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.
The Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I
Summary
Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience. There was the more mobile Eastern Front, as well as mountain warfare in the Alps and scattered fighting in Africa and the Far East. Then there was the Middle Eastern Front, fought across the Levant and Mesopotamia, which captured the imagination of the European public. There, the British and their allies fought the Ottoman Turkish Empire under harsh desert conditions hundreds of miles from home, struggling for possession of places most people only knew from the Bible and the Koran. The war to push the Ottoman Empire out of the Middle East ended up being a total success, and it has had far-reaching ramifications in the past 100 years.
©2017 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
Long, Obstinate, and Bloody
Summary
On 15 March 1781, the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis fought one of the bloodiest and most intense engagements of the American Revolution at the Guilford Courthouse in piedmont North Carolina. Although victorious, Cornwallis declared the conquest of the Carolinas impossible. He made the fateful decision to march into Virginia, eventually leading his army to the Yorktown surrender and clearing the way for American independence. In the first book-length examination of the Guilford Courthouse engagement, Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard - drawing from hundreds of previously underutilized pension documents, muster rolls, and personal accounts - piece together what really happened on the wooded plateau in what is today Greensboro, North Carolina. They painstakingly identify where individuals stood on the battlefield, when they were there, and what they could have seen, thus producing a bottom-up story of the engagement. The authors explain or discount several myths surrounding this battle while giving proper place to long-forgotten heroic actions. They elucidate the actions of the Continentals, British regulars, North Carolina and Virginia militiamen, and the role of American cavalry. Their detailed and comprehensive narrative extends into individual combatants' lives before and after the Revolution. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2009 Lawrence E. Babits & Joshua B. Howard (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
The Real Horse Soldiers
Summary
Benjamin Grierson’s Union cavalry thrusting through Mississippi is one of the most well-known operations of the Civil War. The last serious study was published more than six decades ago. Since then, other accounts have appeared, but none are deeply researched full-length studies of the raid and its more-than-substantial (and yet often overlooked) results. The publication of Timothy B. Smith’s The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi rectifies this oversight. There were other simultaneous operations to distract Confederate attention from the real threat posed by US Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Grierson’s operation, however, mainly conducted with two Illinois cavalry regiments, has become the most famous, and for good reason: For 16 days (April 17 to May 2) Grierson led Confederate pursuers on a high-stakes chase through the entire state of Mississippi, entering the Northern border with Tennessee and exiting its Southern border with Louisiana. The daily rides were long, the rest stops short, and the tension high. Ironically, the man who led the raid was a former music teacher who some say disliked horses. Throughout, he displayed outstanding leadership and cunning, destroyed railroad tracks, burned trestles and bridges, freed slaves, and created as much damage and chaos as possible. Grierson’s Raid broke a vital Confederate rail line at Newton Station that supplied Vicksburg and, perhaps most importantly, consumed the attention of the Confederate high command. While Confederate Lt. Gen. John Pemberton at Vicksburg and other Southern leaders looked in the wrong directions, Grant moved his entire Army of the Tennessee across the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, spelling the doom of that city, the Confederate chances of holding the river, and perhaps the Confederacy itself. Novelists have attempted to capture the large-than-life cavalry raid in the popular imagination, and Hollywood reproduced the daring cavalry action in The Horse Soldiers, a 1959 major motion picture starring John Wayne and William Holden. Although the film replicates the raid’s drama and high-stakes gamble, cinematic license chipped away at its accuracy. Based upon years of research and presented in gripping, fast-paced prose, Timothy B. Smith’s The Real Horse Soldiers captures the high drama and tension of the 1863 horse soldiers in a modern, comprehensive, academic study. Listeners will find it fills a wide void in Civil War literature.
©2018 Savas Beatie (P)2018 Savas Beatie
January Moon
Summary
In January Moon, Jerome Greene draws from extensive research and fieldwork to explore a signal - and appallingly brutal - event in American history: The desperate flight of Chief Dull Knife’s Northern Cheyenne Indians from imprisonment at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. In the wake of the Great Sioux War of 1876 - 77, the U.S. government expelled most Northern Cheyennes from their northern plains homeland to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma. Following mounting hardships, many of those people, under Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf, broke away, seeking to return north. While Little Wolf’s band managed initially to elude pursuing U.S. troops, Dull Knife’s people were captured in 1878 and ushered into a makeshift barrack prison at Camp (later Fort) Robinson, where they spent months waiting for government officials to decide their fate. It is here that Greene’s riveting narrative edges toward its climax. On the night of January 9, 1879, in a bloody struggle with troops, Dull Knife’s people staged a massive breakout from their barrack prison in a last-ditch bid for freedom. Greene paints a vivid picture of their frantic escape, which took place under an unusually brilliant moon that doomed many of those fleeing by silhouetting them against the snow. A climactic engagement at Antelope Creek proved especially devastating, and the helpless people were nearly annihilated. In gripping detail, Jerome Greene follows the survivors’ dreadful experiences into their aftermath, including creation of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Carrying the story to the present day, he describes Cheyenne tribal events commemorating the breakout - all designed to ensure that the injustices of 19th-century U.S. government policy will never be forgotten. The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
©2020 University of Oklahoma Press (P)2020 Redwood Audiobooks
The Iron Sea
Summary
From the acclaimed military history author, this action-packed World War II history describes the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet. The sea had become a mass grave by 1941 as Hitler's four capital warships - Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Tirpitz, and Bismarck, the largest warship on the ocean - roamed the wind-swept waves, threatening the Allied war effort and sending thousands of men to the icy depths of the North Atlantic. Bristling with guns and steeled in heavy armor, these reapers of the sea could outrun and outgun any battleship in the Allied arsenal. The deadly menace kept Winston Churchill awake at night; he deemed them "targets of supreme consequence". The campaign against Hitler's surface fleet would continue into the dying days of World War II and involve everything from massive warships engaged in bloody, fire-drenched battle to daring commando raids in German-occupied harbors. This is the fast-paced story of the Allied bomber crews, brave sailors, and bold commandoes who "sunk the Bismarck" and won a hard-fought victory over Hitler's iron sea. Using official war diaries, combat reports, eyewitness accounts, and personal letters, Simon Read brings the action and adventure to vivid life. The result is an enthralling and gripping story of the Allied heroes who fought on a watery battlefield.
©2020 Simon Read (P)2020 Hachette Books
Stupid Wars
Summary
When winners write history, they sometimes "forget" to include their own embarrassing misjudgments. Fortunately, this take-no-prisoners edition of history isn't going to let the winners (or the losers) forget the mistakes of the past. Be prepared to laugh out loud - and gasp in horror - at the most painfully idiotic strategies, alliances, and decisions the world has ever known. These stupid wars have been launched by democracies as well as monarchies and dictatorships, in recent decades just as often as in less "enlightened" times. The ridiculous and reckless conflicts chronicled in Stupid Wars include the misdirected Fourth Crusade, the half-baked invasion of Russia by the U.S., the U.K.'s baffling Falklands War, Hitler's ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch, several incredibly foolish South American conflicts, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and many more. Whether you're a future dictator, war-mongering politician, royal mistress, or history lover, these blow-by-stupid-blow accounts will teach you the valuable lessons you need to stay off the list, including: Don't declare war on all your neighbors at the same time. Working radios, accurate maps, and weather-appropriate uniforms are big plusses. Large amounts of bird poop and very small islands are probably not worth dying for. Never invade Russia.Seriously. It's a really bad idea.
©2004 Ed Strosser and Michael Prince (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Mexican Revolution
Summary
If you want to discover the captivating history of the Mexican Revolution, then keep reading... The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment of the 20th century. The Mexican fight for democracy, equality, and justice sent shockwaves around the world. No other episode in its history has left a deeper mark. It is a three-act drama full of politics, persecution, and war, not to mention earthquakes, signs in the sky, and even spiritualist sessions, while being populated by larger-than-life villains, international spies, and the universally known figures of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. In fact, our modern idea of “revolution” owes much to what happened in this country between 1910 and 1920. In The Mexican Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the Mexican Civil War and How Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata Impacted Mexico, you will discover topics such as: The Comet The strong man of the Americas Francisco and the spirits Victory comes too soon The Wicked Ambassador Victoriano Huerta Two Hurricanes The Convention of Aguascalientes The Presidential Chair Huerta Strikes Back The Horsemen of the Apocalypse The Centaur and the General: Pershing’s Punitive Expedition The Zimmermann Telegram Aftermath And much, much more... So if you want to learn more about the Mexican Revolution, scroll up and click the "Buy Now" button!
©2020 Captivating History (P)2020 Captivating History
Steaming to Victory
Summary
In the seven decades since the darkest moments of the Second World War it seems every tenebrous corner of the conflict has been laid bare, prodded and examined from every perspective of military and social history. But there is a story that has hitherto been largely overlooked. It is a tale of quiet heroism, a story of ordinary people who fought, with enormous self-sacrifice, not with tanks and guns, but with elbow grease and determination. It is the story of the British railways and, above all, the extraordinary men and women who kept them running from 1939 to 1945. Churchill himself certainly did not underestimate their importance to the wartime story when, in 1943, he praised ‘the unwavering courage and constant resourcefulness of railwaymen of all ranks in contributing so largely towards the final victory.’ And what a story it is. The railway system during the Second World War was the lifeline of the nation, replacing vulnerable road transport and merchant shipping. The railways mobilised troops, transported munitions, evacuated children from cities and kept vital food supplies moving where other forms of transport failed. Railwaymen and women performed outstanding acts of heroism. Nearly 400 workers were killed at their posts and another 2,400 injured in the line of duty. Another 3,500 railwaymen and women died in action. The trains themselves played just as vital a role. The famous Flying Scotsman train delivered its passengers to safety after being pounded by German bombers and strafed with gunfire from the air. There were astonishing feats of engineering restoring tracks within hours and bridges and viaducts within days. Trains transported millions to and from work each day and sheltered them on underground platforms at night, a refuge from the bombs above. Without the railways, there would have been no Dunkirk evacuation and no D-Day. Michael Williams, author of the celebrated book On the Slow Train, has written an important and timely book using original research and over a hundred new personal interviews. This is their story.
©2013 Michael Williams (P)2013 Isis Publishing Ltd, Random House Audiobooks
The Dutch East India Company
Summary
If you want to discover the captivating history of the Dutch East India Company, then pay attention... Huge international companies and corporations are a normal part of our everyday lives today. For most, their unimaginable wealth and power, rivaling even some of the smaller countries of the world, is something we take for granted. And we see them as the living embodiment of the capitalist system, regardless if we take it as a good or a bad omen. However, this wasn’t always the case. For the majority of history, it was the kings and emperors who wielded the most influence, commanded the largest armies, and had the largest treasures. And all of them would laugh at the idea of some merchants managing to not only catch up to their supremacy and riches but even surpass them. Yet, they did. Probably, the best example of that kind of success were the traders of the Dutch East India Company of the 16th century. This company single-handedly reformed the way businesses functioned, creating the foundation of our modern capitalist world, with all of its strengths and weaknesses. Through its international trade, this corporation brought our world one step closer to the colonialism of the 19th century and the globalization of the 20th century. It managed to transform itself from a group of merchants to an empire in its own right. By the time of its disbandment in the late 18th century, the world was irreversibly changed. If you want to learn more about the Dutch East India Company, scroll up and click on the "buy now" button!
©2019 Captivating History (P)2020 Captivating History
Jayden: Heroes at Heart, 5
Summary
Jayden Chapman may have always been the quieter twin, but deep inside lay the heart of a protector. When he came upon a young woman stranded on the side of the road, he recognized her as someone he had seen before...and not been able to help. Determined to not let history repeat itself, he befriended her, as well as took care of her car. Ruby Mantle had worked hard for years, just to pay the bills and take care of her grandmother. The weight of the world was on her shoulders and she was wary of the large man who came to rescue her. But, soon, she learned that Jayden was determined to help her in any way that he could. Allowing love to bloom as their friendship grew, life began looking up for them. But, then a problem from her past reared its ugly head, and Jayden stepped in to protect her once more. Loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood. Scenes in the audiobook are similar to what you would find in an R-rated movie. 18+ listeners only.
©2019 Maryann Litton (P)2019 Maryann Litton
Defiant Courage
Summary
In late March of 1943, four commandos arrive in northern Norway with a mission of establishing a base for sabotage operations. Before they can unload their cutter, they are betrayed, as a German Schnell boat arrives and turns the quiet fjord into a battle zone. Only one man, Jan Baalsrud, surrvives the attack. This is the story of his perilous journey to freedom. Wounded, the dauntless soldier swims icy fjord waters, climbs snow-laden granite peaks, endures violent snowstorms and is hurled off a mountain by an avalanche. Fleeing the Gestapo and battling the harsh Arctic cold, Jan suffers snowblindness and frostbite. Though he possesses raw courage and an iron will, they are not enough to deliver him all the way to neutral Sweden and safety. The people of northern Norway's Troms district step forward to assist Jan. Selflessly defying Nazi dictates, more than 60 people risk their lives to help the fugitive commando.
©2010 Astrid Karlsen Scott and Dr. Tore Haug (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Order of the Day
Summary
Winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, this eye-opening account of the muddled forces at work behind the Anschluss brilliantly dismantles the myth of a glorious and inevitable Nazi victory. February 20, 1933: on an unremarkable day during a harsh Berlin winter, a meeting of twenty-four German captains of industry and senior Nazi dignitaries is being held in secret in the plush lounges of the Reichstag. They are there to "stump up" funding for the accession to power of the National Socialist Party and its fearsome Chancellor. This inaugural scene sets the tone of consent which will lead to the worst possible repercussions. March 12, 1938: the annexation of Austria is on the agenda and a grotesque day ensues that is intended to make history: the newsreels capture for eternity a motorized army, a terrible, inexorable power. But behind Goebbels's splendid propaganda, it is an ersatz Blitzkrieg which unfolds, the Panzers breaking down en mass on the roads of Austria. The true behind-the-scenes story of the Anschluss - a patchwork of minor shows of strength and fine words, a string of fevered telephone calls and vulgar threats - reveals a starkly different picture: it is no longer strength of character or the determination of a people that wins the day, but rather a combination of intimidation and bluff. With this vivid, compelling history, Éric Vuillard warns against the perils of willfully blind acquiescence, and offers a crucial reminder that, ultimately, the worst is not inescapable.
©2018 Actes Sud. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2018 by Mark Polizzotti.
The Best of American Heritage: The Civil War
Summary
The Civil War posed a critical test of the young nation's character, endurance, and will to survive. Coming only two generations after the nation's founding, the secession of Southern states challenged the very existence of the United States. "America's most monumental drama and morality tale" comes alive in this brilliant collection from America's leading history magazine, as selected by its current editor in chief, Edwin S. Grosvenor.
©2015 American Heritage (P)2017 Tantor
Runaway Girl
Summary
It's Naomi Clemons's big day. Her dream wedding. And she's outta here. One moment. A chance meeting of gazes through the church window pane with someone familiar who radiates intrigue. Independence. It's the final push Naomi needs to realize...she's boring. A blonde, cookie cutter, well mannered trophy wife-to-be. How can she expect to lead a fulfilling married life when she's never lived? Special Forces diver Jason Bristow needs a beauty pageant coach. Not for himself - although the tattooed bruiser could definitely use some charm. For his little sister who he has returned to St. Augustine, Florida, to raise. When a beautiful southern debutante lands on his doorstep, she awakens a hunger that won't be ignored. If only she wasn't planning on winning back the ex-fiance she left at the altar.... Despite the potential for ruin, heat continues to build between Naomi and Jason beneath the sultry Florida sunshine, consuming them both. But they're on borrowed time... and it's about to run out. Contains mature themes.
©2018 Tessa Bailey (P)2019 Tantor
The Battle of Shiloh
Summary
One Sunday morning in early April in 1862, the North and South clashed at an obscure river landing deep in the Tennessee woods, far from the intensely watched battlefields near Washington and Richmond. Until now, many experts believed that the Civil War would be over within a matter of months. But they were in for a shock! Fought by amateur soldiers - mostly Midwestern farm boys led by generals who had never conducted operations on this scale - when the two sides finally came to grips at Shiloh they fought with incredible ferocity that piled more casualties in two days than the losses of the American Revolution, the Mexican War and the various Indian wars combined. Shiloh was a confusing battle, partly because it was a battle of amateurs and partly because it was fought in rugged terrain. Because of this, the author carefully takes you through the fighting hour by hour to help you understand what this tremendous battle was really like, both for the generals and for the young soldiers who did the fighting.
©2012 Jack Kunkel (P)2014 Pepper Publishing
When the Wolf Came
Summary
Winner of the 2014 Oklahoma Book Award for nonfiction. Winner of the 2014 Pate Award from the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table. When the peoples of the Indian Territory found themselves in the midst of the American Civil War, squeezed between union Kansas, confederate Texas, and Arkansas, they had no way to escape a conflict not of their choosing - and no alternative but to suffer its consequences. When the Wolf Came explores how the war in the Indian Territory involved almost every resident, killed many civilians as well as soldiers, left the country stripped and devastated, and cost Indian nations millions of acres of land. Using a solid foundation of both published and unpublished sources, including the records of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations, Mary Jane Warde details how the coming of the war set off a wave of migration into neighboring Kansas, the Red River Valley, and Texas. She describes how Indian Territory troops in Unionist regiments or as Confederate allies battled enemies - some from their own nations - in the territory and in neighboring Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. And she shows how post-war land cessions forced by the federal government on Indian nations formerly allied with the Confederacy allowed the removal of still more tribes to the Indian Territory, leaving millions of acres open for homesteads, railroads, and development in at least 10 states.
©2013 The University of Arkansas Press (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks
Battle Above the Clouds: Lifting the Siege of Chattanooga and the Battle of Lookout Mountain, October 16 - November 24, 1863
Summary
In October 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland was besieged in Chattanooga, all but surrounded by familiar opponents: the Confederate Army of Tennessee. The Federals were surviving by the narrowest of margins, thanks only to a trickle of supplies painstakingly hauled over the sketchiest of mountain roads. Soon, even those quarter-rations would not suffice. Disaster was in the offing.
Yet those Confederates, once jubilant at having routed the Federals at Chickamauga and driven them back into the apparent trap of Chattanooga’s trenches, found their own circumstances increasingly difficult to bear. In the immediate aftermath of their victory, the South rejoiced; the Confederacy’s own disasters of the previous summer - Vicksburg and Gettysburg - were seemingly reversed. Then came stalemate in front of those same trenches. The Confederates held the high ground, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, but they could not completely seal off Chattanooga from the north.
The Union responded. Reinforcements were on the way. A new man arrived to take command: Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate General Braxton Bragg, unwilling to launch a frontal attack on Chattanooga’s defenses, sought victory elsewhere, diverting troops to East Tennessee.
Battle Above the Clouds by David Powell recounts the first half of the campaign to lift the siege of Chattanooga, including the opening of the “cracker line”, the unusual night battle of Wauhatchie, and one of the most dramatic battles of the entire war: Lookout Mountain.
©2017 Savas Beatie (P)2019 Savas Beatie
1812: The Navy's War
Summary
At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean, but America's war fleet, only 20 ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war: on the Great Lakes, in the Atlantic, and even in the eastern Pacific. In 1812: The Navy's War, prize-winning historian George C. Daughan tells the thrilling story of how a handful of heroic captains and their stalwart crews overcame spectacular odds to lead the country to victory against the world's greatest imperial power. A stunning contribution to military and national history, 1812: The Navy's War is the first complete account in more than a century of how the U.S. Navy rescued the fledgling nation and secured America's future.
©2011 George C. Daughan (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Between the Alps and a Hard Place
Summary
What really happened to the billions of dollars worth of gold seized by Nazi Germany? What role did the Swiss government play and what are the implications of neutrality during wartime? The author addresses these questions, presents the case for and against Switzerland, and applies the lessons learned from World War II to the broader issue of companies - and countries - profiting during wartime. Between the Alps and a Hard Place is both thrilling World War II history and an exposé of the shameful selling of historical truth and American foreign policy for political gain.
©2000 Angelo M. Codevilla (P)2012 Regnery Publishing
The Zealot and the Emancipator
Summary
Master storyteller and best-selling historian H. W. Brands narrates the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln - two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin. John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery in 1854, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war. His men tore pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Three years later, Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm slaves with weapons for a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery. Brown’s violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former officeholder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. Lincoln spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path back to Washington and perhaps to the White House. Yet his caution could not protect him from the vortex of violence Brown had set in motion. After Brown’s arrest, his righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded with anger and horror to a terrorist being made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle between the opposing voices of the fractured nation and won election as president. But the time for moderation had passed, and Lincoln’s fervent belief that democracy could resolve its moral crises peacefully faced its ultimate test. The Zealot and the Emancipator is acclaimed historian H. W. Brands' thrilling account of how two American giants shaped the war for freedom. Cover photograph of Abraham Lincoln courtesy of the White House Collection/White House Historical Association
©2020 H. W. Brands (P)2020 Random House Audio