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.
This Hallowed Ground
Summary
This audiobook is the classic one-volume history of the American Civil War by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton. Covering events from the prelude of the conflict to the death of Lincoln, Catton blends a gripping narrative with deep, yet unassuming, scholarship to bring the war alive in an almost novelistic way. It is this gift for narrative that led contemporary critics to compare this book to War and Peace, and call it a "modern Iliad." Now over 50 years old, This Hallowed Ground remains one of the best-loved and admired general Civil War books: a perfect introduction to listeners beginning their exploration of the conflict, as well as a thrilling analysis and reimagining of its events for experienced students of the war.
©1956 Bruce Catton (P)2018 Tantor
The Unknowns
Summary
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sacred ground at Arlington National Cemetery. Originally constructed in 1921 to hold one of the thousands of unidentified American soldiers lost in World War I, it now also contains unknowns from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars and receives millions of visitors each year who pay silent tribute. When the first unknown soldier was laid to rest in Arlington, General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, selected eight of America's most decorated, battle-hardened veterans to serve as body bearers. For the first time, O'Donnell portrays their heroics on the battlefield 100 years ago, thereby animating the tomb by giving voice to all who have served.The body bearers appropriately spanned America's service branches and specialties. Their ranks include a cowboy who relived the charge of the light brigade, a Native American who heroically breached mountains of German barbed wire, a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight, a tough New Yorker who sacrificed his body to save his ship, and an indomitable gunner who, though blinded by gas, nonetheless overcame five machine gun nests. Their stories slip easily into the larger narrative of America's involvement in the conflict, transporting readers into the midst of dramatic battles during 1917 and 1918 that ultimately decided the Great War. Celebrated military historian and best-selling author Patrick O'Donnell illuminates the saga behind the creation of the tomb itself and recreates the moving ceremony during which it was consecrated and the eight body bearers, and the sergeant who had chosen the one body to be interred, solemnly united. Brilliantly researched, vividly told, The Unknowns is a timeless tale of heeding the calls of duty and brotherhood and humanizes the most consequential event of the 20th century, which still casts a shadow a century later.
©2018 Patrick K. O'Donnell (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
1918
Summary
In every sense, 1918 was the climactic year of the Great War on the Western Front. The battles fought during that spring dwarfed those at the Somme and at Passchendaele.The casualties on both sides were unprecedented, and the weapons and tactics used were the culmination of four years' bloody experience. This epic account of the events of 1918 is the first major reappraisal of the end of the war for more than 20 years, and describes what is in some respects a forgotten chapter in history. The soldiers who returned to Britain in November 1918 were not the martyrs or victims of popular memory - they were a victorious army and were greeted as heroes. As the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, Peter Hart has had unprecedented access to material never before seen or heard. He uses this vast wealth of sources to describe the entire course of the year, at all levels of command, from the terrifying German attacks in the spring to the victorious parades after the Armistice was signed. As a chronicle of the Great War's brutal climax it is unparalleled in its scope and depth.
