The Military category has 1,612 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 5,283 ratings. The most-rated is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Strategy
Summary
This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H. Liddell Hart was considered one of the world's foremost military thinkers - a man generally regarded as the "Clausewitz of the 20th century". Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibility, surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in World War I) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkreig in World II). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: Just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.
©1954, 1967 The Executors of Lady Liddell Hart, deceased (P)2019 Tantor
The Great Siege
Summary
Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: a dot of an island in the Mediterranean called Malta, which was occupied by the Knights of Saint John, the cream of the warriors of the Holy Roman Empire. A clash of civilizations was shaping up, the likes of which had not been seen since Persia invaded Greece. Determined to capture Malta and use its port to launch operations against Europe, Suleiman sent an armada and an overwhelming army. A few thousand defenders in Fort Saint Elmo fought to the last man, enduring cruel hardships. When the Turks captured the fort, they took no prisoners and mutilated the defenders’ bodies. Grand Master La Vallette of the Knights reciprocated by decapitating his Turkish prisoners and using their heads to cannonade the enemy. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked, none given. The Great Siege is not merely a gripping tale of brutality, courage, and tenacity but the saga of two mighty civilizations struggling for domination of the known world. Ernle Bradford (1922–1986) was a prominent British historian specializing in the Mediterranean world and naval history. He served in the Royal Navy for the duration of World War II and later traveled throughout the Mediterranean, living for a while on Malta. He was a BBC broadcaster and magazine editor, as well as the author of many acclaimed books, including biographies on Cleopatra, Hannibal, and Caesar.
©2012 Ernle Bradford (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc
The Nazi Hunters
Summary
The gripping "untold story" (Daily Mail) of the Secret Hunters, deep-cover British special forces who pursued Nazi fugitives from justice after World War II. In the late summer of 1944, 80 British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers undertook a covert commando raid, parachuting behind enemy lines into the Vosges Mountains in occupied France to sabotage Nazi-held roads, railways, and ammo dumps, and assassinate high-ranking German officers, undermining the final stand of Hitler's Third Reich. Despite their successes, more than half the men were captured, tortured, and executed. Although the SAS was officially dissolved when the war ended, a top-secret black ops unit was formed, under Churchill's personal command, to hunt down the SS commanders who had murdered their special forces comrades, as well as war criminals from concentration camps who had eluded the Nuremberg trials. Under the cover of full deniability, “The Secret Hunters” waged a covert war of justice and retribution - uncovering the full horror of Hitler's regime as well as dark secrets of Stalin's Russia and the growing threat of what would become the Cold War.
©2015 Damien Lewis (P)2019 Tantor
Securing Zoey
Summary
After an unstable childhood, Zoey Knight landed in Juneau, Alaska, during high school, and has never left. Now in her early 30s, she lives a quiet life that includes part-time caretaker for a beloved father figure. Despite the stability, she occasionally wishes for more adventure. She gets more than she bargained for when a plane she’s in goes down in a remote stretch of wilderness - and the only other passenger is a man she’s crushed on for years. Life as a SEAL doesn’t allow for much spare time, but Mark "Bubba" Wright still regrets not trying harder to visit his pop. Now it’s too late, and the guilt is heavy when he heads to Alaska for the reading of his father’s will. The only bright spot is finding a girl he knew in high school on the same tiny plane. The same woman, it turns out, who’s been taking care of his pop...a girl he crushed on in high school. Struggling to survive in the Alaska back country isn’t the kind of second chance either envisioned, but relying on each other makes Zoey and Bubba’s rekindled attraction hotter than ever. Funny how puzzling out who might want them dead can bring a couple closer together.... Securing Zoey is the fourth book in the SEAL of Protection: Legacy Series. Each book is a stand-alone, with no cliffhanger endings.
©2019 Susan Stoker (P)2019 Susan Stoker
Freedom from Fear
Summary
Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This Pulitzer Prize-winning history tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom-and-bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike. Freedom from Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could. Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed. Please note: The individual volumes of the series have not been published in historical order. Freedom from Fear is number IX in The Oxford History of the United States.
