William Lavelle has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 3 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Patton.
Patton
Summary
In paying final tribute to his Third Army commander, General Eisenhower said: "He was one of those men born to be a soldier...whose gallantry and dramatic personality inspired all he commanded to great deeds of valor." This detailed and persuasive study by the author of The Patton Papers was described by Patton's daughter Ruth as "an extraordinary book". It is widely considered the best biography ever written of the General, an American hero as compelling as he was complex.
©1985 by Martin Blumenson (P)1990 by Blackstone Audiobooks
Our Country
Summary
In this rare, sweeping history, Michael Barone draws from deep within the political and social record of modern America, from election returns, political polls, news reports, census extracts, and statistical abstracts, to tell the story of how the country of our parents and of our grandparents became our country. Barone's account of the rise of the prosperous and powerful nation which we know today points out that the single most significant issue to dominate American politics in this century is that of who really is an American. Gone are the vaunted battles over the distribution of wealth and income. In their place are the powerfully rooted political battles fought between America's cultural poles: its racial and ethnic groups, its urban liberals and small town conservatives, its state's rightists and centrists, and ultimately also between advocates of culturally diverse positions and lifestyles. Besides his extensive knowledge of the historical record, his portrayal of individual participants, from FDR and Ronald Reagan through labor leader John L. Sullivan and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, adds color and dimension to the narrative as it moves into contemporary times.
©1990 Michael Barone (P)1992 Blackstone Audiobooks
Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays
Summary
“This is not a book to promote tranquility, and readers in quest of peace of mind should look elsewhere,” writes Paul Fussell in the foreword to this original, sharp, tart, and thoroughly engaging work. The celebrated author focuses his lethal wit on habitual euphemizers, artistically pretentious third-rate novelists, sexual puritans, and the “Disneyfiers of life”. He moves from the inflammatory title piece on the morality of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima to a hilarious disquisition on the “naturist movement”, to essays on the meaning of the Indy 500 race, on George Orwell, and on the shift in men’s chivalric impulses toward their mothers. Fussell’s “frighteningly acute eye for the manners, mores, and cultural tastes of Americans” (The New York Times Book Review) is abundantly evident in this entertaining dissection of the enemies of truth, beauty, and justice.
©1988 Paul Fussell (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.