Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in History

The Caribbean crises of the Cold War are revealed as never before in this riveting story of clashing ideologies, the rise of the politics of fear, the machinations of superpowers, and the daring of the brazen mavericks who took them on. The superpowers thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets, but what neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life.

After a long pre-history, the actual Cuban revolutionary war itself only lasted, incredibly, a little more than two years, from Dec 2, 1956, to January 1, 1959 - from the disastrous first battle, in which three-quarters of the expeditionary force of 82 revolutionaries that traveled to Cuba on the Granma were killed, to total victory at the beginning of January 1959. And there is no better account of the war than this little book by guerilla leader Che Guevara.

From primitive man's cowrie shells to the electronic cash card, from the markets of Timbuktu to the New York Stock Exchange, The History of Money explores how money and the myriad forms of exchange have affected humanity, and how they will continue to shape all aspects of our lives--economic, political, and personal.

On 16 July 1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 16, setting in motion Operation Sea Lion: his plan to invade England. The success of Operation Sea Lion hinged entirely on the destruction of the RAF and the Royal Navy, but even as Hitler's plans swung into action and England, barely recovered from Dunkirk, rallied her defences, the Battle of Britain began and in just a few months Germany had lost all hope of dominating England's skies and with it, the key to the invasion. On 17 September, 1940, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely and the entire episode faded from memory.

On Sarah A. Chrisman's 29th birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset - ever. She'd heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it.

Ecco una biografia estremamente piacevole da leggere, dallo straordinario piglio narrativo. Chiara Frugoni I tempi lontani in cui l'Europa era priva di strade e piena di paludi, finalmente sottratti alle nebbie delle nostre memorie scolastiche, in un saggio che si fa leggere come un romanzo. Laura Lilli, la Repubblica, nel giorno di Natale dell'anno 800 Carlo Magno viene incoronato imperatore. Un poeta rimasto anonimo saluta in lui il padre dell'Europa.

Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success.

From one of America’s greatest nonfiction writers, an epic saga of the rise and fall of American power, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, told through the life of one man. Richard Holbrooke was one of the most legendary and complicated figures in recent American history. Brilliant, utterly self-absorbed and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites, he was both admired and detested. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. 

A quarter of a century after the end of Communism swept away the ideological conflict of the "short 20th century", a new world is once again taking shape, this time in the Middle East. But what does the crisis in the region, and its refugee exodus into Europe, signify for the future of the world? And why has the noble dream of nation-building failed? Focusing mainly on religion, ideology or economics, most analysis ignored one crucial factor: asabiyyah, or group feeling, something outlined six and a half centuries ago.

With a new introduction exclusively in audio, read by Anna Pavord. The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish and devotion have all played their parts in the development of the tulip into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts and plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.

It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery: in an authoritarian state where the future was preordained, punk, with its rejection of society and DIY approach to building a new one, planted the seeds for revolution.  

In 1949, Ron Losee, a young Yale Medical School graduate, headed west with his wife and small daughter to begin the practice of medicine. They settled in Ennis, Montana, in a log cabin that also became their office and lab. Patients made themselves at home in the living room. One small bag held all their medical equipment. It was a proud moment when a patient first called Losee "Doc." His fee on that occasion was three dollars.

This introduction to the years of the Napoleonic Wars (1793 to 1815) tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the ship of the line - the deadly battleships that played such a vital role in the battles. The author describes the ships' construction and armaments, the daily life of the men who served, and the problems faced by commanders of the time in battles that include the Glorious First of June, the Battle of the Nile and Trafalgar.

From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reachinghistory offers a riveting account of its past 100 year, from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era.

In A Vast Conspiracy, the best-selling author of The Run of His Life casts an insightful, unbiased eye over the most extraordinary public saga of our time - the Clinton sex scandals. A superlative journalist known for the skillfulness of his investigating and the power of his writing, Jeffrey Toobin tells the unlikely story of the events that began over doughnuts in a Little Rock hotel and ended on the floor of the United States Senate, with only the second vote on presidential removal in American history.

Here is a tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries - many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today. Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history.

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change. 

John Laband examines the reigns of the eight Zulu kings from 1816 to the present. Starting with King Shaka, the renowned founder of the Zulu kingdom, he charts the lives of the kings Dingane, Mpande, Cetshwayo, Dinuzulu, Solomon and Cyprian, to today’s King Goodwill Zwelithini. In the course of this investigation, Laband places the Zulu monarchy in the context of African kingship and tracks and analyses the trajectory of the Zulu kings from independent and powerful precolonial African rulers to largely powerless traditionalist figures in post-apartheid South Africa.

This story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full detail "the greatest art theft in history." Almost 200 years after they were "purchased" from Greece, the finest and most famous marbles of antiquity still remain a burning issue. This compelling, controversial story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full and colorful detail "the greatest art theft in history", a steamy tale of obsession, intrigue, adultery, and ruin.

En este libro, que abarca desde los caníbales de Atapuerca hasta el talante del presidente Zapatero, no he pretendido escribir la historia que escribiría el pueblo, ya que el pueblo es ágrafo por naturaleza, sino, más bien, una historia de España contada para escépticos que no creen en la historia de España. No pretendo que sea veraz, justa y desapasionada, porque ninguna historia lo es, pero por lo menos intentaré que no mienta ni tergiverse a sabiendas, que ya es un propósito sobradamente ambicioso en los tiempos que corren.