The Americas category has 777 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2,631 ratings. The most-rated is Endurance.
A Stranger Among Saints
Summary
Sometime between 1610 and 1611, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest. The idea for the play came from the real-life shipwreck in 1609 of the Sea Venture, which was caught in a hurricane and grounded on the coast of Bermuda during a voyage to resupply England's troubled colony at Jamestown, in present-day Virginia. A lesser known passenger was Stephen Hopkins. During the 10 months the Sea Venture passengers were marooned on Bermuda, Hopkins was charged with trying to incite a mutiny and condemned to die, only to have his sentence commuted moments before it was to be carried out. In 1620, Hopkins signed on to another colonial venture, joining a group of religious radicals on the Mayflower. The Pilgrims encountered their own tempest, a furor that started when they anchored off Cape Cod and lasted for their first 12 months in the New World. Disease and sickness stole nearly half their number, and their first contacts with the indigenous Americans were contentious. The entire enterprise hung in the balance, and it was during these trials that Hopkins became one of the expedition's leaders, playing a vital role in bridging the divide of suspicion between the English immigrants and their native neighbors.
©2020 Jonathan Mack (P)2020 Tantor
American Heritage History of the American Revolution
Summary
Bruce Lancaster starts his story with an examination of colonial society and the origins of the quarrel with England. He details the ensuing battles and military campaigns from Lexington and Concord to the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, as well as the tense political and social situation of the new nation. The American Heritage History of the American Revolution details the birth of America with insight and depth.
©2014 American Heritage (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The American Revolution
Summary
Explore the captivating history of the American Revolution! In an era where political discourse is becoming increasingly polarized, it is worth reflecting on the circumstances of America’s foundation. This captivating history audiobook presents a general outline of the American Revolution, focusing largely on the period between the outbreak of rebellion in 1765 until the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789. In homage to the original 13 colonies, the audiobook is divided into 13 chapters. In The American Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the American Revolutionary War and the United States of America's Struggle for Independence from Great Britain, you will discover topics such as: Colonial America The Seven Years’ War and its consequences Taxation without representation The road to war David versus Goliath Independence Washington on the ropes The international dimension War in the South Surrender at Yorktown An imperfect union A more perfect union Manifest Destiny And much, much more! So, if you want to learn more about the American Revolution, scroll up and click the "Buy Now" button!
©2018 Captivating History (P)2019 Captivating History
Young Washington
Summary
A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the history of American independence, from the best-selling author of Astoria Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naive and self-absorbed, the 22-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War - a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution. With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. By weaving together Washington’s harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.
©2018 Peter Stark (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Horizontal Vertigo
Summary
At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city. Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city ’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today - one of the world’s leading cultural and financial centers. In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: “Living in the City”, “City Characters”, “Shocks”, “Crossings”, and “Ceremonies”. What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City’s genius loci, its spirit of place.
©2021 Juan Villoro (P)2021 Random House Audio
Greater Gotham
Summary
In this utterly immersive volume, Mike Wallace captures the swings of prosperity and downturn, from the 1898 skyscraper-driven boom to the Bankers' Panic of 1907, the labor upheaval, and violent repression during and after the First World War. Here is New York on a whole new scale, moving from national to global prominence - an urban dynamo driven by restless ambition, boundless energy, immigrant dreams, and Wall Street greed. Within the first two decades of the 20th century, a newly consolidated New York grew exponentially. The city exploded into the air, with skyscrapers jostling for prominence, and dove deep into the bedrock where massive underground networks of subways, water pipes, and electrical conduits sprawled beneath the city to serve a surging population of New Yorkers from all walks of life. New York was transformed in these two decades as the world's second-largest city and now its financial capital, thriving and sustained by the city's seemingly unlimited potential. Wallace's new book matches its predecessor in pure pause-resisting appeal and takes America's greatest city to new heights.
