Michael W. Simmons has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 2★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is The Rothschilds.
The Rothschilds
Summary
Who are the Rothschilds? Still making headlines today, their fascinating history stretches back to the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt, Germany, where the first Rothschild ancestors lived in the House of the Red Shield. There, one man and his five brilliant sons made their fortune as court agents to a royal prince. It would take Napoleon's earth-shattering quest to conquer Europe to scatter the five brothers to the four winds, but when the dust of war settled, there was a Rothschild brother and a Rothschild bank in five cities: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples, and Vienna. The era of haute finance had begun, and the legend of a banking dynasty more powerful than any royal family in history was established. In this book, you will follow the progress of the Rothschild family through the centuries. Their ranks included not only bankers and financiers but doctors, scientists, bomb experts, and collectors who amassed not only some of the finest art collections in Europe, but also one of the finest bug collections. Find out for yourself how the Rothschilds prevented wars, crowned and uncrowned kings, helped win the battle of Waterloo, looked down their noses at Nazis, and established a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
©2017 Michael W. Simmons (P)2017 Michael W. Simmons
John D. Rockefeller
Summary
John D. Rockefeller is held to be one of the wealthiest men who ever lived; he is also one of the most controversial figures in American history. Born of the unlikely union between a strict Baptist matriarch and her husband, a bigamist, alleged rapist, and snake-oil salesman, Rockefeller's early childhood was spent learning how to shoulder an adult's responsibility for his family and turn a deaf ear to the gossip that followed wherever his father went. This book contains highlights from the extraordinarily long life of a man many believed to be little better than a criminal, preying on small business owners to establish the supremacy of the Standard Oil Trust. John D. Rockefeller crushed his competitors and sparked massive public outrage against his businesses. Yet he also saved thousands of lives and helped establish respect for evidence-based medicine in the United States. From his teen years as a bookkeeper in a small commodities trading firm, to his imperial rule over the oil industry, to his early retirement and the decades he spent establishing philanthropic trusts in the fields of education and medicine, you will learn that there is no simple way to pass judgment on John D. Rockefeller's life.
©2017 Michael W. Simmons (P)2017 Michael W. Simmons
Romanov
Summary
The Romanov family ruled as tsars and emperors of all Russia for just over 300 years - 19 men and women in total, some of them brilliant, some of them mad, most of them somewhere in between. The story of the Romanovs begins in Moscow in 1613, and ends in Ekaterinburg in 1918, at the beginning of a revolution, where Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children were slaughtered by a Soviet death squad. In this book, you will learn about the lives and reigns of each Romanov emperor and empress. Hear about Peter the Great, who kept company with peasants and pie sellers but had his own son tortured to death; Catherine the Great, who finally convinced Europe that there was more to be found in the far north than just snow and barbarians; Alexander I, the gallant emperor who famously defeated Napoleon in 1812; Alexander II, who freed the serfs and survived five assassination attempts before perishing in the sixth; and Nicholas II, who ended the Romanov dynasty in 1917 when he abdicated the throne on behalf of himself and his son, the hemophiliac Alexei, who would never be emperor but is now considered a saint.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
Peter the Great
Summary
As the third son of the legendary Tsar Alexis, Peter the Great was never supposed to rule. But when his older brother died, the 10-year-old boy was proclaimed tsar by a cheering multitude outside the walls of the Kremlin. His destiny seemed assured-until a bloody rebellion erupted, forcing him to watch as his family was impaled and torn limb from limb by a mob of furious soldiers. From that day forward, Peter was determined to tear down the Old Muscovy and usher in a new Russia - dragging his backwards, traditional nobles into the 18th century by their long, bushy beards when necessary. He became the first tsar to sail the ocean and the first Romanov to visit Europe. Standing six foot, eight inches tall, Peter took Europe in his immense stride while laboring as a common carpenter in order to learn the skills he needed to modernize his army and build Russia's first navy. From his childhood adventures in Moscow's German quarter to his earth-shaking victory at the Battle of Poltava, where he singlehandedly broke the back of the Swedish empire, the life of Peter the Great was unlike that of any other man of his time.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
