, government documents the authors show how mobster Mickey Cohen may have been involved in the escape, some revealing letters from fellow inmate Whitey Bulger, and recorded testimony from the person who facilitated their escape to Brazil, the authors make a strong case for the Anglin brothers' survival. In addition, a 1975 photograph of the brothers in Brazil has overcome all challenges to its authenticity by skeptics. This book provides a plausible outcome to one of America's enduring mysteries.

Ken Widner, Mike Lynch (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Christopher Grove