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Title: The Story of the '9th Kings' in France

Author: Herbert Glynne Roberts

Narrator: Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-02-11

Publisher: FNH Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

The 9th Kings was a territorial infantry battalion when the Great War (World War I) began. On the 4th of August 1914, a telegram containing one word arrived at their headquarters: "Mobilise!" This book follows the unit from mobilisation in 1914 through to the demobilisation in 1918 after the armistice. Along the way, they take part in all of the big battles, Somme, Arras, Ypres along with a near continuous series of skirmishes and patrols while in the front line.

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Title: Conquest

Author: Stewart Binns

Narrator: Richard Burnip

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-30-11

Publisher: Oakhill Publishing Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

1066 Senlac Ridge, England. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, defeats Harold Godwinson, King Harold II of England, in what will become known as the Battle of Hastings. But England will not be conquered easily, the Anglo-Saxons will not submit meekly to Norman rule. Although his heroic deeds will nearly be lost to legend, one man unites the resistance. His name is Hereward of Bourne. His honour, bravery and skill at arms will change the future of England.

Critic Reviews:

... some wonderful prose and above all else characters that you really want to hang around (Falcetta Times)

Members Reviews:

Soap history

This is a good bad book. The plotline is clever, with every major character of the 11th century springing out of the pages. A English hero meets up with Welsh rebels, a famous Scots King, a Spanish icon, and others. He returns to England to defy the despicable William the Conqueror, then goes off into Byzantine exile. There is a mystical amulet. If this sounds rather silly, it is.

That said, the book has a magnetism and many genuinely moving moments. Hereward's family are lovable. The women are not badly written but narrated in a breathlessly tedious way. There is a hilariously daft seduction scene. The Normans are all purpose professional villains. The Saxons are noble but doomed.

This is a great beach read, or one for a rainy day

Engrossing

One of the few books I've listened to in the past few years that I didn't want to end, excellent story and narration.

As a follow on this was poor,

What would have made Conquest better?

This story felt like a children story at times, weak plot based around facts. The characters were poor super hero types?

I was really looking forward to this book after the last by Stewart Binns but it almost as if he ran out of ideas

The narrative really got on my nerves,

Had to listen but dont know why

What could Stewart Binns have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

made it like previous novel

You didnt love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It gives an idea of history and the Norman invasion, problem was I knew what would happen as I know this part of history

Any additional comments?

Maybe a good book for kids to learn about history

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Title: A Woman, a Man, and Two Kingdoms

Subtitle: The Story of Madame DÉpinay and the Abbé Galiani

Author: Francis Steegmuller

Narrator: Davina Porter

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 11-22-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

The 18th centurys Age of Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary France continues to fascinate us today. Steegmuller brings his scholarly talents to this collection of the letters of Mme. Louise dÉpinay, best-known for the treatment she received in Rousseaus Confessions. Eavesdropping on the writings of this intelligent woman, the listener gains not only insights into her friendship with Italian priest-diplomat, Ferdinando Galiani, but also a glance into the life of Frances elite.

Members Reviews:

more chronicle than narrative

Through page 123, the author has assured us of the remarkable qualities of the woman and the man without letting us get to know them.

He has dropped many names without conveying much sense of how the people named influenced each other or their world.

He has quoted the correspondence of Tanucci and Galiani at remarkable length. ("Two Men and a Kingdom"?)

He has provided no vivid or compelling experience of the worlds of 18th-century France and Naples (except that Galiani found Paris more congenial than Naples, except that the weather of Paris was foggy compared with that of Naples).

And he may be about to start focusing on the relationship of the woman and man of the title.

Lacks something ...

After reading several books on Ben Franklin earlier in the year, I was looking forward to finding similar portraits of great personalities in European circles during the Enlightenment period. Although I was not wholly disappointed with the actual drawing of the main characters of the interesting Paris and Naples relationship, I had a hard time understanding these persons within a broader context of the period. The correspondence between the parties is indeed charming and the author gives ample examples of how their friendship progressed along the way, but lacks a greater sense of their world outside of being a diplomat or of being a liberated woman and teacher. The writers are authoring Dialogues and Conversations, showing that they are interested in greater philosophical and social issues, and not just motivated by economical issues or manners alone, and some such acknowledgement should have been made more clear.

A helpful overview that would make this tender story of two friends more enjoyable would have been to read "Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson" by Leo Damrosch, to get the sense that is lacking in Steefmuller's work. Although Damrosch writes about Britain rather than of France or Naples, he identifies the divide between the fictive and the real in the political conservatism that is the result of wanting to be part of a consensus, and having a hard time achieving it, in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Steegmuller affirms that Madame d"Epinay and the Abbe Galiani spent much of their time seeking approval from each other and from those in their circles. To see this as a wider problem of the time would have made the book much more insightful. These two friends were successful because they understood, as Franklin himself did, that Christian charity is an act of freedom that sets one free from self. How to experience that freedom within social norms and expectations is the problem that arises within Enlightened societies.