©1999 Oxford University Press, Inc. (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Tamerlane
Summary
Sweeping out of Central Asia in the last half of the 14th century came the Tatar armies of Timur, known as Tamerlane in the West, and one of history's supremely gifted military leaders. With consummate skill, Tamerlane cobbled together a kingdom from the tattered leftovers of various Mongol fiefdoms. He then enlarged that fiefdom into a large and menacing power in the center of Asia. But when the mighty Mongolian empire decided to crush out this upstart rival, it was too late. Tamerlane not only defeats the Mongols, but goes on to vanquish the Persians, the Indians and the mighty Ottoman Turks in successive wars. It was one of the most astounding developments imaginable, doubly so because of its swiftness and decisiveness. And at the time of his death in 1405, Tamerlane was on his way to invade and subdue China with an army of 200,000. Ruling from his fabulous capital of Samarkand, he was a fascinating, controversial, and contradictory tyrant. He was both a destroyer and a builder, a barbarian and a cultured gentleman. He was ostensibly Muslim, but was the scourge of Muslim states, who vilify him to this day. The Tatar empire at his death approached the dimensions of the earlier Khans of Mongolia, yet it melted away immediately after his passing. In yet another superb historical work, Harold Lamb brings the mighty Tatar leader to vivid life and shows how this ruthless commander used his superior intellect and magnetic leadership to overcome one obstacle after another. Tamerlane was truly one of the most remarkable personalities ever to emerge from the steppes of Central Asia.
©2007 Audio Connoisseur (P)2007 Audio Connoisseur
The Deluge
Summary
In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order. A century after the outbreak of fighting, Adam Tooze revisits this seismic moment in history, challenging the existing narrative of the war, its peace, and its aftereffects. From the day the United States enters the war in 1917 to the precipice of global financial ruin, Tooze delineates the world remade by American economic and military power. Tracing the ways in which countries came to terms with America's centrality - including the slide into fascism - The Deluge is a chilling work of great originality that will fundamentally change how we view the legacy of World War I.
©2014 Adam Tooze (P)2014 Tantor
Uncommon Valor
Summary
Uncommon Valor is a look into the formation and operation of an advanced Special Forces recon company during the Vietnam War. Code-named the Studies and Observations Group, SOG was the most covert US military unit in its time and contained only volunteers from such elite units as the Army's Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Air Force Air Commandos. SOG warriors operated in small teams, going behind enemy lines in Laos and Cambodia and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, tasked with performing special reconnaissance, sabotaging North Vietnamese Army ammunition, attempting to rescue downed US pilots, and other black ops missions. During that time, Forward Operating Base-2's (FOB-2's) recon company became the most highly decorated unit of the Vietnam War, with five of its men earning the Medal of Honor and eight earning the Distinguished Service Cross - America's second highest military award for valor. Purple Hearts were earned by SOG veterans at a pace unparalleled in American wars of the 20th century, with casualties at times exceeding 100 percent. One, Bob Howard, was wounded on 14 different occasions, received eight Purple Hearts, was written up after three different missions for the Medal of Honor, and emerged from Vietnam as the most highly decorated soldier since World War II's Audie Murphy.
©2018 Stephen L. Moore (P)2020 Tantor
Forgotten Ally
Summary
The epic, untold story of China's devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan. For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West. Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China's Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists' fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past 10 years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang's American chief of staff, the unforgettable "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China's wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice. Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II, yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No 20th-century event was as crucial in shaping China's worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.
©2013 Rana Mitter (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Earth Is Weeping
Summary
With the end of the Civil War, the nation recommenced its expansion onto traditional Indian tribal lands, setting off a wide-ranging conflict that would last more than three decades. In an exploration of the wars and negotiations that destroyed tribal ways of life even as they made possible the emergence of the modern United States, Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the encroachment experienced by the tribes and the tribal conflicts over whether to fight or make peace and explores the squalid lives of soldiers posted to the frontier and the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. As the action moves from Kansas and Nebraska to the Southwestern desert to the Dakotas and the Pacific Northwest, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of other military and political figures as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud. For the first time, The Earth Is Weeping brings them all together in the fullest account to date of how the West was won.
©2016 Peter Cozzens (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Terrible Victory
Summary
On September 4, 1944, Antwerp, Europe’s largest port, fell to the Second British Army and it seemed the war would soon be won. But Antwerp was of little value unless the West Scheldt Estuary linking it to the North Sea was also in Allied hands. In his greatest blunder of the war, Field Marshal Montgomery turned his back on the port, leaving the First Canadian Army to fight its way up the long coastal flank. By the time the Canadians and others serving with them reached the area, it had been transformed into a fortress manned by troops ordered to fight to the death. Crushing the Nazi defenders required all of the Canadians’ courage, endurance and skill. The battle that raged until November was Canada’s bloodiest of World War II, costing more than 6,000 casualties.
