Charles Lane has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Freedom's Detective.
Freedom's Detective
Summary
Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle. In the years following the Civil War, a new battle began. Newly freed African American men had gained their voting rights and would soon have a chance to transform Southern politics. Former Confederates and other white supremacists mobilized to stop them. Thus, the KKK was born. After the first political assassination carried out by the Klan, Washington power brokers looked for help in breaking the growing movement. They found it in Hiram C. Whitley. He became head of the Secret Service, which had previously focused on catching counterfeiters and was at the time the government’s only intelligence organization. Whitley and his agents led the covert war against the nascent KKK and were the first to use undercover work in mass crime - what we now call terrorism - investigations. Like many spymasters before and since, Whitley also had a dark side. His penchant for skulduggery and dirty tricks ultimately led to his involvement in a conspiracy that would bring an end to his career and transform the Secret Service. Populated by intriguing historical characters - from President Grant to brave Southerners, both Black and White, who stood up to the Klan - and told in a brisk narrative style, Freedom’s Detective reveals the story of this complex hero and his central role in a long-lost chapter of American history.
©2019 Charles Lane (P)2019 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
Soybean Wars
Summary
In western Paraguay fields that were once thick rain forests are now soybean plantations. The rows of soybeans stretch far into the distance, swaying hypnotically back and forth in the wind. This ocean of soy, though, is dotted with small islands--houses, actually, that belong to the subsistence campensinos who once eked out a living farming an array of crops like sugar, cotton, wheat, and maize. Now there is only one industrial harvest: soy. Soybeans are a major export crop in Paraguay, supplying feed and biofuels to the West. The price is corrosive: degraded environments and substandard living for local farmers. Reporter Charles Lane gives us a portrait of the impact of soybean cultivation in Paraguay, the world’s fastest growing producer of soybeans. The Soundprint documentary series features the best work of top radio producers. The award winning documentaries are renowned for drawing the listener into the story with compelling interviews, authentic voices and rich sound. From memoirs to science, health and popular culture, Soundprint creates a powerful experience the listener will not soon forget. Here are some related Soundprint documentaries: Café Culture Produced by: Judith KampfnerFuneral in Irian Jaya Produced by: Vicki Monks and Moira RankinThe Gulag and the Garden of Eden Produced by: Frank BrowningWhen the Rainforest Burns I & II Produced by: Cecilia VaismanSoundprint Executive Producer: Moira RankinAudio Engineer: Jared WeissbrotProduction Assistant: Nkechi MogekwuProduction Assistant: Erica PoonProduction Assistant: Eric Schaffer
©2008 SMCI (P)2013 SMCI
The Day Freedom Died
Summary
America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats.
In The Day Freedom Died, Charles Lane draws us vividly into this war-torn world with a true story whose larger dimensions have never been fully explored. Here is the epic tale of the Colfax Massacre, the mass murder of more than 60 black men on Easter Sunday, 1873, that propelled a small Louisiana town into the center of the nation's consciousness. As the smoke cleared, the perpetrators created a falsified version of events to justify their crimes.
But a tenacious Northern-born lawyer rejected the lies. Convinced that the Colfax murderers must be punished lest the suffering of the Civil War be in vain, U.S. Attorney James Beckwith of New Orleans pursued the killers despite death threats and bureaucratic intrigue - until the final showdown at the Supreme Court of the United States. The ruling that decided the case influenced race relations in the United States for decades.
An electrifying piece of historical detective work, The Day Freedom Died brings to life a gallery of memorable characters in addition to Beckwith: Willie Calhoun, the iconoclastic Southerner who dreamed of building a bastion of equal rights on his Louisiana plantation; Christopher Columbus Nash, the white supremacist avenger who organized the Colfax Massacre; William Ward, the black Union Army veteran who took up arms against white terrorists; Ulysses S. Grant, the well-intentioned but beleaguered president; and Joseph P. Bradley, the brilliant justice of the Supreme Court whose political and legal calculations would shape the drama's troubling final act.
©2008 Charles Lane (P)2008 Brilliance Audio