Fascinating lives! Incredible times! Historical yet personal

This books transports you back to the 50-year span preceding the French Revolution.

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Title: Dresden

Subtitle: Tuesday 13 February 1945

Author: Frederick Taylor

Narrator: Sean Barrett

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-15-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

At 9.51pm on Tuesday, 13 February 1945, Dresden's air-raid sirens sounded as they had done many times in the previous five years - until then most always a false alarm. No searchlights probed the skies above the unprotected target city; the guns had mostly been moved East to counter the Russian advance.

By the next morning, 796 RAF Lancasters and 311 USAAF Flying Fortresses had dropped more than 4,500 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices. More than 25,000 inhabitants perished in the terrifying firestorm, and 13 square miles of the city's historic centre, including incalculable quantities of treasure and works of art, lay in ruins. It was Ash Wednesday, 1945.

This is the first serious re-appraisal of an event that lives in the popular memory with Guernica and Hiroshima as a by-word for the horror of 20th-century air warfare. In addition to drawing on archives and primary sources only accessible since the fall of the East German regime, together with British and American records, Frederick Taylor has talked to Allied aircrew and the city's survivors, whether Jews working as slave labourers, members of the German armed services, refugees, or ordinary citizens of Dresden.

Critic Reviews:

'Taylor weaves a chilling narrative from eyewitness accounts and...documentary research...His account of the air operation... is quite superb.' (The Times)

'Taylor's magnificent... study... surely as close as the English language will get to a definitive, balanced examination of the subject.' (Scotsman)

Members Reviews:

Gripping and balanced account of Dresden raids

This book was a balanced and thought-provoking, as well as an emotional, account of the Dresden raids and the impact of those raids on the people of Dresden. Taylor does a good job in providing a realistic assessment of the reasons why Dresden was fire-bombed and the ways in which the firebombing became a moral issue at the time and in the postwar period. He also tells an emotive account of the raids as they were experienced by ordinary Germans, including German Jewish people. As an audio book, this is generally gripping stuff. Sean Barrett is a good narrator, although I find some of the accents irritating (at times). I would recommend this to anyone interested in the story of the Dresden raids/ history of the Second World War.

Myth shattering

Wow so much information not only about the raid and the days around it but a full history of the town from humble beginnings to seat of kings. All I thought I knew was challenge with evidence and the pace of the story kept you hooked. The appendix provide modern information and figures that shed light on the reasons we think we know so much but that we truly only know a little. Great read!

An exceptional piece of work.

Hard for me to overpraise this splendid book. It's content is a brilliant melding of the history of Dresden, the specific events of the late second world war which led to its destruction and an an extraordinarily detailed and lucid description of that horrific destruction itself. There is an excellent balance of the macro-historical and personal throughout, lending a limpid air of pathos to the narrative. The narration is clear, precise, well paced and euphonious; really of the very, very highest quality. Anyone with an interest in history will enjoy this work, which is as good an audio book as I have heard.

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Title: The War that Never Was

Subtitle: The True Story of the Men who Fought Britain's Most Secret Battle

Author: Duff Hart-Davis

Narrator: Cameron Stewart

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-26-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

For the very first time, The War That Never Was tells the fascinating story of a secret war fought by British mercenaries in the Yemen in the early 1960s.

In a covert operation organised over whisky and sodas in the clubs of Chelsea and Mayfair, a group of former SAS officers - led by the irrepressible Colonel Jim Johnson - arranged for a squadron of British mercenaries to travel to the remote mountain regions of the Yemen, to arm, train and lead Yemeni tribesmen in their fight against a 60,000-strong contingent of Egyptian soldiers.

It was one of the most uneven running battles ever waged; the Egyptians fielded a huge, professionally-trained army. The British fought back at the head of a ragtag force of tribal warriors and, ultimately, won. Egypt's President Nasser described the battle in the Yemen as my Vietnam.

Its a fascinating, forgotten, and rip-roaringly entertaining pocket of British military history.

Members Reviews:

The Lawrence's of Yemen

There is a lot that can be learned from this book that pertains to the goings on of today. Small groups of special operators can go into an environment and join a rebel group and make it more efficient and lethal.A much better option than to invade a country and then try to deal with the societal and cultural issues. Imagine if small teams of private military contractors went into Syria at the very beginning and gave the people the tools to free themselves and head of the scourge of ISIS?

And the big take away is whether you are Egypt in the case of this book or America today in Afghanistan, never go into these types of terrain and expect to win. The terrain will always favor the defender.