©2017 Mike Wallace (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
John Tyler, the Accidental President
Summary
The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." In this biography of the 10th president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency. Crapol also highlights Tyler's faith in America's national destiny and his belief that boundless territorial expansion would preserve the Union as a slaveholding republic. When Tyler sided with the Confederacy in 1861, he was branded as America's "traitor" president for having betrayed the republic he once led.
©2006 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2019 Tantor
The Great Book of North Carolina: The Crazy History of North Carolina with Amazing Random Facts & Trivia
Summary
How much do you know about the Tar Heel State? There’s so much to learn about North Carolina that even natives of the state don’t know. In this trivia book, you’ll learn more about North Carolina’s history, pop culture, sports, unsolved mysteries, and so much more. In The Great Book of North Carolina, you’ll find the answers to the following questions: How did North Carolina get its name? Why is it known as the “Tar Heel State”? What happened to the “Lost Colony”? Which famous pirate was killed in the Outer Banks? What popular recreational activity was invented in the state? What soda company got its start in North Carolina? Which sport originated from the Tar Heel State? Which NBA legend was raised in North Carolina? What urban legends haunt the state? What’s the most haunted spot in North Carolina? And so much more! This book is packed with facts about North Carolina. Some of the facts in this book may shock you. Others may give you chills. But the one thing they all have in common is that they’re all interesting! Whether you feel like an amateur or a pro on North Carolina trivia, you’re bound to walk away with plenty of new knowledge about the state once you finish this book. Your friends won’t stand a chance at your next trivia night! So, what are you waiting for? Get started now to learn more about North Carolina!
©2019 LAK Publishing (P)2020 LAK Publishing
Great Speeches by the First Ladies of the United States
Summary
Great Speeches by the First Ladies of the United States highlights 25 of the most important and well-known speeches by our nation's first ladies. This collection includes speeches by Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama, and Melania Trump.
©2017 SpeechWorks, a division of SoundWorks, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Northland
Summary
America's northern border is the world's longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. Travel writer Porter Fox spent two years exploring its length by canoe, freighter, and car - and in Northland, he delivers the little-known history of the region and a riveting account of his travels. Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain's adventures; recounts the rise and fall of the iron, wheat, and timber industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and tracks America's fur traders through the Boundary Waters. Northland is full of colorful characters (railroad tycoon James J. Hill, Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Sioux, Captain Meriwether Lewis) and extraordinary landscapes (Glacier National Park, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Montana's Medicine Line country). Throughout, Fox weaves in his encounters with residents, border guards, Indian activists, and militia leaders to give a dynamic portrait of the northland wracked by climate change, water wars, and heightened border security.
©2018 Porter Fox (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Big Roads
Summary
From author Earl Swift comes the surprising history of the U.S. interstate system, a fascinating route through the dreams, discoveries, and protests that shaped these mighty roads.
©2011 Earl Swift (P)2011 Tantor
21 Months a Captive
Summary
On May 19, 1836, Fort Parker in Texas was overwhelmed by a band of Comanche Indians. Some residents were brutally murdered, others taken prisoner. Among those captured was 11-year-old Cynthia Parker, who would remain with the Comanche for 24 years and give birth to famed Chief Quanah. Another captive was 17-year-old Rachel Plummer, mother of one, pregnant with her second child. She would soon have her first-born ripped from her arms, never to be seen again, and later watched as her second-born was killed before her eyes. After 21 months of captivity that destroyed her health, she was purchased and returned to her family. In this extraordinary account, her father tells of that horrible day when the fort was attacked, and his desperate efforts to find and retrieve the captives. Rachel details her terrible enslavement and how she eventually fought back.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
Pirates: The Golden Age of Piracy: A History from Beginning to End
Summary
Pirates dominate movie box-office profits, they are theme park entertainment, and they occupy a place in popular culture that has outlasted the era when they originally ruled the seas. Contemporary audiences who are safe from the pistols and cutlasses of the men who sailed the Caribbean, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to prey upon ships and claim their cargo may find it hard to reconcile the perceived glamour of Captain Jack Sparrow with the authentic bloodlust and greed of the real pirates who killed without conscience, kidnapped innocent victims for ransom, and ravaged, bribed, and robbed their way into legend. Tragut Rais, Grace O’Malley, William Kidd, Blackbeard, and their colleagues were dangerous adventurers who lived at a time when piracy was an economic enterprise that yielded both wealth and a hangman’s noose. This audiobook will teach you about: When pirates owned the seas The roots of piracy The original pirates of the Caribbean The pirate round Piracy after the Spanish War of Succession The pirates of the Barbary Coast The modern-day pirates Most pirates had a short life before they were captured and executed. A few lucky ones did die of natural causes, but they were rare. Nonetheless, those tales of swashbuckling adventure under the Jolly Roger continue to mesmerize us. Listen to more about the reality of the golden age of piracy to find out whether or not Hollywood’s version can possibly compare with the truth.
