Download the Popular Authors Audiobooks in History, 20th Century

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Title: Gulag

Subtitle: A History

Author: Anne Applebaum

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Format: Unabridged

Length: 27 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-15-12

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 211 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 2004

The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.

Applebaum intimately recreates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the 20th century.

Members Reviews:

Riveting story, flawed performance

Would you listen to Gulag again? Why?

Perhaps parts of it. I will consult a hard copy in order to digest and remember some of the many facts, statistics and quotations cited by the author.

What other book might you compare Gulag to and why?

Holocaust histories. Applebaum's history is based on newly opened archival information.

Would you be willing to try another one of Laural Merlingtons performances?

Not if it's a performance of a Russian-related subject. Her style was over-dramatic in inappropriate places, but worse was her horrendous pronunciation of Russian names, places, and gulag terminology. And it was inconsistently horrendous -- she pronounced the same name two or three different ways -- almost always incorrect.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Way too long for that but in places it was definitely hard to stop. The author livens up her chronological historical survey of the prisons and camps with the fascinating, if dismal, tragedies of individuals.

Any additional comments?

I find other reviewers' negative comments interesting. Applebaum opens her history with an instructive analysis of the contrast between the wests cultural fascination with Nazi atrocities and its willful ignorance and disregard of Soviet evils. The details of the story are grisly and mind-boggling, but all too true and they deserve attention. The gulag is an important part of 20th century history and it is still relevant in Russia.

informative to a degree

Anne Applebaum's books are always informative. She is very smug and thin skinned on Twitter. She has a pro-Polish bias. She has a tendency to over hype lesser known Gulag writers at the expense of Solzhenitsyn. That said I will buy every single book she writes.

Torture of Russian names

If you could sum up Gulag in three words, what would they be?

Necessary, frightening, sad

What other book might you compare Gulag to and why?

"Iron Curtain" by the same author

What didnt you like about Laural Merlingtons performance?

She ought to have been given at least a one-hour crash course of Russian pronunciation. Many names are simply not identifiable.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

That can't be done.

GULAG

Gulag is an important part of history. No one should forget the brutality, paranoia, and human degradation perpetrated by Joseph Stalin after the revolution of 1917.

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Title: The Longest Day

Subtitle: June 6, 1944

Author: Cornelius Ryan

Narrator: Clive Chafer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-02-12

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 540 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The classic account of the Allied invasion of Normandy....

The Longest Dayis Cornelius Ryans unsurpassed account of D-day, a book that endures as a masterpiece of military history. In this compelling tale of courage and heroism, glory and tragedy, Ryan painstakingly re-creates the fateful hours that preceded and followed the massive invasion of Normandy to retell the story of an epic battle that would turn the tide against world fascism and free Europe from the grip of Nazi Germany.

This book, first published in 1959, is a must for anyone who loves history, as well as for anyone who wants to better understand how free nations prevailed at a time when darkness enshrouded the earth.

Critic Reviews:

What I write about is not war but the courage of man. (Cornelius Ryan)

Fifty years from now, the history of D-day, I am sure, will lean heavily on this book. (

New York Times Book Review)

A dramatic, moving masterpiece, a living memorial to the men who died, and as suspenseful as the most gripping mystery story. (

Chicago Sunday Tribune)

Members Reviews:

Seen the movie? Read the book: it is worth it

Any additional comments?

Have you seen the movie? They make such a prominent statement in the opening credits that it is "based on the book by Cornelius Ryan" that I've always had a mind to read it.

After all, while the story is epic, the movie just "tries too hard" in parts. Isn't the breaching of Fortress Europe enough of a plot? No! Movie-goers also need a schmaltzy love story too. Surely the book can't be that contrived?

The good news is that it is not. It shares the "tell a story through a mosaic of slice-of-life vignettes" approach, yet does it with compelling integrity. It is gritty and unrelenting; sometimes poignant, but always authentic. The book's most rewarding and fascinating aspect is how it shows in rich detail the diverse impact of action and inaction, decision and indecision - and often just plain luck - in the final outcome of the day.

