Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Military

Civil War Commando is the incredible tale of two giants on a historic collision course: Will Cushing, the United States Navy's first naval commando, and the unsinkable Confederate ironclad Albemarle, Terror of the Roanoke, an innovative war machine that seized control of the Roanoke River Valley and threatened to cost the Union the war.

In this fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front.

Alistair Horne is a leading scholar of French history. Here he trains his sights on one of the most compelling figures of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte. Far from a mere dictator, Napoleon was a military, political and social visionary whose legacy can still be felt in France and all over the world. Horne examines the one-time emperor at his most human, from his greatest triumphs to his disastrous failures.

As an orphaned survivor and witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) compelled the world to confront the Holocaust with his searing memoir Night. How did this soft-spoken man from a small Carpathian town become such an influential figure on the world stage? Drawing on Wiesel’s prodigious literary output and interviews with his family, friends, scholars, and critics, Joseph Berger seeks to answer this question.

 In this riveting new book, John Rhodehamel argues that Booth’s primary motivation for his heinous crime was a growing commitment to white supremacy. In alternating chapters, America’s Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln’s commitment to emancipation grew, so too did Booth’s rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as “King Abraham Africanus the First.”  

"The real war will never get in the books," Walt Whitman wrote in this diary he kept during the Civil War. Whitman chronicled his visits to Washington, D.C. hospitals where he comforted wounded men and assisted nurses and doctors. This journal, written by one of America's greatest poets and writers, captures the details and ironies of war.

America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that’s the story many Americans have long told themselves. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military.

The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy.

Neal Bascomb, a New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous - and ingenious - breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp.

Richard Bessel, history professor at the University of York, specializes in the social and political history of Nazi Germany. In four compelling essays, he forcefully argues that racism made war inevitable. The Third Reich, led by "[A] band of political gangsters", came to power with a deep ideological commitment to war and racism. As the driving force behind the economics, social policy, and propaganda of Germany, racial hatred was the catalyst that plunged Europe into war.

Noted historian Robert Hendrickson has written more than 40 books and has earned critical acclaim for his meticulous historical research and highly accessible style. In The Road to Appomattox, by weaving together passages from diaries, military reports, and newspapers, Hendrickson creates a vivid, firsthand account of the final year of the Civil War.

The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put aside their own agendas to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress to George Washington's battle against his slave, Harry Washington, these less discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation.

On August 18, 1945, US Army Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione bled to death in the clear, bright sky above Tokyo. Marchione, a gunner in the US Air Force, died, like so many before him in World War II, quietly, cradled in the arms of a buddy. Though tragic, Marchione's death would have been no more notable than any other had he not had the dubious distinction of being the last American killed in World War II combat.

For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative.

"If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." These are the words of General William T. Sherman, with whom "scorched earth policy" will forever be linked. In his memoirs, the Union general describes the waning days of the American Civil War and his famous march through Georgia, culminating in the capture and burning of Atlanta. With frank, forceful words, the listener is brought to the front lines as Sherman wipes out 20,000 Confederate soldiers and sacks Atlanta - and in the process boosts Abraham Lincoln's re-election campaign.

We all know about the famous generals and the major battles of the Civil War. But for the soldiers who actually fought, the war was all too real. It was especially traumatic for the thousands of soldiers who ranged in age from 10 to 15. Some young soldiers joined the fray to escape the boredom of farm work or to "set the South straight". Many of them kept diaries and wrote letters home. Through their eyes, we see what life was like on the edge of chaos.

Major Megan McClung is the first female United States Naval Academy graduate to be killed in action since the school’s 1845 founding and the highest-ranking female U.S. Marine Corps officer to die during the Iraq war. Be Bold is Megan’s inspirational story of defying steep odds, making the ultimate sacrifice and paving the way for a new era of women at war.

Journey back through time to discover remarkable accounts of parents who waved off their sons and daughters, never knowing if they would ever see them again. One mother saw no less than ten of her sons between the ages of eighteen and thirty-seven, dispatched to the frontline in the First World War. The biggest “real” band of brothers that ever served their country, but to discover how many made it back and who this dear lady was, you will have to listen to the rest.

Leading the Way to Victory is the official history of the 60th Troop Carrier Group, featuring unpublished first-person accounts by participating veterans and expertly written by retired USAF Colonel Mark C. Vlahos, combat veteran and former Vice Wing Commander of 314th Airlift Wing at the Little Rock Air Force Base.

Amidst bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent the Civil War trying to hold their families together. This moving book illuminates that struggle through the letters they exchanged. Despite harsh laws against literacy and brutal practices that broke apart Black families, people found ways to write to each other against all odds. In this book, listeners will meet parents who are losing hope of ever seeing their children again and a husband who walks fifteen miles to visit his wife, enslaved on a different plantation.