Catherine the Great
Summary
Born an obscure German princess who suffered under the control of a domineering, narcissistic mother, the 14-year-old Princess Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst seemed to be destined for a minor marriage and a forgettable career. Destiny had other plans for her: summoned to Russia, then considered by most Europeans to be a vast, primitive wasteland, devoid of culture or sophistication, she became the Grand Duchess Ekaterina, wife of the future emperor Peter III. What followed her short, unhappy marriage was a legendary rise to supreme power. At the age of 33, the Grand Duchess Catherine became the Empress Catherine II, ruler in her own right of the largest empire on earth. In this book, you will learn how, during Catherine's lonely years as a neglected wife in the court of the Empress Elisabeth, she bided her time and amassed the necessary political and military support to overthrow the heir to the Romanov dynasty and seize his throne. You will also learn why, over the course of her 34-year reign, which saw rebellions, foreign wars, popular uprisings, and a string of jealous lovers vying for her favor, she came to be remembered by history under the name conferred upon her by her own people: Catherine the Great.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
William Shakespeare
Summary
William Shakespeare was the most brilliant writer in the history of the English language. But his life is a complete mystery to us. No biographies were written for almost 100 years after his death. His friends, family, and all those who knew him as a poet in London's theatrical scene died before anyone could ask them: who was Shakespeare? What was he like? What were his habits, his amusements, his passions? The only answers we have are those we can divine from his plays and poems. Shakespeare's uncanny ability to grasp the technical languages of skilled professions makes it difficult to judge what precisely he got up to during his "lost years"- the two periods of life in which he disappears from the historical record entirely. In this book, you will learn what it is we know for certain about William Shakespeare, and by delving into the plays, you will discover all that can be surmised about his uneasy relationship with authority, the religious conflicts in his family, his relationship with the father who fulfilled his lifelong dream to become a gentleman, and his own unexpected ambition: to become a wealthy, respectable country landlord in his hometown of Stratford.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
Marie Antoinette: Reversal of Fortune
Summary
Three-foot-tall hairdos, "let them eat cake", and the guillotine: this is the sum total of what most people know about Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France. The wife of King Louis XVI and the daughter of Maria Teresa, Holy Roman Empress, did indeed wear her hair three feet high, when she wasn’t wearing straw bonnets and simple muslin gowns and playing at being a dairymaid at her fantasy retreat of Petit Trianon. But she never said "let them eat cake", nor was she the vain, shallow creature who was said to have drained the coffers of France to pay for her luxuriant amusements. The guillotine was real, however. In this audiobook, you will hear about the life of the woman who was born an insignificant archduchess and defied all expectations for her future by marrying the heir to the throne of France, only to go seven years without consummating her marriage. The victim of a misogynistic, sex-obsessed tabloid pamphlet industry, Marie Antoinette went from being a popular young queen to the most hated woman in France. The national obsession with the foreign-born queen ignited a revolution, destroying a thousand year old monarchy - and the lives of everyone she loved.
©2017 Michael W. Simmons (P)2017 Michael W. Simmons
A Dictionary of American Presidents Vol. 1
Summary
A Dictionary of American Presidents Vol. 1: Presidents 1-24 George Washington to Grover Cleveland offers an introductory glimpse into the background, upbringing, education, and political agendas of every American president from the years following the Revolutionary War to the end of the 19th century and Reconstruction. The first in a two-volume collection, this book offers the reader the opportunity to trace the development of the United States and the office of the Presidency from its inception in 1789 to the brink of the 20th century. This lively, informative examination of the people and events that shaped the first one hundred years of the American presidency answers the question: what sort of person does it take to shepherd a new nation from its rocky, tumultuous beginnings, to an era of increasing international prestige and geographical expansion? From the Founding Fathers and the Era of Good Feelings, to the Civil War and the Gilded Age, from Virginia plantations to log cabins on the western frontier, from self-taught lawyers to storied military heroes, from the Bill of Rights to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution: the story of the American presidency is neither more nor less than the story of the American nation.