©2007 Mark Zuehlke (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Rescuing Macie
Summary
From New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Susan Stoker comes a new story in her Delta Force Heroes series.... After years of estrangement, Mercedes Laughlin has finally reconciled with her older brother. It should be the happiest time of her life, getting to know Truck and his new wife...and it would be, if an ex wasn’t causing her trouble. Add in Truck’s boss, Colonel Colton Robinson, an amazingly distracting man whom she met under embarrassing circumstances, and Macie’s got a bit more on her plate than she can handle. From the moment they met, Colt was fascinated by Macie, and helping her through an anxiety attack at her brother’s wedding didn’t diminish the appeal. He’d do his best to sweep her off her feet, if not for a little voice telling him to tread lightly - until a frantic phone call changes the plan. Macie’s being targeted, and Colt’s determined to keep her safe while he and her brother eliminate the threat. Colt isn’t about to let his friend lose his sister again so soon...or miss his own chance at a happy ending with Macie before they’ve barely had a beginning.
©2019 Susan Stoker (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Pearl Harbor
Summary
Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed 20th-century America - Pearl Harbor - based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times best-selling author. The America we live in today was born not on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941, when almost 400 Japanese planes attacked the US Pacific Fleet, killing 2,400 men and sinking or damaging 16 ships. In Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness, Craig Nelson follows, moment by moment, the sailors, soldiers, pilots, admirals, generals, emperors, and presidents, all starting with a pre-polio assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, attending the laying of the keel of the USS Arizona at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, against the backdrop of the imperial, military, and civilian leaders of Japan lurching into ultranationalist fascism, all culminating in an insanely daring scheme to shock the Allies with a technologically revolutionary mission in one of the boldest military stories ever told - one with consequences that continue to echo in our lives today. Besides the little-understood history of how and why Japan attacked America, we can hear the abandoned record player endlessly repeating "Sunrise Serenade" as the Japanese bombs hit the deck of the California; we feel terror as navy wives, helped by their Japanese maids, upturn couches for cover and hide with their children in caves from a rumored invasion; and we understand the mix of frustration and triumph as a lone American teenager shoots down a Japanese bomber. Backed by a research team's five years of efforts with archives and interviews, producing nearly a million pages of documents, as well as a thorough reexamination of the original evidence produced by federal investigators, this definitive history provides a blow-by-blow account from both the Japanese and American perspectives and is a historical drama on the greatest scale. Nelson delivers all the terror, chaos, violence, tragedy, and heroism of the attack in stunning detail and offers surprising conclusions about the tragedy's unforeseen and resonant consequences.
©2016 Craig Nelson (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Quadruple Duty: A Military Reverse Harem Romance
Summary
Needed: Community girlfriend for (four) Army Ranger Specialists at incredible lake house estate. Wife material. Long term only. The ad was ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous! Yet for Sammara Madsen, bored in life and unlucky in love? The concept made her stomach do a sexy barrel roll. After a chance encounter with a gorgeous soldier reveals the opportunity of a lifetime, Sammara goes along out of simple curiosity. Yet when she falls in love with the beautiful mansion as well as the three other handsome Rangers who live there? The idea of being shared between them as their girlfriend doesn't seem so outrageous anymore. Kyle is the charming, sculpted epitome of the perfect man. Dakota, the beautiful giant - and quintessential country boy. Ryan is the brooding, motorcycle-riding bad boy who shares Sammara's lonely past, and Briggs is the mysterious alpha mercenary, dark and enigmatic, with wounds only a lover could heal. Can Sammara succeed in fulfilling her role to each of her beautiful new boyfriends; that of friend, lover, and so much more? Or will sinister unknown forces crush their budding five-way relationship before it can even begin? Contains mature themes.
