Chris Mackowski PhD has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Grant's Last Battle.
Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River, May 21-25, 1864
Summary
For 16 days the armies had grappled — a grueling horror-show of nonstop battle, march, and maneuver that stretched through May of 1864. Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant had resolved to destroy his Confederate adversaries through attrition if by no other means. He would just keep at them until I used them up. Meanwhile, Grant's Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, looked for an opportunity to regain the offensive initiative. "We must strike them a blow," he told his lieutenants. The toll on both armies was staggering. But Grant's war of attrition began to take its toll in a more insidious way. Both army commanders — operating on the dark edge of exhaustion, fighting off illness, pressure-cooked by stress — began to feel the effects of that continuous, merciless grind in very personal ways. Punch-drunk tired, they began to second-guess themselves, began missing opportunities, began making mistakes. As a result, along the banks of the North Anna River, commanders on both sides brought their armies to the brink of destruction without even knowing it. Picking up the story started in the Emerging Civil War Series book A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, historian Chris Mackowski follows the road south to the North Anna River. Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River offers a concise, engaging account of the mistakes and missed opportunities of the third — and least understood — phase of the Overland Campaign.
©2015 Savas Beatie (P)2020 Savas Beatie
Don't Give an Inch
Summary
George Gordon Meade could hardly believe it: only three days earlier, he had been thrust unexpectedly into command of the Army of the Potomac, which was cautiously stalking its long-time foe, the Army of Northern Virginia, as it launched a bold invasion northward. Meade had hardly wrapped his head around the situation before everything exploded. Outside the small college town of Gettysburg, Confederates had inexplicably turned on the lead elements of Meade’s army and attacked. The first day of battle had ended poorly for Federals, but by nightfall, they had found a lodgment on high ground south of town. There, they fortified - and waited. “Don’t give an inch, boys!” one Federal commander told his men. The next day, July 2, 1863, would be one of the Civil War’s bloodiest. Confederate commander Robert E. Lee would launch his army at the Federal position in a series of assaults that would test the mettle of men on both sides in a way few had ever before been tested - and the Pennsylvania landscape would run red as a result. With names that have become legendary - Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Culp’s Hill - the second day at Gettysburg encompasses some of the best-known engagements of the Civil War. Yet those same stories have also become shrouded in mythology and misunderstanding. In Don’t Give an Inch: The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, historians Chris Mackowski and Daniel T. Davis peel back the layers to share both the real and often-overlooked stories of that fateful summer day. In the same engaging style that has invited thousands into the Civil War’s most important stories, Mackowski and Davis share their intimate knowledge of the battlefield they both grew up on.
©2016 Savas Beatie (P)2020 Savas Beatie
Grant's Last Battle
Summary
The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War...the two-term president of the United States...the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe...the respected New York financier - Ulysses S. Grant - was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked 20 cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant’s final battle - a race against his own failing health to complete his personal memoirs in an attempt to secure his family’s financial future. But the project evolved into something far more: an effort to secure the very meaning of the Civil War itself and how it would be remembered. The news of Grant’s illness came swift on the heels of his financial ruin. Business partners had swindled his family out of everything but the money he and his wife had in their pockets and the family cookie jar. In this maelstrom of woe, Grant refused to surrender. Putting pen to paper, the hero of Appomattox embarked on his final campaign: an effort to write his memoirs before he died. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant would cement his place as not only one of America’s greatest heroes but also as one of its most sublime literary voices. Filled with personal intrigues and supported by a cast of colorful characters that included Mark Twain, William Vanderbilt, and P. T. Barnum, Grant’s Last Battle recounts a deeply personal story as dramatic for Grant as any of his battlefield exploits. Author Chris Mackowski, PhD has recounted Grant’s battlefield achievements as a historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and as an academic, he has studied Grant’s literary career. His familiarity with the former president as a general and as a writer brings Grant’s Last Battle to life with new insight, told with the engaging prose that has become the hallmark of the Emerging Civil War Series.
©2015 Savas Beatie (P)2019 Savas Beatie