Chris Mackowski has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors. The most-rated is The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign, November 26-December 2, 1863.
Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River, May 21-25, 1864
Summary
For 16 days the armies had grappled — a grueling horror-show of nonstop battle, march, and maneuver that stretched through May of 1864. Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant had resolved to destroy his Confederate adversaries through attrition if by no other means. He would just keep at them until I used them up. Meanwhile, Grant's Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, looked for an opportunity to regain the offensive initiative. "We must strike them a blow," he told his lieutenants. The toll on both armies was staggering. But Grant's war of attrition began to take its toll in a more insidious way. Both army commanders — operating on the dark edge of exhaustion, fighting off illness, pressure-cooked by stress — began to feel the effects of that continuous, merciless grind in very personal ways. Punch-drunk tired, they began to second-guess themselves, began missing opportunities, began making mistakes. As a result, along the banks of the North Anna River, commanders on both sides brought their armies to the brink of destruction without even knowing it. Picking up the story started in the Emerging Civil War Series book A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, historian Chris Mackowski follows the road south to the North Anna River. Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River offers a concise, engaging account of the mistakes and missed opportunities of the third — and least understood — phase of the Overland Campaign.
©2015 Savas Beatie (P)2020 Savas Beatie
Grant's Last Battle
Summary
The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War...the two-term president of the United States...the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe...the respected New York financier - Ulysses S. Grant - was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked 20 cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant’s final battle - a race against his own failing health to complete his personal memoirs in an attempt to secure his family’s financial future. But the project evolved into something far more: an effort to secure the very meaning of the Civil War itself and how it would be remembered. The news of Grant’s illness came swift on the heels of his financial ruin. Business partners had swindled his family out of everything but the money he and his wife had in their pockets and the family cookie jar. In this maelstrom of woe, Grant refused to surrender. Putting pen to paper, the hero of Appomattox embarked on his final campaign: an effort to write his memoirs before he died. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant would cement his place as not only one of America’s greatest heroes but also as one of its most sublime literary voices. Filled with personal intrigues and supported by a cast of colorful characters that included Mark Twain, William Vanderbilt, and P. T. Barnum, Grant’s Last Battle recounts a deeply personal story as dramatic for Grant as any of his battlefield exploits. Author Chris Mackowski, PhD has recounted Grant’s battlefield achievements as a historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and as an academic, he has studied Grant’s literary career. His familiarity with the former president as a general and as a writer brings Grant’s Last Battle to life with new insight, told with the engaging prose that has become the hallmark of the Emerging Civil War Series.
©2015 Savas Beatie (P)2019 Savas Beatie
The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign, November 26-December 2, 1863
Summary
The stakes for George Gordon Meade could not have been higher. After his stunning victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863, the Union commander spent the following months trying to bring the Army of Northern Virginia to battle once more and finish the job. The Confederate army, robbed of much of its offensive strength, nevertheless parried Meade’s moves time after time. Although the armies remained in constant contact during those long months of cavalry clashes, quick maneuvers, and sudden skirmishes, Lee continued to frustrate Meade’s efforts. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Meade’s political enemies launched an all-out assault against his reputation and generalship. Even the very credibility of his victory at Gettysburg came under assault. Pressure mounted for the army commander to score a decisive victory and prove himself once more. Smaller victories, like those at Bristoe Station and Rappahannock Station, did little to quell the growing clamor - particularly because out west, in Chattanooga, another Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, was once again reversing Federal misfortunes. Meade needed a comparable victory in the east. And so, on Thanksgiving Day, 1863, the Army of the Potomac rumbled into motion once more, intent on trying again to bring about the great battle that would end the war. The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign, November 26-December 2 1863 recounts the final chapter of the forgotten fall of 1863 - when George Gordon Meade made one final attempt to save the Union and, in doing so, save himself.
©2018 Savas Beatie (P)2019 Savas Beatie