©2018 Krista Wolf (P)2019 Tantor
Danger Zone
Summary
They train to serve their country. They strive to be the best. But only a select few can be.... The Elite Mateo Morgan Call Sign: Solo Reckless, arrogant, and bold, Solo is as known in the US Navy for his bad-boy reputation as he is for his skills as a fighter pilot. It’s a surprise to his peers, then, when he’s chosen to train and compete at the most prestigious naval aviation academy in the world. Mission Rules: 1. Kick everyone’s ass. 2. Do whatever it takes to win. 3. Do your best to distract the competition. 4. Especially when that competition is a gorgeous blue-eyed perfectionist who makes your blood run hot. Grant Hughes Call Sign: Panther Disciplined, smart, and confident, Panther can’t afford not to play by the rules. As the son of a top Navy commander, all eyes are on him, and being anything less than number one is unacceptable. Mission Rules: 1. Keep it safe in the air. 2. Prove you’re more than Commander Hughes’s son. 3. No distractions. Stay focused. 4. Don’t fall for your competition - especially not the rebellious heartbreaker with lips made for sinning. In the heat of the hot California sun, tempers flare and desires ignite as Solo and Panther try to resist their attraction while fighting to be number one. With passion this intense, the question remains: Who’s gonna come out on top?
©2020 Brooke Blaine & Ella Frank (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Balkan Ghosts
Summary
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic. This new edition of Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo War, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.
©1993, 1996, 2005 Robert D. Kaplan (P)2020 Tantor
Fall and Rise
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La delivers his most compelling and vital work yet - a spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting narrative, years in the making, that weaves together myriad stories to create the definitive portrait of 9/11. In the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack, then-Boston Globe journalist Mitchell Zuckoff led a team that reported and wrote the lead news stories and a series of pieces about 9/11 victims and their families. It was the beginning of an obsession with that momentous day and a commitment to tell its complete true story. Fall and Rise is a 9/11 work like no other. Based on years of meticulous reporting, it gives voice as never before to both the lost and the saved. Zuckoff masterfully braids the stories of what happened in New York, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, into a mesmerizing account that details the minute-by-minute experiences of those whose lives were forever altered by that day. Zuckoff puts us in the center of events with numerous men and women caught up in the terrible attacks - beside a young, out-of-work actor stuck in an elevator in the North Tower of the World Trade Center; among the heroes aboard United Airlines Flight 93; inside the badly damaged Pentagon with a veteran trapped in the inferno; accompanying the first firefighters on the scene in rural Shanksville; in the company of workers at offices in the World Trade Center; among a team of New York firefighters racing against time to save an injured woman and themselves; and alongside families flying to see loved ones across the country who suddenly face terrorists bent on murder. Fall and Rise opens new avenues of understanding for anyone who thinks they know the story of that tragic day and illuminates as never before the extraordinary ordinary people from all walks of life caught up in tragic circumstances they could neither understand nor control. Destined to become a classic, Fall and Rise is a tribute to the dead and the living and a testament to the power of the human spirit to triumph even in the darkest hour. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Mitchell Zuckoff (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Dunkirk
Summary
The epic true story of Dunkirk - now a major motion picture written and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, and Mark Rylance. The Battle of Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, is remembered as a stunning defeat yet a major victory as well. The Nazis had beaten back the Allies and pushed them across France to the northern port of Dunkirk. In the ultimate race against time, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were daringly evacuated across the Channel. This moment of German aggression was used by Winston Churchill as a call to Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war. Now historian Joshua Levine explores the real lives of those soldiers, bombed and strafed on the beaches for days on end, without food or ammunition; the civilians whose boats were overloaded; the airmen who risked their lives to buy their companions on the ground precious time; and those who did not escape.
©2017 Joshua Levine (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The British Empire
Summary
Here is the story of how the English acquired their vast domain; how they ruled, maintained, and exploited it; and how, within decades, they presided over its dissolution. Here are Britain's triumphs and also her stinging defeats, her heroes and her scoundrels. It is a full and fascinating chronicle of the growth of the British Empire and its people and of the impact that empire had on the rest of the world.
©2014 American Heritage (P)2017 HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books
Beneath This Mask
Summary
Gael Peterson has spent years hiding behind the enhanced abilities he wears like a mask, even though he is an important, confident member of the FBI’s exclusive H.E.R.O. team. The hurt and betrayal of his mom’s abandonment and his father’s fists are secrets buried deep beneath the ugly scars on his face, and he doesn’t trust Jake, his new, regular human partner, with any of them. In a world where those with special abilities like Gael’s are regarded as freaks and monsters, it won’t be easy for him to rely on Jake to have his back, especially when the abilities of a vulnerable, nonspeaking, enhanced child make that child a murder suspect. Tempers rise, and loyalties are challenged, and when the serial killer targeting the enhanced finally sets his sights on Gael, not only will Gael have to trust Jake with his secrets, he might have to trust him to save his life.
©2018 Victoria Sue (P)2018 Dreamspinner Press