©2008 Peter Hart (P)2008 Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Into the Black
Summary
On 12th April 1981 a revolutionary new spacecraft blasted off from Florida on her maiden flight. NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia was the most advanced flying machine ever built - the high watermark of post-war aviation development. A direct descendant of the record-breaking X-planes the likes of which Chuck Yeager had tested in the skies over the Mojave Desert, Columbia was a winged rocket plane, the size of an airliner, capable of flying to space and back before being made ready to fly again. She was the world's first real spaceship. The Shuttle's Commander, moonwalker John Young, was already a veteran of five spaceflights. Alongside him, Pilot Bob Crippen was making his first, but Crip, taken in by the space agency after the cancellation of a top secret military space station programme in 1969, had worked on the Shuttle's development for a decade. Never before had a crew been so well prepared for their mission. Yet less than an hour after Young and Crippen's spectacular departure from the Cape it was clear that all was not well. Tiles designed to protect Columbia from the blowtorch burn of re-entry were missing from the heatshield. If the damage to their ship was too great the astronauts would be unable to return safely to earth. But neither they nor mission control possessed any way of knowing. Instead, NASA turned to the National Reconnaissance Office, a spy agency hidden deep inside the Pentagon whose very existence was classified. Into the Black is a thrilling race against time; a gripping high stakes cold-war story, and a celebration of a beyond the state-of-the-art machine that, hailed as one of the seven new wonders of the world, rekindled our passion for spaceflight. With a foreword by Astronaut Richard Truly. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Rowland White (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks
The Grand Design
Summary
Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in union and southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Donald Stoker provides for the first time a comprehensive and often surprising account of strategy as it evolved between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. Reminding us that strategy is different from tactics (battlefield deployments) and operations (campaigns conducted in pursuit of a strategy), Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them - or how they often failed to do so. Stoker shows that Davis, despite a West Point education and experience as Secretary of War, ultimately failed as a strategist by losing control of the political side of the war. Lincoln, in contrast, evolved a clear strategic vision, but he failed for years to make his generals implement it. And while Robert E. Lee was unerring in his ability to determine the Union's strategic heart - its center of gravity - he proved mistaken in his assessment of how to destroy it. Historians have often argued that the North's advantages in population and industry ensured certain victory. In The Grand Design, Stoker reasserts the centrality of the overarching plan on each side, arguing convincingly that it was strategy that determined the result of America's great national conflict.
©2010 Donald Stoker (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Tex
Summary
Abby Raines is leaving Las Vegas. She's trading the glitter and excess of her hometown for the rolling hills and lush forests of Rapid City, South Dakota. She's taken her first real job, and she's determined to succeed on her own. Mark Marsten traded the Texas range for the Army Rangers years ago and never looked back. Now he's settled permanently in Rapid City with the remaining members of his Special Forces unit. He thought he had it all - well, almost, anyway. Until a sassy redhead with a sharp tongue and body to die for rolled into town. Mark knows that he's too much for her long-term, but he can't resist a fling with Rapid City's newest resident. He thought that he knew the game. After all, it's his game. And always his rules. But more and more it feels like Abby is the one holding all the cards.
©2015 Dahlia West (P)2016 Tantor
Hunting Evil
Summary
At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicians attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assassinate the fugitives. Guy Walters has travelled the world in pursuit of the real account of how the Nazis escaped at the end of the war, the attempts to bring them to justice, and what happened to those that got away.
©2010 Guy Walters (P)2010 Oakhill Publishing Ltd
Erasing Faith
Summary
Faith Morrissey is overdue for an adventure. After 20 years in the same small town, she sets out on a yearlong study abroad trip, fully expecting to fall in love with the wonders of Budapest. She certainly doesn't expect to fall for Wes, the mysterious stranger who sweeps her off her feet mere days after her arrival. It seems almost too good to be true. Weston Abbott is a ghost. In service to his country, he's done unspeakable things, the kinds of things that make settling down or falling in love out of the question. That's never been a problem - until he meets Faith. No matter how many times Wes tells himself that she's just a mark, he can't deny that she rattles his composure like no one else. And he can't seem to shake the forbidden feelings that stir to life whenever he's with her. Wes knows better than anyone that the line separating fact from fiction is almost as fine as the one between love and hate. And if the truth comes out, it may erase their love along with all the lies.
©2014 Julie Johnson (P)2016 Tantor
Closing with the Enemy
Summary
Closing with the Enemy picks up where D-Day leaves off. From Normandy through the "breakout" in France to the German army's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge, Michael D. Doubler deals with the deadly business of war - closing with the enemy, fighting and winning battles, taking and holding territory. His study provides a provocative reassessment of how American GIs accomplished these dangerous and costly tasks. Doubler portrays a far more capable and successful American fighting force than previous historians - notably Russell Weigley, Martin Van Creveld, and S. L. A. Marshall - have depicted. True, the GIs weren't fully prepared or organized for a war in Europe and have often been viewed as inferior to their German opponent. But, Doubler argues that they were more than compensated for this by their ability to learn quickly from mistakes, to adapt in the face of unforeseen obstacles, and to innovate new tactics on the battlefield. This adaptability, Doubler contends, was far more crucial to the American effort than we've been led to believe. Fueled by a fiercely democratic and entrepreneurial spirit, GI innovations emerged from every level within the ranks - from the novel employment of conventional weapons and small units to the rapid retraining of troops on the battlefield. Their most dramatic success, however, was with combined arms warfare - the coordinated use of infantry, tanks, artillery, air power, and engineers - in which they perfected the use of air support for ground operations and tank-infantry teams for breaking through enemy strongholds. Doubler argues that, without such ingenuity and imaginative leadership, it would have been impossible to defeat an enemy as well-trained and heavily fortified as the German army the GIs confronted.