This book made me think of Lawrence of Arabia and his great adventures. These men did a fine job and followed in that tradition.

A Jolly Good and Relevant Reading - Yemen

In light of the American withdrawal from the Middle East and now Yemen, this book is

a timely reminder of the unsettled nature of the region. This story is UK and French

mercenaries [without official government visible support] aided the tribes and shieks and Prince of Yemen in thwating Nassars attempted control

of Yemen on the way to enlarging his influence in the Middle East. Nassar, a client of the Soviet Union, wanted to oust the West and then control the flow of oil to Europe and the U.S.

Operating on a shoe-string and with periodic Egyptian gold, the mercenaries held on for almost a decade. The military leadership kept the tribes in line and also to protect the

tribal interests.

The story line is engrossing and the account well researched and written. End notes often

illuminate a passage. Truly an amazing story and one worth a reader's time.

Yemen

This is a real and interesting account of how the world powers acted in the cold war area - war by proxy and plausible deniability!

Three Stars

Extremely long winded--

Five Stars

Fasinating history!

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Title: Nick Robinson's The Prime Ministers: The Complete Series 1

Author: Nick Robinson

Narrator: Nick Robinson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-06-11

Publisher: BBC Worldwide Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

This series explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today.

The BBCs Nick Robinson presents his fascinating and absorbing Radio 4 series featuring eight famous British prime ministers.

Extract from speech by Lloyd George: © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

Members Reviews:

An impressive look at history.

What did you love best about Nick Robinson's The Prime Ministers: The Complete Series 1?

The varoious interviws and musical pieces.

What did you like best about this story?

The insights giving by historians and others gave it a documentary feel.

Which scene was your favorite?

To many to pick from.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The poems in the first segment I thought were hilarious.

Any additional comments?

A must have for any fan of history.

Well worth it!

This is a great introduction to the leaders of Britain. There are fantastic anecdotes and nothing boring. I liked the interviews with modern politicians which gave added perspective. Enjoyable and informative.

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Title: World's End

Author: Donald James Wheal

Narrator: Michael Jayston

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-24-11

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

Best-selling author Donald James grew up in World's End, Chelsea during the Blitz years. Just on the edge of a fashionable middle class world, his childhood experience was in stark contrast to the privileged, bourgeois lifestyle glimpsed a few hundred yards away. He grew up in stark poverty and depredation, a hard existence yet shot through by the humour and courage of his family and neighbours.

This was a now vanished world of grimy factories and generating plants, coal drays, flat caps and boozers, betting shops, dog tracks, 'Piccadilly girls', Guinness Trust buildings and bare foot children. World's End was a melting pot of the working class labourers who flooded to London in the previous century to make their fortunes, and Donald's family was no exception.

The story tells of the feud between Donald's two grandmothers that meant that though they only lived a few yards away from each other, for a dozen years they never acknowledge one another avoiding even at Donald's parent's weeding, Christmases or birthday celebrations. Yet, though it was hard, Donald's was a happy childhood until the war came. Donald was eight. The radio carried news of impending war and then the declaration of war, difficult to believe in the Indian summer of the 1939. But soon Donald's world would be torn apart by school drills with gas masks and evacuation plans, evacuation itself then an uneasy return to London just as the Blitz itself began and the nights were spent in terror as bombs rained down through the Black Out. Then came the night that Donald's world, did literally end and with it his childhood.

Members Reviews:

An Aussie Worlds End

This is a story so akin to my own...growing up during WW2..Part of my time was spent in Wooloomooloo in old Sydney. It was a fetid slum area...now thoroughly gentrified. My experiences there were so alike his, though the denizens of the 'loo were much more depraved..the dregs of squalid city life.

All in all, a great and moving read.

You come away feeling you knew these people.

This is an autobiography. The author brings the characters alive. You feel you're there with them living through the times and the blitz. Since my experience was through the audiobook, I can say Michael Jayston's narration is superb. With an audiobook, the skill of the reader is every bit as important as the skill of the author. This is a perfect match of both.

Worlds End A memoir of a blitz childhood

My husband was born and brought up in the Worlds End and this book really brings back some of his early memories, even i can remember some of the places that are spoken about in the book. Wonderful read

Wonderful

I grew up around this area in London in the 1950s. For people who know London and Londoners this will be an especially interesting read.

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Title: The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Narrator: Stephen Thorne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-20-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

The King James Bible has often been called the Book of Books both in itself and in what it stands for. Since its publication in 1611 it has been the best-selling book in the world, and many believe it has had the greatest impact. The King James Bible has spread the Protestant faith. It has also been the greatest influence on the enrichment of the English language and its literature. It has been the Bible of wars from the British Civil War in the 17th century to the American Civil War two centuries later, and it has been carried into battle in innumerable conflicts since then.

