Bruce Catton has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 8 ratings. The most-rated is Grant Takes Command.
Grant Takes Command
Summary
A thrilling account of the final years of the War Between the States and the great general who led the Union to victory. This conclusion of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton's acclaimed Civil War history of General Ulysses S. Grant begins in the summer of 1863. After Grant's bold and decisive triumph over the Confederate Army at Vicksburg - a victory that wrested control of the Mississippi River from Southern hands - President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to the head of the Army of the Potomac. The newly named general was virtually unknown to the nation and to the Union's military high command, but he proved himself in the brutal closing year and a half of the War Between the States. Grant's strategic brilliance and unshakeable tenacity crushed the Confederacy in the battles of the Overland Campaign in Virginia and the Siege of Petersburg. In the spring of 1865, Grant finally forced Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, thus ending the bloodiest conflict on American soil. Although tragedy struck only days later when Lincoln - whom Grant called "incontestably the greatest man I have ever known" - was assassinated, Grant's military triumphs would ensure that the president's principles of unity and freedom would endure. In Grant Takes Command, Catton offers listeners an in-depth portrait of an extraordinary warrior and unparalleled military strategist whose brilliant battlefield leadership saved an endangered Union.
©1968, 1969 Little, Brown and Company, Inc. (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Mr. Lincoln's Army
Summary
A magnificent history of the opening years of the Civil War by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton. The first book in Bruce Catton's Pulitzer Prize-winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan. Following the secession of the Southern states, a beleaguered President Abraham Lincoln entrusted the dashing, charismatic McClellan with the creation of the Union's Army of the Potomac and the responsibility of leading it to a swift and decisive victory against Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although a brilliant tactician who was beloved by his troops and embraced by the hero-hungry North, McClellan's ego and ambition ultimately put him at loggerheads with his commander in chief - a man McClellan considered unworthy of the presidency. McClellan's weaknesses were exposed during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history, which ended in a stalemate even though the Confederate troops were greatly outnumbered. After Antietam, Lincoln ordered McClellan's removal from command, and the Union entered the war's next chapter having suffered thousands of casualties and with great uncertainty ahead. America's premier chronicler of the nation's brutal internecine conflict, Bruce Catton is renowned for his unparalleled ability to bring a detailed and vivid immediacy to Civil War battlefields and military strategy sessions. With tremendous depth and insight, he presents legendary commanders and common soldiers in all their complex and heartbreaking humanity.
©1951, 1962 Bruce Catton (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
This Hallowed Ground
Summary
This audiobook is the classic one-volume history of the American Civil War by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton. Covering events from the prelude of the conflict to the death of Lincoln, Catton blends a gripping narrative with deep, yet unassuming, scholarship to bring the war alive in an almost novelistic way. It is this gift for narrative that led contemporary critics to compare this book to War and Peace, and call it a "modern Iliad." Now over 50 years old, This Hallowed Ground remains one of the best-loved and admired general Civil War books: a perfect introduction to listeners beginning their exploration of the conflict, as well as a thrilling analysis and reimagining of its events for experienced students of the war.
©1956 Bruce Catton (P)2018 Tantor
Grant Moves South
Summary
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict. While a succession of Union generals - from McClellan to Burnside to Hooker to Meade - were losing battles and sacrificing troops due to ego, egregious errors, and incompetence, an unassuming Federal Army commander was excelling in the Western theater of operations. Though unskilled in military power politics and disregarded by his peers, Colonel Grant, commander of the Twenty-First Illinois Volunteer Infantry, was proving to be an unstoppable force. He won victory after victory at Belmont, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson, while brilliantly avoiding near-catastrophe and ultimately triumphing at Shiloh. And Grant's bold maneuvers at Vicksburg would cost the Confederacy its invaluable lifeline: the Mississippi River. But destiny and President Lincoln had even loftier plans for Grant, placing nothing less than the future of an entire nation in the capable hands of the North's most valuable military leader. Based in large part on military communiqués, personal eyewitness accounts, and Grant's own writings, Catton's extraordinary history offers listeners an insightful look at arguably the most innovative Civil War battlefield strategist, unmatched by even the South's legendary Robert E. Lee.
©1960 Little, Brown and Company, Inc. (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Terrible Swift Sword
Summary
Terrible Swift Sword (Vol. 2): The dismissal of George McClellan and the rise of Ulysses S. Grant.
©1963 Bruce Catton (P)1989 Recorded Books, LLC
Never Call Retreat
Summary
The final work in this series begins in December of 1862. Four months before, the Union Army tasted long-awaited victory at the bloody battle of Antietam. Grant continued on towards Vicksburg, Mississippi. The grim battles that lay ahead would be costly: the Vicksburg campaign, Chattanooga, the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of Atlanta and the March to the Sea, the siege of Petersburg. There would be two and a half more years of war before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, followed by Lincoln’s death just six days later.
©1965 Bruce Catton (P)1990 Recorded Books, LLC
Glory Road
Summary
The riveting saga of a nation at war with itself - from the Union Army's disaster at Fredericksburg to its costly triumph at Gettysburg - by Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War chronicler Bruce Catton. In the second book of the Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Bruce Catton - one of America's most honored Civil War historians - once again brings the great battles and the men who fought them to breathtaking life. As the War Between the States moved through its second bloody year, General Ambrose Burnside was selected by President Lincoln to replace the ineffectual George "Little Mac" McClellan as commander of the Union Army. But the hope that greeted Burnside's ascension was quickly dashed in December 1862 in the wake of his devastating defeat at Fredericksburg. Following Burnside's exit, a mediocre new commander, Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, turned a sure victory into tragedy at Chancellorsville, continuing the Union's woes and ensuring Robert E. Lee's greatest triumph of the war. But the tide began to turn over the course of three days in July 1863, when the Union won a decisive victory on the battlefield of Gettysburg. Months later, Lincoln would give his historic address on this ground, honoring the fallen soldiers and strengthening the Union Army's resolve to fight for a united and equal nation for all of its people. With brilliant insight, color, and detail, Catton interweaves thrilling narratives of combat with remarkable portrayals of politics and life on the home front. Glory Road is a sweeping account of extraordinary bravery and shocking incompetence during what were arguably the war's darkest days.
©1952 Bruce Catton (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Civil War
Summary
For a person seeking a single volume to serve as a captivating introduction and a dependable guide through all the maze of battles and issues of the Civil War, this is an audiobook without parallel. Bruce Catton understood the Civil War - its participants and battles - and he unfolds it with skill and simplicity. Of all historians past and present, Bruce Catton ranks among the best.
©1960 by American Heritage, Inc. (P)1991 by Blackstone Audiobooks
A Stillness at Appomattox
Summary
Undoubtedly Bruce Catton's most brilliant book, A Stillness at Appomattox won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for excellence in nonfiction. Catton, our foremost Civil War historian, recounts the most spectacular conflicts between Grant and Lee and details the end of hope for the Confederacy. Utilizing various collections of unpublished letters written by soldiers, personal diaries of spouses and relatives, memoirs of soldiers and their families, and official war records, Catton follows Grant's campaigns from early 1864 to the end of the war, detailing many crucial battles along the way.
©1953 Bruce Catton (P)2014 Tantor
The Coming Fury
Summary
The New York Times hailed this trilogy as “one of the greatest historical accomplishments of our time”. With stunning detail and insights, America’s foremost Civil War historian recreates the war from its opening months to its final, bloody end. Each volume delivers a complete listening experience. The Coming Fury (Volume 1) covers the split Democratic Convention in the spring of 1860 to the first battle of Bull Run.
©1961 Bruce Catton (P)1989 Recorded Books, LLC