©1994 University Press of Kansas (P)2010 Tantor
Hidden Miles
Summary
“I wasn’t ready for this. Hannah deserved a man who was whole, not a broken shell. But I couldn’t resist her. Couldn’t resist this. It felt too good. And would that be so bad? To have something that felt good for once?” Leo Miles came home broken - wounded and scarred. It’s been five years, and he hasn’t left his family’s land. Not once. It’s not much of a life, but the way he looks now, he prefers to stay hidden. His only reprieve is her voice. He puts on his headset, logs in to his game, and she’s there. They talk while they play, sharing everything but personal details. She’s his best friend - his happy place - even though he doesn’t know her real name. Until one day, he hears a voice he recognizes. Meeting Hannah Tate in person rocks the reclusive Leo’s world. And discovering she’s in trouble - serious trouble - changes everything. Hannah is Leo’s every fantasy come true, and the badass gamer girl is determined to break through his defenses. But between the mess that is his life and the threats to his family’s safety, he can’t be anyone’s hero. Least of all hers. But maybe they both need saving. Author’s note: A wounded hero who’ll squeeze your heart. A girl in trouble. And the family who won’t let either of them down. The Miles Family is best enjoyed in order.
©2019 Claire Kingsley (P)2020 Claire Kingsley
World War One
Summary
In 1914, a new kind of war came about, bringing with it a new kind of world. World War One began on horseback, with generals employing bayonet charges to gain ground, and ended with attacks resembling the Nazi blitzkriegs. The scale of devastation was unlike anything the world had seen before: 14 million combatants died, a further 20 million were wounded, and four empires were destroyed. Even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. An overwhelming disaster from which the world is still recovering, World War One can seem baffling in its complexity. But now Norman Stone, one of world's greatest military historians, has composed a dazzlingly lucid and succinct history of the conflict. Stone has distilled a lifetime of teaching, arguing, and thinking into this brisk and opinionated account of the fundamental tragedy of the 20th century.
©2009 Norman Stone (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Home Fire Inferno
Summary
Navy SEAL Dan Gillman's wife, Jenn, goes into early labor while stranded in the California desert, as he and most of Team 16 are mission-ready overseas. Meanwhile, left behind with a recent knee injury and faced with impending surgery and rehab, Chief Jay Lopez decides that the timing might be exactly right for a romantic interlude with a pretty fifth grade teacher. Hijinks definitely ensue. Home Fire Inferno is the second story in a connected trilogy of Troubleshooters short stories and novellas that starts with Free Fall and concludes with Ready to Roll.
©2017 Suzanne Brockmann (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Brilliant Disaster
Summary
A remarkably gripping account of America's Bay of Pigs crisis, drawing on long-hidden CIA documents and delivering, as never before, the vivid truth - and consequences - of five pivotal days in April 1961. The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself. The Cuban-born invaders were trained by CIA officers, supplied with American matériel, and shadowed by the U.S. Navy. Landing by sea with fighter-plane support, they hoped to establish a military beachhead and spark a counterrevolution against Fidel Castro’s regime. The gambit was a stupendous failure, resulting in the death or imprisonment of more than a thousand men. Now, journalist Jim Rasenberger takes a closer look at this darkly fascinating incident in American history. At the heart of the crisis stood President Kennedy, and Rasenberger traces what Kennedy knew, thought, and said as events unfolded. He examines whether Kennedy was manipulated by the CIA into approving a plan that would ultimately involve the American military. He also draws compelling portraits of the other figures who played key roles in the drama, including Fidel Castro. Written with elegant clarity and narrative verve, The Brilliant Disaster is the most complete account of this event to date, providing not only a fast-paced chronicle of the disaster but an analysis of how it occurred—a question as relevant today as then—and how it profoundly altered the course of modern American history.
