Joseph Wheelan has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Midnight in the Pacific.
Midnight in the Pacific
Summary
A sweeping narrative history - the first in over 20 years - of America's first major offensive of World War II, the brutal, no-quarter-given campaign to take Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal. From early August until mid-November of 1942, US marines, sailors, and pilots struggled for dominance against an implacable enemy: Japanese soldiers, inculcated with the bushido tradition of death before dishonor, avatars of bayonet combat - close-up, personal, and gruesome. The glittering prize was Henderson Airfield. Japanese planners knew that if they neutralized the airfield, the battle was won. So did the marines who stubbornly defended it. The outcome of the long slugfest remained in doubt under the pressure of repeated Japanese air, land, and sea operations. And losses were heavy. At sea, in a half-dozen fiery combats, the US Navy fought the Imperial Japanese Navy to a draw, but at a cost of more than 4,500 sailors. More American sailors died in these battles off Guadalcanal than in all previous US wars, and each side lost 24 warships. On land, more than 1,500 soldiers and marines died, and the air war claimed more than 500 US planes. Japan's losses on the island were equally devastating - starving Japanese soldiers called it "the island of death". But when the attritional struggle ended, American marines, sailors, and airmen had halted the Japanese juggernaut that for five years had whirled through Asia and the Pacific. Guadalcanal was America's first major ground victory against Japan and, most importantly, the Pacific War's turning point. Published on the 75th anniversary of the battle and utilizing vivid accounts written by the combatants at Guadalcanal, along with marine corps and army archives and oral histories, Midnight in the Pacific is both a sweeping narrative and a compelling drama of individual marines, soldiers, and sailors caught in the crosshairs of history. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Joseph Wheelan (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Their Last Full Measure
Summary
As the Confederacy steadily crumbled under the Union army's relentless hammering, dramatic developments in early 1865 brought the bloody war to a swift climax and denouement. Their Last Full Measure relates these thrilling events, which followed one another like falling dominoes - from Fort Fisher's capture to the burning of South Carolina's capital to the fall of Petersburg and Richmond and, ultimately, to Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination. Acclaimed historian Joseph Wheelan braids the disparate events into a compelling, fast-paced account of powerful armies; civil and military leaders, both flawed and splendid; and ordinary people, black and white, struggling to survive the war's wreckage in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
©2015 Joseph Wheelan (P)2015 Tantor
Bloody Okinawa
Summary
A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle - the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign - the last of its kind. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, more than 184,000 US troops began landing on the only Japanese home soil invaded during the Pacific war. Just 350 miles from mainland Japan, Okinawa was to serve as a forward base for Japan's invasion in the fall of 1945. Nearly 140,000 Japanese and auxiliary soldiers fought with suicidal tenacity from hollowed-out, fortified hills and ridges. Under constant fire and in the rain and mud, the Americans battered the defenders with artillery, aerial bombing, naval gunfire, and every infantry tool. Waves of Japanese kamikaze and conventional warplanes sank 36 warships, damaged 368 others, and killed nearly 5,000 US seamen. When the slugfest ended after 82 days, more than 125,000 enemy soldiers lay dead - along with 7,500 US ground troops. Tragically, more than 100,000 Okinawa civilians perished while trapped between the armies. The brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.
©2020 Joseph Wheelan (P)2020 Hachette Books
Jefferson's War
Summary
Two centuries ago, without congressional or public debate, a president who is thought of today as peaceable, Thomas Jefferson, launched America's first war on foreign soil, a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, and encrypted intelligence, and launched from foreign bases. For nearly 200 years, the Barbary pirates had haunted the Mediterranean, enslaving tens of thousands of Europeans and extorting millions of dollars from their countries in a mercenary holy war against Christendom. Sailing in sleek corsairs built for speed and plunder, the Barbary pirates attacked European and American merchant shipping with impunity, triumphing as much by terror as force of arms. The author traces the events leading to Jefferson's belief that peace with the Barbary States and respect from Europe could be achieved only through the "medium of war".
©2003 Joseph Wheelan (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Terrible Swift Sword
Summary
Alongside Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan is the least known of the triumvirate of generals most responsible for winning the Civil War. Yet, before Sherman's famous march through Georgia, it was General Sheridan who introduced scorched-earth warfare to the South, and it was his Cavalry Corps that compelled Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Sheridan's innovative cavalry tactics and "total war" strategy became staples of 20th-century warfare. After the war, Sheridan ruthlessly suppressed the raiding Plains Indians much as he had the Confederates - by killing warriors and burning villages - but he also defended reservation Indians from corrupt agents and contractors. Sheridan, an enthusiastic hunter and conservationist, later ordered the U.S. cavalry to occupy and operate Yellowstone National Park to safeguard it from commercial exploitation.
©2012 Joseph Wheelan (P)2013 Tantor