Its influence on social movements - particularly involving women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and politics was profound. It was crucial to the growth of democracy. It was integral to the abolition of slavery and it defined attitudes to modern science, education and sex.

Fascinating and eye-opening, The Book of Books reveals the extraordinary and still-felt impact of a work created 400 years ago. Stephen Thorne reads Melvyn Braggs definitive history of the King James Bible.

Members Reviews:

The Influence of the Bble on English Literature

Melvyn Bragg was lyrical in his appreciation of the literary contribution of the King James Bible to the English language, crediting it with having the most influence on the all subsequent English literature of any writing. He dismissed the content of the Bible as being mostly fairy tales however, which was disappointing. As it is the 400th anniversary of the K.J.V. being universally available, I was hoping to find a book that gave some background to the events which finally allowed ordinary people to own these amazing scriptures which have influenced our culture so markedly. I lost interest halfway though the volume as it became a technical treatise about language.

A linguist trying to be a theologian

If you want a history of the King James Version, this book will probably be a disappointment. Melvyn Bragg tries to give an overview of the impact of the King James Version on the English speaking peoples and the world at large ranging over 400 years. The book has a too broad scope and therefore I think it fails. The impression that I got at times is that it is the ramblings of someone that don't know where to start and where to finish. While there are a lot of interesting bits, I was left with a lot of questions. Should a short rebuttal of Richard Dawkins be part of such a book? Does Bragg really know the difference between the Old and New Testament, as in the beginnig he especially equated the New Testament with the Bible? I really don't think Bragg is right when he says that British and other English speaking missionaries made their translations into other languages from the King James Bible. He quotes Diarmaid Macullach a lot, taking his point of departure uncritically. In the end I am a bit disappointed in the book. I really think there are better books on the issue for instance the one Alistar McGrath wrote. Bragg should really limit his scope in future.

The Bibles cultural influence on our lives

I must say that I am a confirmed sceptic. However I did have a religious period (Jehovah's Witness) in my life and reckon I had a reasonable and defensive knowledge of scripture. But I little realised the generational influences and past degree of Biblical intrusion in Western cultural development.

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Title: The Blitz

Subtitle: The British Under Attack

Author: Juliet Gardiner

Narrator: Catherine Harvey

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-31-11

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

From the author of Wartime and The Thirties comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war. Yet, compared with other great events of that war - Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, D-Day - the Blitz remains curiously overlooked; while the London Blitz has been much documented, there exists very little in the way of a comprehensive account of the Blitz experience as a whole - or of its social, political and cultural implications.

In her new book, critically acclaimed historian Juliet Gardiner finally gives the Blitz the historical attention it deserves. Exploring this national story, she charts the impact of the nightly bombings on the entire country. And while loss and devastation affected the whole of Britain, the attacks also served to galvanise the nation: in the face of the terrifying Nazi onslaught, a new determination steadily emerged.

Revealing, original and beautifully written, The Blitz is a much-needed re-examination of one of the most important aspects of Second World War history.

Members Reviews:

An avalanche of information

This is an excellent piece of research and writing. It cuts through all the old stories of war time spirit and "We'll meet again" style propaganda. It's all here - the thieves, the deceptions, the making money, the poor preparation, the destruction, the death and the depression. The good stories are there too overall giving an accurate account of how terrible it must have been.

The sheer amount of information in this book does not make it the easiest of listens but if you want to know in-depth about this subject then this is for you. I've given it four stars as its such an impressive work but as a casual listen it would be a two or three star book.

Amazing what people lived through

A fascinating book that really brings home the reality of a nation at war. The carnage and destruction of our cities is described in detail - and makes me remember too that we did even more to german cities. Well read and full of anecdote and first hand evidence of what it was like on the ground. Only misses out on a fifth star because, perhaps inevitably, the detailed accounts of raids does become repetitive.

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Title: Honour And The Sword

Author: A. L. Berridge

Narrator: Jonathan Oliver

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-22-11

Publisher: Oakhill Publishing Ltd

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, European

Publisher's Summary:

It is 1636 - the height of the Thirty Years War. The Spanish armies swell out of the Artois Region of the Netherlands, flooding into King Louis XIII's France. The border village of Dax-en-roi stands in their way. The Chevalier de Roland rallies a valiant defence, but his household guard are no match for the invaders. The is only one survivor of the Spanish brutality: the lone heir the Roland name, a young boy called Andre de Roland, the new Sieur of Dax......Upon this young nobleman's shoulders all hope lies.

Members Reviews:

Loved it

Loved it!

Fantastic listening even better than when I read it five years ago yay