©2011 Jim Rasenberger (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
Erick
Summary
Book 2: SEALs of Steel
Two years earlier, Erick Fuller, a former SEAL, was severely injured when his squad's truck drove over an antitank landmine. He lost his lower leg and two fingers. He's filled with steel plates and titanium pins...along with the driving need for answers and justice. Six other team-mates were also badly hurt, the seventh dead, in what their team leader Badger Horley realized later had to be a trap set to take them out. After joining the team in England and finding a link to the antitank landmine used in the explosion, Erick heads to Kabul-to the site where the original incident took place-for more intel. What he discovers there blows him away....
Honey Lewis, an innovative leader in the field of dentistry, is invited to a cutting-edge stem cell research conference. The man who issued the last-minute invitation is someone she met at a similar workshop years earlier. While she knows she doesn't have the experience, she nevertheless can't resist attending to learn the industry's latest. Once she arrives in Kabul, she runs into another man-one she never expected or hoped to see again. She met Erick a year ago in New Mexico when she smashed into his beloved, vintage ’69 Mustang. Unbelievably, he's still upset about the accident. If only his overexcitement didn't bring out corresponding emotions in her....
With too many things going on at once-in her life and inside her own heart-the tug-of-war all but blindsides her with the realization that the man who befriended her might not be the man she thought he was.
Author note: For your listening pleasure, this series must be listened in order.
SEALs of Steel reading order:
Badger
Erick
Cade
Talon
Laszlo
Geir
Jager
The Final Reveal
©2018 Beverly Dale Mayer (P)2019 Beverly Dale Mayer
For Crew and Country
Summary
John Wukovits tells of the most dramatic naval battle of the Pacific War and the incredible sacrifice of the USS Samuel B. Roberts. On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts, along with the other 12 vessels comprising its unit, stood between Japan’s largest battleship force ever sent to sea and MacArthur’s transports inside Leyte Gulf. Faced with the surprise appearance of more than 20 Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers - including the Yamato, at 70,000 tons the most potent battlewagon in the world - the 1,200-ton Samuel B. Roberts turned immediately to action with six other ships. Captain Copeland marked the occasion with one of the most poignant addresses ever given to men on the edge of battle: "Men," he said over the intercom, "we are about to go into a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected." The ship churned straight at the enemy in a near-suicidal attempt to deflect the more potent foe, allow the small aircraft carriers to escape, and buy time for MacArthur’s forces. Of 563 destroyers constructed during World War II, the Samuel B. Roberts was the only one sunk, going down with guns blazing in a duel reminiscent of the Spartans at Thermopylae or Davy Crockett’s Alamo defenders. The men who survived faced a horrifying three-day nightmare in the sea, where they battled a lack of food and water, scorching sun and numbing nighttime cold, and nature’s most feared adversary - sharks. The battle would go down as history’s greatest sea clash, the Battle of Samar - the dramatic climax of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
©2013 John Wukovits (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Belles histoires d'une sale guerre
Summary
Les grands drames ve´cus lors d'une guerre rele`guent habituellement les e´ve´nements moins tragiques, au second rang. Bien que ces derniers passent inaperc¸us durant les combats, ils ne me´ritent pas moins d'e^tre connus du public a` cause du sentiment de bienveillance, de compassion, d'amour et d'innombrables preuves d'humanite´ dont ils ont fait preuve. Ce livre audio ne s'attarde donc pas sur les protagonistes des grandes batailles, mais pluto^t sur les oublie´s de celle-ci, aux citoyens lambda parmi lesquels on trouvent souvent des he´ros du quotidien. Elle re´ve`le de remarquables pe´ripe´ties qui ont re´ussi a` remettre un tant soit peu en harmonie les e^tres humains durant les pe´riodes les plus cruelles du conflit arme´ de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Voici quelques-unes de ces pe´ripe´ties susceptibles de constituer un document comme´morant le 75e anniversaire de la fin de la Guerre.
