Jay Winik has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is 1944.
The Great Upheaval
Summary
It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into monumental revolution. But none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. In The Great Upheaval, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. Winik brings his vast, meticulous research and narrative genius to the cold, dark battlefields and deadly clashes of ideologies that defined this age. Here is a savage world war, the toppling of a great dynasty, and an America struggling to survive at home and abroad. Here, too, is the first modern Holy War between Islam and a resurgent Christian empire. And here is the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage: Washington and Jefferson, Louis XVI and Robespierre, Catherine the Great, Adams, Napoleon, and Selim III. Exquisitely written and utterly compelling, The Great Upheaval vividly depicts an arc of revolutionary fervor stretching from Philadelphia and Paris to St. Petersburg and Cairo, with fateful results. A landmark in historical literature, Winik's gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world.
©2007 Jay Winik (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
1944
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt. It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did or that it would even end well. Nineteen forty-four was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead it saved those democracies - but with a fateful cost. Now, in a superbly told story, Jay Winik, the acclaimed author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval, captures the epic images and extraordinary history as never before. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of millions of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on an all but dying Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Here then, as with D-Day, was a momentous decision for the president. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world's reach, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge - saving Europe's Jews - seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp.
©2015 Jay Winik. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Great Upheaval
Summary
It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into revolution. But in contrast to the way conventional histories tell it, none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. A sweeping, magisterial drama featuring the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage, including Washington, Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great, The Great Upheaval is a gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade that will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world.
©2007 Jay Winik (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
The Modern Scholar
Summary
The American Civil War is perhaps the greatest challenge any democratic society has ever faced. The events of the war are well known. The names of the battles - Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg - have echoed through time and resonate to the present day, as do the names of the leaders - Grant and Sherman, Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. What is less understood is exactly how close the Union came to a permanent break. In this course, award-winning historian Jay Winik examines the climactic period near the end of this devastating conflict - a period that could have destroyed America, but saved it instead. It was a most precarious moment for the South. Atlanta had been overwhelmed, Columbia surrendered and burned, Charleston abandoned. The peace conference at Hampton Roads had been fruitless, and the British and French had refused to intervene. After striking harsh blows against the Union during the six bloodiest weeks of the war, the Army of Northern Virginia had wriggled free of its enemy's clutches and fallen back, assuming a defensive position around the cities of Petersburg and Richmond. Across the slim divide of trenches and water lay U.S. Grant's swelling and mighty Army of the Potomac. Southerners knew this was not the first time in history defenders had been cut to pieces and yet somehow found the will to prevail. They still had four armies in the field, and their guerrilla fighters and cavalry were second to none. Confronted by the prospect of losing everything, they hoped to find a leader who could rescue the south. In the trenches they believed there was such a man, and a weary Abraham Lincoln shared this thought. Robert E. Lee and the generals who looked to him for guidance were as aggressive as ever, not ready to give up or relinquish their Confederate identity. The war was not over, not by a long shot. It is the eve of April 1865. Even today, what followed in the remaining days of the Civil War seems almost miraculous. April 1865 is a month...
©2003 J Winik (P)2003 Recorded Books, LLC