©2018 Michael W. Simmons (P)2018 Michael W. Simmons
Thomas Edison
Summary
Everyone knows that Thomas Edison is America's most famous inventor. But what exactly drove him to invent? Have you ever heard of the phonograph or the kinetoscope? And what made his incandescent light bulb so special anyway? In this book, you will learn about Edison's busy childhood as a young inventor and entrepreneur conducting chemical experiments aboard a moving train car, his nomadic youth as a wandering telegraph operator, and about the five miraculous years of invention that produced the phonograph and the incandescent light bulb, inventions that made Edison the most famous American in history before he was 35 years old. Through the inclusion of primary documents, including letters written by Edison himself, his diary entries, and newspaper articles from the 19th century and after, this book will help you see through the eyes of an ordinary American glimpsing electric light for the first time, or listening to records on the phonograph, or viewing the very first motion pictures. From his friendship with Henry Ford, to his work for the American Navy during World War I, Thomas Edison was the original American hero, lighting all of history with his extraordinary inventions.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
Mary, Queen of Scots: White Queen, Red Queen
Summary
Mary Stuart became the Queen of Scots when she was only a week old. While she was still a baby, Henry VIII burned and pillaged the Scottish countryside to force her betrothal to his son Edward. The skillful politicking of her mother, Marie de Guise, resulted in Mary’s betrothal to the son of the French king when Mary was five years old. She was sent to France to be educated as a French princess. There, "the little Queen" was adored and admired. But when her husband died a year after succeeding to his father’s throne, Mary surrendered to duty and left her beloved France behind to return to the homeland she barely remembered, and be Queen of the Scots in deed as well as in name. Six years, two disastrous marriages, two sordid murders, and one abduction later, Mary Stuart went from being an adored and popular young queen to being the most hated woman in Scotland. Taken captive by her own lords and nobles, she was forced to abdicate the throne. A daring escape in the middle of the night led to a heroic last stand against her enemies. In the end, however, the last queen of Scotland was forced to take refuge with the most dangerous woman in Britain: Elizabeth I.
©2017 Michael W. Simmons (P)2017 Michael W. Simmons
Queen Victoria
Summary
When we think of Queen Victoria, whose reign eclipsed that of every British king and queen before her, we imagine the Widow of Windsor, reclusive in her palace, draped in permanent mourning for her beloved husband, Albert, the Prince Consort, who died in 1861. But this book takes the listener on a journey that starts before her marriage, before she came to be seen as the static icon of the age that bears her name. From her isolated childhood at Kensington Palace, where her daily life was controlled by a man who plotted to one day seize power through her, Victoria emerged shortly after her 18th birthday as a fully-fledged queen, a young woman who gloried in her newfound power and freedom. Over the next 20 years, she fell in love - twice, if the rumors are to be believed - bore nine children, and kept a daily diary which recorded her private, inward struggles: how to reconcile her role as monarch with her duties as a wife and mother, how to protect her country and her throne in an age of revolution. Ultimately, listeners of this book will discover how Queen Victoria redefined the monarchy for her own age - and afterwards.
©2017 Michael W. Simmons (P)2017 Michael W. Simmons
Alexander Hamilton
Summary
What did Alexander Hamilton ever do besides get shot in a duel by Aaron Burr? When it comes to the American government, the answer is practically everything. Born in the West Indies, Hamilton was the illegitimate child of a Scottish nobleman who lost a fortune in sugar plantations. Orphaned as a teenager, he came to America in search of an education, a home, and the war that would at last bring him fame and honor. As George Washington's most trusted aide, Hamilton helped to win the American Revolution - but after the war, his enemies lost no time accusing him of trying to sell his country back to the British. He was the most powerful member of Washington's presidential cabinet - so why did Adams and Jefferson hate him so much? In this book, you will learn how the author of the Federalist Papers and the first Secretary of the Treasury nearly ruined his career by fighting duels, seducing women, and getting involved in America's first sex scandal. The duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is the most famous duel in American history, but you'll have to come up with your own answer to its greatest mystery: who shot first, Hamilton or Burr?
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons
Nikola Tesla
Summary
Nikola Tesla: inventor or magician? Tesla was one of the most famous inventors who ever lived, but after his death, he was nearly forgotten. He was a celebrity during the height of America's Gilded Age. In this book, you will hear about his friendship with Mark Twain, his furious competition with his former employer Thomas Edison, his uneasy relationship with billionaire J.P. Morgan, and his rivalry with Albert Einstein. During his lifetime, Tesla revolutionized the field of electrical engineering with his most famous invention: the induction motor. But that wasn't all he contributed to the world of technology. His coils, turbines, robotic boats, and mysterious "death ray" continue to beguile the imagination and inspire the inventors of the 21st century. But who was Tesla really? This book will take you from his early childhood in Croatia, where he experienced strange optical visions and "luminous phenomenon" that gave him near super-human powers of memory and visualization, to the "War of the Currents", Thomas Edison's bizarre campaign to ruin Tesla's reputation. From trying to fight the Spanish American War with robots, to electrifying the skies of the Colorado desert, to starting an earthquake in the middle of New York City, learn how Nikola Tesla shaped the world we live in today.
©2016 Michael W. Simmons (P)2016 Michael W. Simmons