Horrendous narration makes it impossible to listen

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A different narration.

What didnt you like about Clive Chafers performance?

Every sentence dragged on with the exact same rhythm. How can you make such

interesting material so impossible to bear????

Any additional comments?

This is one of the saddest disappointments I have ever experienced on Audible.

a different take

This book gives a different take on the d day landings. Using interviews and letter etc it tells the story from the thoughts and feelings of those involved. A very good listen.

Excellent book, unpleasant narration voice

This is an exceptional written work. Unfortunately I found the narrator's voice to be so unpleasant that I was unable to listen to the entire book.

OMG....kill me now.....

Would you be willing to try another one of Clive Chafers performances?

NEVER!!!

Any additional comments?

I could not get past Chapter 2.... The narrator was sooooo monotone and drove me to rip my earphones out.....

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Title: Glock

Subtitle: The Rise of America's Gun

Author: Paul M. Barrett

Narrator: Kiff VandenHeuvel

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-10-12

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 462 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Based on 15 years of research, Glock is the riveting story of the weapon that has become known as Americas gun. Today the Glock pistol has been embraced by two-thirds of all U.S. police departments, glamorized in countless Hollywood movies, and featured as a ubiquitous presence on prime-time TV. It has been rhapsodized by hip-hop artists, and coveted by cops and crooks alike.

Created in 1982 by Gaston Glock, an obscure Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer, and swiftly adopted by the Austrian army, the Glock pistol, with its lightweight plastic frame and large-capacity spring-action magazine, arrived in America at a fortuitous time. Law enforcement agencies had concluded that their agents and officers, armed with standard six-round revolvers, were getting "outgunned" by drug dealers with semi-automatic pistols. They needed a new gun.

When Karl Water, a firearm salesman based in the U.S. first saw a Glock in 1984, his reaction was, Jeez, thats ugly. But the advantages of the pistol soon became apparent. The standard semi-automatic Glock could fire as many as 17 bullets from its magazine without reloading. (One equipped with an extended 33 cartridge magazine was used in Tucson to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others). It was built with only 36 parts that were interchangeable with those of other models. You could drop it underwater, toss it from a helicopter, or leave it out in the snow, and it would still fire. It was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to produce than Smith and Wessons revolver. Made in part of hardened plastic, it was even rumored (incorrectly) to be invisible to airport security screening.

Filled with corporate intrigue, political maneuvering, Hollywood glitz, bloody shoot-outs - and an attempt on Gaston Glocks life by a former lieutenant - Glock is at once the inside account of how Glock the company went about marketing its pistol to police agencies and later the public, as well as a compelling chronicle of the evolution of gun culture in America.

Critic Reviews:

This book - from a top-notch reporter - will enlighten you about both gun culture and business culture. Its fascinating, even-handed, and packs considerable punch! (Bill McKibben, best-selling author of The End of Nature, Deep Economy, and The Age of Missing Information)

Glock is a riveting tale with masterful pacing and meticulous research. Paul Barrett knows his subject intimately, and it shows.... Its a must-read for anyone with an interest in handguns or the firearm industry or even American pop culture. (Cameron Hopkins, editor in chief, Combat Tactics magazine; American Riflemans Industry Insider blog)

With his customary insight and crystal-clear style, Paul Barrett has told the story of how a simple toolmaker from Austria came to be the dominant force in the manufacture and sale of pistols in the United States.... Glock is not at all just for the gun enthusiast. This book is for anyone concerned about the level of gun violence in America, and that should be all of us.

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Title: Inferno

Subtitle: The World at War, 1939-1945

Author: Max Hastings

Narrator: Ralph Cosham

Format: Unabridged

Length: 31 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-09-11

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 620 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

From one of our finest military historians comes a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.

World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million livesan average of twentyseven thousand a day. For 35 years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, singlevolume history of the entire war.

Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday peopleof soldiers, sailors, and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crewsHastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developmentsHitlers refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late, Stalins ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army, Churchills leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, Roosevelts steady hand before and after the United States entered the warand puts them in real human context.

Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the wars penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalins invading Red Army, and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehrus words, the final epitaph of British rule in India.

Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the 20th century.

Critic Reviews:

This is the book [Hastings] was born to write: a work of staggering scope and erudition, narrated with supreme fluency and insight, it is unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written. (

Sunday Times)

Members Reviews:

A different kind of history

This is one of many books that I have read about The Second World War over the years. I have read enough books about this period that I almost did not buy this one, but I found Mr Hastings' approach very fresh and very different. Instead of following battles through army and division movements Mr Hastings decided to follow the flow of the war through individual diaries and letters. This approach made the period much more personal for me and taught me, as no other book did, what the war was like for those who had to live through it. I was and have remained impressed by his presentation of the war.

I also appreciated his global prospective. Here I read about the battles in the lesser battlefields of the war - Burma, India, China and so on. Previously I had to read books such as Stillwell And The American Experience In China to find much about what was going on outside of Europe and The Pacific.

Balanced against the positives I feel the need to mention some negatives.

1) Mr Hastings keeps referring to all information gained by breaking the enemy codes as Ultra in spite of the fact that the effort to break and utilize the German codes was known as Ultra and the effort to break and utilize the Japanese codes was known as Magic.

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Title: At the Dark End of the Street

Subtitle: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

Author: Danielle L. McGuire

Narrator: Robin Miles

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-28-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 122 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"A black woman's body was never hers alone" --Fannie Lou Hamer, Freedom Fighter

Rosa Parks is often described as a sweet elderly woman, whose tired feet caused her to defy the Jim Crow laws on Montgomery's city buses. Her supposedly solitary and spontaneous act, history tells us, sparked the 1955 bus boycott and gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really started the 1955 Boycott is far different than anything previously written. Danielle L. McGuire, brilliant historian, tells the never before told history of how the civil rights movement really began, how it was started in protest against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, begun in 17th century America, continued unpunished throughout the Jim Crow period when white men abducted and assaulted black women, as a form of retribution or to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy; sexually humiliating and assaulting women on streetcars and buses, in taxis and trains. The author writes how sexual violence and interracial rape became a crucial battleground upon which African Americans sought to destroy white supremacy and gain personal and political autonomy; how civil rights campaigns had roots in organized resistance to sexual violence and appeals for protection of black womanhood. Often ignored by civil rights historians, we see how a number of campaigns led to trials and convictions throughout the South and how these cases, broke with Southern tradition, fracturing the philosophical and political foundations of white supremacy and challenging the relationship between sexual domination and racial equality. And at the center of it all, Rosa Parks, who in the 1940s, fifteen years before the Montgomery boycott, was a militant woman and an anti-rape seasoned activist, the great granddaughter of a fair skinned slave woman and a Yankee soldier. Her quiet demeanor and steely determination bravely doing battle against white supremacy.

Members Reviews:

Listen to This Book

What did you love best about At the Dark End of the Street?

This book will make you cry.

What other book might you compare At the Dark End of the Street to and why?

It was similar to The Warmth of Other Suns in the vivid description of the Jim Crow South.

What does Robin Miles bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

Miles is very easy to listen to.

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

What is truly amazing is that any group of people could survive the treatment that African people have survived in America. The organization and activism of the community, the courage and dignity of the individuals are all a lesson to inform those interested in organizing and activism and restoring the dignity that was stolen from us.

Any additional comments?

Get it and pass it on!

Truth

I'm a white woman who grew up on Long Island, NY. I was a young girl in the late 50's and watched the news often with my parents. Harlem was often mentioned. I asked my dad if he would take me there. He did. As we drove down the alleys in Harlem, looking at poor like I never could have imagined, I cried for the people who lived there. At my young age before I was eight, I could not understand how they were allowed to live with so little, and no one was helping them.