©2019 Alexandre Stanké (P)2019 Éditions Alexandre Stanké
Utmost Savagery
Summary
On November 20, 1943, in the first trial by fire of America’s fledgling amphibious assault doctrine, 5,000 men stormed the beaches of Tarawa, a seemingly invincible Japanese island fortress barely the size of the 300-acre Pentagon parking lots. Before the first day ended, one-third of the marines who had crossed Tarawa’s deadly reef under murderous fire were killed, wounded, or missing. In three days of fighting, four Americans would win the Medal of Honor and six thousand combatants would die. Now, Colonel Joseph Alexander, a combat marine himself, presents the full story of Tarawa in all its horror and glory: the extreme risks, the horrific combat, and the heroic breakthroughs. Based on exhaustive research, never-before-published accounts from marine survivors, and new evidence from Japanese sources, Colonel Alexander captures the grit, guts, and relentless courage of United States Marines overcoming outrageous odds to deliver victory for their country. Colonel Joseph H. Alexander (Ret.), a combat veteran who served in the Marine Corps for 28 years, is the author of six books and has helped produce 25 military documentaries. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
©1995 Joseph H. Alexander, 2009 by Findaway World, LLC (P)2009 Findaway World, LLC
Fateful Lightning
Summary
The Civil War is the greatest trauma ever experienced by the American nation, a four-year paroxysm of violence that left in its wake more than 600,000 dead, more than 2 million refugees, and the destruction (in modern dollars) of more than $700 billion in property. The war also sparked some of the most heroic moments in American history and enshrined a galaxy of American heroes. Above all, it permanently ended the practice of slavery and proved, in an age of resurgent monarchies, that a liberal democracy could survive the most frightful of challenges. In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. And unlike other surveys of the Civil War era, it extends the reader's vista to include the postwar Reconstruction period and discusses the modern-day legacy of the Civil War in American literature and popular culture. Guelzo also puts the conflict in a global perspective, underscoring Americans' acute sense of the vulnerability of their republic in a world of monarchies. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and especially the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South. Written by a leading authority on our nation's most searing crisis, Fateful Lightning offers a vivid and original account of an event whose echoes continue with Americans to this day.
©2012 Oxford University Press (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Germans in Normandy
Summary
An account of the D-Day invasion - from the German point of view. The Allied invasion of Northern France was the greatest combined operation in the history of warfare. Up until now, it has been recorded from the attackers' point of view - whereas the defenders' angle has been largely ignored. While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler's mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers, but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stalemate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage - hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. This book describes the catastrophe that followed, in a unique look at the war from the losing side.
©2006, 2019 Richard Hargreaves (P)2019 Tantor
The Odyssey of Echo Company
Summary
A powerful work of literary military history from the New York Times best-selling author of In Harm's Way and Horse Soldiers - the harrowing and redemptive account of an American army platoon fighting for survival during the Vietnam War. On a single night, January 31, 1968, some 100,000 soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army attacked 36 cities throughout South Vietnam, hoping to topple that government and dislodge American forces. The 12 American boys of the recon platoon of the 101st Airborne Division, average age 19, are from small farms, California beach towns, and big cities like Chicago, and they are cast into a war they neither understand nor ultimately feel they can win. The fighting was hand-to-hand, nonstop, and waged in endless small battles that forged this group into a lifelong brotherhood of survivors. The Odyssey of Echo Company is about the young men who survived 60 days on the run from the enemy during the Tet Offensive, at the height of the Vietnam War. Each young man lived 100 years in these days and came home to a country that did not understand, and didn't try to understand, what they had survived. They came home winners because they were alive but were losers for having fought there. When they arrived, they landed in San Francisco, took off their uniforms, and walked back into America, where they fell silent and realized that not many wanted to hear the remarkable story they had to tell - until now. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, dozens of detailed letters written to and from Echo Company soldiers, a huge trove of Pentagon after-action reports, and travel to the scenes of battle with the American soldiers and some of their Vietnamese enemy soldiers, The Odyssey of Echo Company breaks through the wall of time to tell this important story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
©2017 Doug Stanton (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio