Brian V. Hunt has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 11 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is My Life as an Indian.
My Life as an Indian
Summary
Beautiful, tender, haunting, and full of excitement, this is the memoir of famed author, explorer, Glacier Park guide, trader, and historian of the Blackfoot Indians, James Willard Schultz. With the Blackfoot woman, whom he deeply loved, from 1880 to 1903, Schultz lived the life of a Blackfoot Indian with Nat-ah-ki and her people. During this time, he began writing for magazines, at times running a trading post, and working as a guide in the West. He met historian, writer, and naturalist George Bird Grinnell, who encouraged him to write this heartfelt and important memoir. As an ethnography of a people and a time it is invaluable. Though he would marry again, Schultz eventually went back to live near the Native peoples he'd come to love and is buried in the traditional ground of Nat-ah-ki's people. You won't read another memoir like it. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the migration that changed the country forever.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
Through Five Administrations
Summary
Fifty years of service at the White House in various capacities, including bodyguard to Abraham Lincoln, William H. Crook's memoir brings an astonishing array of personal details of life in the executive mansion. His sensitive observations of Lincoln are especially moving. A well-known figure in Washington, Crook knew every president from Lincoln until Crook's death in 1915. He was a keen observer and his stories will entertain and sometimes surprise you. Here are also stories of presidents Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Garfield. A friend of Ulysses S. Grant, a guest at the White House wedding of Grant's daughter, Nellie, he also tells stories of racing with Grant in buggies.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
Thirty-Six Years in the White House
Summary
For 36 years, from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt, Tom Pendel saw the daily comings and goings at the center of American political life in the White House. As doorkeeper, he saw senators, congressmen, royalty, citizens, and scoundrels appear on the White House steps. His intimate memories of that time is a valuable contribution to American history. These are personal memories of interactions with icons of the American political scene. This long out-of-print book is available now as an audiobook. Included in his account are his memories of some of the furnishings in various parts of the house.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
John Wilkes Booth
Summary
Between the Monday after Abraham Lincoln was shot until the following week, Tom Jones hid John Wilkes Booth in the wilds of Maryland and then helped him get across the Potomac River to Virginia. At the time of the Lincoln assassination, Thomas A. Jones was 45 years old and had spent the years of the American Civil War working with zeal in the Confederate cause in Southern Maryland. He primarily acted as an aid to Confederate spies moving through Charles County and helping the substantial intelligence network by moving mail. By the time that Jones wrote this account of having helped John Wilkes Booth escape, his assessment of Abraham Lincoln had gone through a transformation. As he tells us, the light of reason had been blinded and he now saw Lincoln as a good and great man. This is but one small piece of the drama that changed history. But Jones was there and was part of it. It's an important account that fills in the days between Booth's deed and his capture and death.
©2014 Big Byte Books (P)2017 Big Byte Books
A Texas Cowboy
Summary
When legendary Charlie Siringo wrote this classic work, he was only 30 years old and had already spent half that life as a cowboy. With enduring wit, he tells the tale of long cattle drives, small-town beauties, meetings with Billy the Kid, and growing up on the Texas frontier. In plain language you'll hear what it was like to live on the "hurricane deck of a Spanish pony" for months on end, earning enough to head into town and have a good time. Crisscrossing the Lone Star State, he lived a vanishing way of life. After only a few years of setting down, he was back in the saddle as a Pinkerton detective, a career he tells of in later books.
©2017 Big Byte Books (P)2017 Big Byte Books
Days on the Road
Summary
Can you visualize today what it meant to cross America's Great Plains in the mid-19th century? It was a wondrous, perilous, often fatal journey without assurance of a successful life at the other end. Yet tens of thousands made the journey and lucky for us, many set aside modesty, often at the request of children or grandchildren, to put the account of their travels into words. Young Sarah Raymond Herndon was one of these pioneer women. Her classic story of days on the road are part of American history. She describes the beauty of the country and the wrenching heartbreak of losing loved ones. What she found along the way and at the end will thrill and inspire you. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the movement that changed the country forever. Listen to a sample.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
The Godfrey Diary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Summary
Lieutenant Edward Settle Godfrey was commander of K Company of the 7th Cavalry in the battalion of Captain Frederick Benteen. Godfrey was a central figure in the Reno-Benteen defense over the 25th and 26th of June, 1876. He kept a diary of the Yellowstone Expedition against the Sioux from May 17 to September 24. The diary reveals anecdotes and observations of General Custer's mood and behavior before the fight on June 25th, as well as the desperate story of survival experienced by the battalions under Reno and Benteen. It also contains fascinating details about how the cavalry moved, camped, and relaxed during the days leading up to the fight. In 1892, (then Captain) Godfrey wrote what became a very famous and widely-read article for Century Magazine about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Both of these documents are cited by most serious Custer books..
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
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
The Spirit Lake Massacre and the Captivity of Abbie Gardner
Summary
Long considered one of the best of the captive narratives from the 19th century, Abbie Gardner's thrilling and graphic tale of her abduction by a band of Santee Sioux in 1857 will captivate you from beginning to end. Barely 14 years old, her family was butchered before her eyes and she witnessed the deaths of two other women captives before her release by Chief Inkpaduta. Gardner suffered years of illness after her return to white culture but eventually made a successful and prosperous life with a family. This book went through seven editions in her lifetime and she eventually purchased the cabin and property from which she was abducted and turned them into a tourist attraction. The cabin still stands today near Spirit Lake, Iowa. Told from the view of a woman looking back three decades to her traumatic experience, Gardner used notes she had written down in the intervening years as well as public documents to produce a compelling narrative.
Public Domain (P)2017 Big Byte Books
Nine Years Among the Indians (Expanded, Annotated)
Summary
In a real-life version of Little Big Man comes Indian captive narrative of Herman Lehmann. He was captured as a boy in 1870 and lived for nine years among the Apaches and Comanches. Long considered one of the best captivity stories from the period, Lehmann came to love the people and the life. Only through the gentle persuasion of famed Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, was Lehmann convinced to remain with his white family once he was returned to them. Lehmann saw some of the most dramatic changes in the western United States from a perspective few whites had. He didn't just play the part...he was living as an Indian. His struggle to readjust to white culture is detailed here as well. At the time of this writing, he was married with five children, although he maintained the ties to his Indian friends and family for the rest of his life. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the movement that changed the country forever.
©2015 Big Byte Books (P)2017 Big Byte Books