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Title: Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

Author: Ian W. Toll

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-08-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 1242 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Audie Award Nominee, History, 2013

The planning, the strategy, the sacrifices and heroics - on both sides - illuminating the greatest naval war in history. On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss.

Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative. Ian W. Toll's dramatic narrative encompasses both the high command and the "sailor's-eye" view from the lower deck. Relying predominantly on eyewitness accounts and primary sources, Pacific Crucible also spotlights recent scholarship that has revised our understanding of the conflict, including the Japanese decision to provoke a war that few in the country's highest circles thought they could win. The result is a pause-resistant history that does justice to the breadth and depth of a tremendous subject.

Critic Reviews:

An entertaining, impressively researched chronicle of the tense period between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and American victory at the battle of Midway....Toll gives everyone involved in the conflict a chance to speak, bringing readers into the command centers and cockpits to reveal the humanity of combatants on both sides of the Pacific. (Kirkus)

Revealing and poignant, Tolls latest deftly navigates the rough waters of the Pacific struggle with flying colors. (Publishers Weekly)

Narrator Grover Gardner gives an applaudable narration of this detailed history of the Pacific Theater in WWIIGardner presents the many historical details in this work with an easygoing pace and precise enunciation that quickly draw in the listener and never let go. Rather than affecting an accent for quotations, he adjusts his inflection slightly, which works well. Novices and history buffs will find this performance a treat and want to hear the continuation of the story. (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

Superb narrative history

I thought Tull's "Six Frigates" was just of average interest, but "Pacific Crucible" is leaps and bounds beyond that. It's just the kind of narrative history I love: the writer is willing to take time to explore the background and side stories at length without losing the momentum of the story. Tull takes the time to show how the American and Japanese navies came to be shaped and then demonstrates throughout his account of the clashes, beginning with Pearl Harbor and ending with Midway, between them. Like Max Hastings, Tull is adept at interweaving personal accounts with the larger historical view. To me, the ultimate test of an audiobook is whether I'm tempted away to listen to other things: in this case, I was held for over twenty hours without ever once experiencing that temptation. A terrific listen!

Astonishingly good.

I have been reading about World War II for many years, but most of the books I have read cover the war in the European area North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Poland and Russia.

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Title: Grey Wolf

Subtitle: The Escape of Adolf Hitler

Author: Simon Dunstan, Gerrard Williams

Narrator: Don Hagen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-14-11

Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 222 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Did Hitler - code name "Grey Wolf" - really die in 1945? Gripping new evidence shows what could have happened.

When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No." As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: "We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death." What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence - some recently declassified - that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina. The recent discovery that the famous "Hitler's skull" in Moscow is female, as well as newly uncovered documents, provide powerful proof for their case. Dunstan and Williams cite people, places, and dates in over 500 detailed notes that identify the plan's escape route, vehicles, aircraft, U-boats, and hideouts. Among the details: the CIA's possible involvement and Hitler's life in Patagonia - including his two daughters.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: Last Call

Subtitle: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Author: Daniel Okrent

Narrator: Richard Poe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-29-11

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 251 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of Americas most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of Americas favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.

From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing.

Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrents dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the womens suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants.

Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredibleif long-forgottenfederal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the 20s was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrents account of Joseph P. Kennedys legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.)

Its a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrents narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing sacramental wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology.

Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrents rank as a major American writer.

Critic Reviews:

This is history served the way one likes it, with scholarly authority and literary grace. Last Call is a fascinating portrait of an era and a very entertaining tale." (Tracy Kidder)

Last Call is - I can't help it - a high, an upper, a delicious cocktail of a book, served with a twist or two and plenty of punch. (Evan Thomas, Newsweek)

A triumph. Okrent brilliantly captures the one glaring 'whoops!' in our Constitutional history. This entertaining portrait should stimulate fresh thought on the capacity and purpose of free government.

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Title: The End

Subtitle: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945

Author: Ian Kershaw

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-27-11

Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 292 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II.

Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did. The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and was almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic final months, when the war was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peace. Historically, this is extremely rare.