©2016 Hourly History (P)2018 Hourly History
Inca Mythology
Summary
If you're looking for a captivating collection of Inca myths, then pay attention.... The myths of the Inca gods in the first section of the audiobook explain how the world was created and also detail the adventures of various deities as they vie for supremacy or act as tricksters in the worlds of mortals and huacas alike. The second section contains the origin myth of the Inca Empire, which was used to justify Inca political legitimacy. This section also presents other tales involving the mythologized deeds of Inca emperors and their interactions with divine beings. The final section contains a collection of Andean folktales and a prose narrative version of the 18th-century drama Apu Ollantay, which may have been based on an ancient Inca tale and which tells the story of the forbidden love between Cosi-Collyur, daughter of the Inca Pachacuti, and the brave warrior Ollantay, whose name also graces the Inca fortress of Ollantay-tambo just north of Cuzco. Inca Mythology: Captivating Inca Myths of Gods, Goddesses, and Legendary Creatures invites you to go on a startling journey and discover: Stories of the Gods Inca political myths Five Andean folktales and an Inca play And much, much more! So, if you want a captivating collection of Inca myths, click the “Buy Now” button!
©2019 Matt Clayton (P)2019 Matt Clayton
The Harvest Gypsies
Summary
A collection of newspaper articles about Dust Bowl migrants in California’s Central Valley by the author of The Grapes of Wrath. Three years before his triumphant novel The Grapes of Wrath - a fictional portrayal of a Depression-era family fleeing Oklahoma during a disastrous period of drought and dust storms - John Steinbeck wrote seven articles for the San Francisco News about these history-making events and the hundreds of thousands who made their way west to work as farm laborers. With the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter and the emotional power of a novelist in his prime, Steinbeck toured the squatters’ camps and Hoovervilles of rural California. The Harvest Gypsies gives us an eyewitness account of the horrendous Dust Bowl migration, and provides the factual foundation for Steinbeck’s masterpiece. '”Steinbeck’s potent blend of empathy and moral outrage was perfectly matched by the photographs of Dorothea Lange, who had caught the whole saga with her camera - the tents, the jalopies, the bindlestiffs, the pathos and courage of uprooted mothers and children.” (San Francisco Review of Books) “Steinbeck’s journalism shares the enduring quality of his famous novel.... Certain to engage students of both American literature and labor history.” (Publishers Weekly)
©1936 The San Francisco News (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Death in a Promised Land
Summary
Widely believed to be the most extreme incidence of white racial violence against African Americans in modern United States history, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the destruction of more than 1,000 Black-owned businesses and homes as well as the murder of between 50 and 300 Black residents. Exhaustively researched and critically acclaimed, Death in a Promised Land is the definitive account of the Tulsa race riot and its aftermath, in which much of the history of the destruction and violence was covered up. It is the compelling story of racial ideologies, Southwestern politics, incendiary journalism, and an embattled Black community’s struggle to hold onto its land and freedom. More than just the chronicle of one of the nation’s most devastating racial pogroms, this critically acclaimed study of American race relations is, above all, a gripping story of terror and lawlessness and of courage, heroism, and human perseverance.