Drawing on original testimony from ordinary Germans and arch-Nazis alike, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this fascinating question in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in May 1945. Hitler, desperate to avoid a repeat of the "disgraceful" German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the Third Reich's fanatical determination, but his power was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even as the military situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their orders largely obeyed, and the regime continued its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and foreign workers. Even beneath the hail of allied bombing, German society maintained some semblance of normalcy in the very last months of the war. The Berlin Philharmonic even performed on April 12, 1945, less than three weeks before Hitler's suicide.

As Kershaw shows, the structure of Hitler's "charismatic rule" created a powerful negative bond between him and the Nazi leadership - they had no future without him, and so their fates were inextricably tied. Terror also helped the Third Reich maintain its grip on power as the regime began to wage war not only on its ideologically defined enemies but also on the German people themselves. Yet even as each month brought fresh horrors for civilians, popular support for the regime remained linked to a patriotic support of Germany and a terrible fear of the enemy closing in.

Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw's The End is a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.

Critic Reviews:

"Kershaw's comprehensive research, measured prose, and commonsense insight combine in a mesmerizing explanation of how and why Nazi Germany chose self-annihilation." (Publishers Weekly)

"[A]superb examination of the final defeat of Hitler's tyranny...an excellent portrait of the regime's death throes." (Booklist)

"This is an astonishing story well told by the reigning English-speaking master of Third Reich history.... A carefully considered and powerfully told saga." (Kirkus)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: Winston S. Churchill: The History of the Second World War, Volume 1 - The Gathering Storm

Author: Winston S. Churchill

Narrator: Michael Jayston

Format: Abridged

Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-11

Publisher: The Copyright Group

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 102 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

In the Second World War, every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Hitler regime that find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record.

It was a simple policy to keep Germany disarmed after the struggle of the First World War and the Victors adequately armed in vigilance. But errors were soon made. The tragedy of Americas failure to enter the League of Nations; the weakness and lack of resolution of the democracies to confront the growing strength, reach, and ambition of the fascist dictators in Germany, Italy, and Japan; the economic turmoil that allowed these events to spark and build.

In this first volume it is all too easy to see and understand how this immense tragedy could have been avoided, how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous. We shall hear how the counsels of prudence and restraint became the prime agents of mortal danger in this Gathering Storm. The overview is read by Winston S Churchill, MP, and the volume narrated by Michael Jayston.

Members Reviews:

Very authentic and insightful

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Well, if you like history about WWII then this is another book to listen to. It is nice to gain perspective from many sides of this most historic era. Churchill's resounding skill to keep the country "up" while dealing with the atrocities and damaging nature of the war make him seem impenetrable.

What other book might you compare Winston S. Churchill: The History of the Second World War, Volume 1 - The Gathering Storm to and why?

Right now I am reading the Grey Wolf about the route the Nazi Party was taking, and namely Hitler and his entourage, were taking amid raping everything and everyone of their right to be a human on earth and the pillaging of loot and art from anyone to satisfy the needs of the Nazis during the war. Also, the interesting aspect of what really happened to Mr. Adolf at war's end. What really happened to him and others who provoked and carried out their wild scheme.

Have you listened to any of Michael Jaystons other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not yet.

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

too many to think of one.

Short, a little self indulgent, but solid

Having listened to many factual accounts of WWII, this was a next logical step for my listening. The first book in this 5 book series seems too short for the cost of it, and it goes without saying that the slant given is very pro-english, regardless of the attacks he makes at the preparedness of the nation and the appeasement policies of the time.

Still, already from one book I have recorded some masterful quotes and I'll end this with one. And if you can digest the fact that you will hear a decidedly biased account of events, you will still find a very good and impressive accounting of events.

-The human mind, except when guided by extraordinary genius, cannot surmount the established conclusions upon which is has been reared.

-Winston Churchill

History at its finest

Winston Churchill, the greatest statesman of the 20th century, presents this history of WWII with a personal insight that only he could provide.

Wow!

This should be compulsory reading in 2017.....masterful, engaging writer.