©1982 Louisiana State University Press (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Problem of Democracy
Summary
"Told with authority and style.... Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship." (The Wall Street Journal) How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy, from the New York Times best-selling author of White Trash. John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat. Though they spent many years apart - and as their careers spanned Europe, Washington DC, and their family home south of Boston - they maintained a close bond through extensive letter writing, debating history, political philosophy, and partisan maneuvering. The problem of democracy is an urgent problem; the father-and-son presidents grasped the perilous psychology of politics and forecast what future generations would have to contend with: citizens wanting heroes to worship and covetous elites more than willing to mislead. Rejection at the polls, each after one term, does not prove that the presidents Adams had erroneous ideas. Intellectually, they were what we today call "independents", reluctant to commit blindly to an organized political party. No historian has attempted to dissect their intertwined lives as Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein do in this audio, and there is no better time than the present to learn from the American nation's most insightful malcontents.
©2019 Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Trail of Tears
Summary
Discover the remarkable history of the Trail of Tears... In the early 1800s, the five civilized tribes - the Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Choctaw - were living in lands allocated to them by the United States government in present-day Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. In general, the Native American people lived in peace with the increasing numbers of white settlers coming to these areas, though there were occasional conflicts as settlers took lands that belonged to the tribes. To many white Americans, the existence of these people in lands that could be used for the expansion of the United States was unacceptable, and many wanted the Native American to be removed and relocated to a new area, west of the Mississippi River, which was not, then, of interest to settlers. In 1830, the administration of President Andrew Jackson signed into law a new piece of legislation - the Indian Removal Act - which gave the government the power to force these tribes to relocate to new lands in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The forced relocation that followed have become known as the Trail of Tears. Some were conducted with extreme brutality, and many thousands of Native American people died as a direct result. Once they had been uprooted from their homelands, many tribes found themselves unable to continue with ways of life which they had followed for thousands of years, and the nature and character of Native American culture and society was forever changed. This is an account of the privations of these forced relocation and the indifference of the US government and the majority of Americans to the suffering they caused to the Native American people. This is the story of the Trail of Tears. Discover a plethora of chapters, such as: Settlers Move West Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act Creek Removal in 1834 Chickasaw Removal in 1837 Cherokee Removal in 1838 And much more! So, if you want a concise and informative book on the Trail of Tears, simply scroll up and click the "buy now" button for instant access!
©2019 Hourly History (P)2020 Hourly History
Three Roads to the Alamo
Summary
Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive work about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis - the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history - and about what really happened in that battle.
©1998 William C. Davis (P)2020 Tantor
Dangerous Economies
Summary
Before the American Revolution, the people who lived in British North America were not just colonists; they were also imperial subjects. To think of 18th-century New Yorkers as Britons rather than incipient Americans allows us fresh investigations into their world. How was the British Empire experienced by those who lived at its margins? How did the mundane affairs of ordinary New Yorkers affect the culture at the center of an enormous commercial empire? Dangerous Economies is a history of New York culture and commerce in the first two thirds of the 18th century, when Britain was just beginning to catch up with its imperial rivals, France and Spain. In that sparsely populated city on the fringe of an empire, enslaved Africans rubbed elbows with white indentured servants while the elite strove to maintain ties with European genteel culture. The transience of the city's people, goods, and fortunes created a notably fluid society in which establishing one's own status or verifying another's was a challenge. New York's shifting imperial identity created new avenues for success but also made success harder to define and demonstrate socially. Such a mobile urban milieu was the ideal breeding ground for crime and conspiracy, which became all too evident in 1741, when 30 slaves were executed and more than 70 other people were deported after being found guilty - on dubious evidence - of plotting a revolt. This sort of violent outburst was the unforseen but unsurprising result of the seething culture that existed at the margins of the British Empire. The book is published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
©2009 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks