Download the Popular Authors Audiobooks in History, American

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Title: The Fishing Creek Confederacy

Subtitle: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance (Shades of Blue and Gray)

Author: Richard A. Sauers, Peter Tomasak

Narrator: Don Sobczak

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-28-13

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln is still thought of as one of the best presidents of the United States. However, most Americans forget that he was elected with only 40 percent of the popular vote. Many Democratic newspapers across the North mistrusted Lincoln's claim that he would not abolish slavery, and their lukewarm support collapsed after Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862. The advent of a national draft in the spring of 1863 only added fuel to the fire with anti-Lincoln Democrats, who argued that it was illegal to draft civilians. Many newspaper editors advocated active resistance against the draft.

Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin of Pennsylvania was a staunch supporter of the Lincoln administration. The commonwealth supplied more than 360,000 white soldiers and 9,000 black soldiers during the conflict. However, there was sustained opposition to the war throughout the state, much of it fanned by the pens of Democratic newspaper editors. Though most of the opposition was disorganized and spontaneous, other aspects of the antiwar sentiment in the state occasionally erupted, creating major incidents.

In The Fishing Creek Confederacy, Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak address the serious opposition to the draft in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, in 1864. Egged on by the anti-Lincoln newspaper editors, a number of men avoided the draft and formed ad hoc groups to protect themselves from arrest. In July 1864, the shooting of a Union lieutenant confronting draft evaders resulted in military intervention in the northern townships of the county. The troops arrested more than one hundred men, sending about half of them to a prison fort near Philadelphia. That fall and winter, some of the men were subjected to military trials in Harrisburg, the state capital. The arrests led to bitter feelings that were slow to die. The military intervention eventually impacted a Pennsylvania gubernatorial election and led to a murder trial.

Sauers and Tomasak describe the draft in Pennsylvania and consider how Columbia County fit into the overall draft process. Subsequent chapters take the reader through the events of the summer of 1864, including the interaction of soldiers and civilians in the county, the prison experiences of the men, and their trials. Later chapters cover the August 1865 Democratic rally at Nob Mountain and the effects of the draft after the war ended, including its influence on the 1872 election for governor, the 1891 murder trial, and the formation of the official Democratic version of the events, which has been used by historians ever since.

The Fishing Creek Confederacy is the first book to address this episode and its aftermath in its entirety. Sauers and Tomasak present the story and try to disentangle the often contradictory nature of the sources and how both amateur and professional historians have used them.

Critic Reviews:

"Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak have done an impressive job of researching the National Archives and local newspapers to uncover the fascinating details about the Fishing Creek Confederacy in 1864. Their insightful and detailed book is by all means the best case study of anti-Lincoln ferment in the North during the Civil War.

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Title: The Flatiron

Subtitle: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose with It

Author: Alice Sparberg Alexiou

Narrator: A. Savalas

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-24-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 15 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The marvelous story of the Flatiron: the instantly recognizable building that signaled the start of a new era in New York history.

Critics hated it. The public feared it would topple over. Passersby were knocked down by the winds. But even before it was completed, the Flatiron Building had become an unforgettable part of New York City.

The Flatiron Building was built by the Chicago-based Fuller Company - a group founded by George Fuller, "the father of the skyscraper" - to be their New York headquarters. The company's president, Harry Black, was never able to make the public call the Flatiron the Fuller Building, however. Black's was the country's largest real estate firm, constructing Macy's department store, and soon after the Plaza Hotel, the Savoy Hotel, and many other iconic buildings in New York as well as in other cities across the country. With an ostentatious lifestyle that drew constant media scrutiny, Black made a fortune only to meet a tragic, untimely end.

In The Flatiron, Alice Sparberg Alexiou chronicles not just the story of the building but the heady times in New York at the dawn of the 20th century. It was a time when Madison Square Park shifted from a promenade for rich women to one for gay prostitutes; when photography became an art; motion pictures came into existence; the booming economy suffered increasing depressions; jazz came to the forefront of popular music - and all within steps of one of the city's best-known and best-loved buildings.

Editorial Reviews:

Alice Sparberg Alexious history of one of New Yorks earliest skyscrapers and enduring icons is thorough and sprawling. With the invention of the elevator, building developers realized they could maximize their expensive real estate investments by building higher and higher; the city quickly grew into the metropolis we know today. This audiobook not only documents the history of the triangular skyscraper from its origins with the Fuller Company, but also the history of the Madison Square neighborhood where it resides and the giant city evolving around it. A. Savlas gives a measured and leisurely performance here. She beautifully evokes the story of this celebrated structure and the famous, infamous, and average New Yorkers who financed, built, criticized, loved, and photographed it again and again.

Members Reviews:

Thank you, Audible, for producing this

Thank you, Audible, for producing this book, that otherwise might not have been recorded. Historical material of interest but not compelling.

Delightful and vivid!

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book which not only gave an insightful account of the origins of the Flat Iron Building, but also vividly and intimately brought to life New York at the turn of the century. It made me feel like I was right there!

Read

I feel as though this is a good book to listen to for anyone who is involved in real estate or construction

Couldn't finish it

What was most disappointing about Alice Sparberg Alexious story?

The topic is very interesting. However, the author included a lot of suppositions about what people thought. It didn't come across as well researched.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator mispronounced foreign words and her timing was off.

Any additional comments?

These comments are based on two hours of listening.

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Title: That's Not Funny, That's Sick

Subtitle: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream

Author: Ellin Stein

Narrator: Jim Meskimen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-24-13

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The untold story behind a revolution in American comedy

Labor Day, 1969: Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called the National Lampoon. Over the next decade, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, along with a loose amalgamation of fellow satirists such as Michael ODonoghue and P. J. ORourke, popularized a smart, caustic, ironic brand of humor that has become the dominant voice of American comedy.

Ranging from sophisticated political satire to broad raunchy jokes, the National Lampoon introduced iconoclasm to the mainstream, selling millions of copies to an audience both large and devoted. Its excursions into live shows, records, and radio helped shape the anarchic earthiness of John Belushi, the suave slapstick of Chevy Chase, and the deadpan wit of Bill Murray and brought them together with other talents such as Harold Ramis, Christopher Guest, and Gilda Radner. A new generation of humorists emerged from the crucible of the Lampoon to help create Saturday Night Live and the influential film Animal House, among many other notable comedy landmarks.

Journalist Ellin Stein, an observer of the scene since the early 1970s, draws on a wealth of revealing firsthand interviews with the architects and impresarios of this comedy explosion to offer crucial insight into a raucous cultural transformation that still echoes today. Brimming with insider stories and set against the roiling political and cultural landscape of the 1970s, Thats Not Funny, Thats Sick goes behind the jokes to witness the fights, the parties, the collaborations - and the competition - among this fraternity of the self-consciously disenchanted. Decades later, their brand of subversive humor that provokes, offends, and often illuminates is as relevant and necessary as ever.

Members Reviews:

Nice color

Th e y stayed tied

Great book for anyone interested in humor!

This book is great in describing the origin of National Lampoon and how it set the stage for Saturday Night Live and all cutting edge humor today.

Five Stars

I love this book

Five Stars

Excellent history of The National Lampoon.

Five Stars

Great book.

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Title: The Weight of Vengeance

Subtitle: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812

Author: Troy Bickham

Narrator: Brian Morris

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-06-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

In early 1815, Secretary of State James Monroe reviewed the treaty with Britain that would end the War of 1812. The United States Navy was blockaded in port; much of the army had not been paid for nearly a year; the capital had been burned. The treaty offered an unexpected escape from disaster. Yet it incensed Monroe, for the name of Great Britain and its negotiators consistently appeared before those of the United States. "The United States have acquired a certain rank amongst nations, which is due to their population and political importance," he brazenly scolded the British diplomat who conveyed the treaty, "and they do not stand in the same situation as at former periods."

Monroe had a point, writes Troy Bickham. In The Weight of Vengeance, Bickham provides a provocative new account of America's forgotten war, underscoring its significance for both sides by placing it in global context. The Napoleonic Wars profoundly disrupted the global order, from India to Haiti to New Orleans. Spain's power slipped, allowing the United States to target the Floridas; the Haitian slave revolt contributed to the Louisiana Purchase; fears that Britain would ally with Tecumseh and disrupt the American northwest led to a pre-emptive strike on his people in 1811. This shifting balance of power provided the United States with the opportunity to challenge Britain's dominance of the Atlantic world. And it was an important conflict for Britain as well. Powerful elements in the British Empire so feared the rise of its former colonies that the British government sought to use the War of 1812 to curtail America's increasing maritime power and its aggressive territorial expansion. And by late 1814, Britain had more men under arms in North America than it had in the Peninsular War against Napoleon, with the war with America costing about as much as its huge subsidies to European allies.

Troy Bickham has given us an authoritative, lucidly written global account that transforms our understanding of this pivotal war.

Members Reviews:

Annoyingly political and one-sided

What would have made The Weight of Vengeance better?

Balance would have been nice. It seemed about as neutral as an evening of Fox and Friends would be. After listening to quote after quote from the British side bashing the US, I had to stop listening.

How could the performance have been better?

The reader was fairly dull.

Any additional comments?

98% of the book was political. And when they talked about battles, it was either British superiority that won a battle for Britain, or some bad general of the British side that lost them a battle.

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Title: Two Tankers Down

Subtitle: The Greatest Small-Boat Rescue in U.S. Coast Guard History

Author: Robert Frump

Narrator: Luke Smith

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-06-13

Publisher: Robert R. Frump

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A riveting account of the greatest small-boat rescue in American history.

Members Reviews:

Batman again!

This is the second book by Frump that Ive listened to & actually thought it was better than Until The Sea Shall Free Them. My only problem with his books are the narrator. Maybe it's just me but, hours of listening to a Batman like, raspy whisper gets annoying really fast. I love the story & the history but at the same time find myself wanting it to hurry up & get done. I listen to alot of books multiple times but it will be a long time before I'm ready to sit through this one again.

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Title: Betrayal in Dallas

Subtitle: LBJ, the Pearl Street Mafia, and the Murder of President Kennedy

Author: Mark North

Narrator: Erik Davies

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-13-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 26 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Finally, the truth behind the crime of the twentieth century!

Here's what we now know: John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Mafia contract killers hired by Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello. Kennedy was killed in that city because it was the only place in the country where a crime of that magnitude could be committed without fear of punishment. Long-time local district attorney Henry Wade, an LBJ crony who would have sole jurisdiction over the prosecution of those responsible, had been corrupted by the local Civello crime family. Lyndon B. Johnson, while a U.S. senator during the 1950s, had accepted bribes from the same mobsters so that they could avoid deportation.

With incredible detail and documentation, Mark North pieces the puzzle together to reveal how in late 1961, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his brother John, who hated LBJ, initiated a covert Organized Crime Task Force investigation of the Civello mob in Dallas. They understood that destroying the Dallas Mafia would also destroy LBJ. Johnson, through Wade and local federal officials he had placed in power, learned of the plan and cooperated with the Civello mob to have JFK killed. Johnson did this, in part, because he had the power to control any subsequent federal investigation via FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson had leverage over Hoover because he had learned that the director and his assistant Clyde Tolson were lovers. After the Mafia killed JFK, Johnson stopped Robert Kennedy's prosecution of the Dallas Mafia.

Betrayal in Dallas is unlike any book written on the JFK assassination. Because its conclusions are based on classified federal documents unknown to the public and research community, it will startle and convince all those who read it. It is inevitable that, at some point, any great historical truth becomes known.

Betrayal in Dallas is nothing less than the vehicle for that moment. It is what the American people have been waiting for since November 22, 1963.

Editorial Reviews:

AudioFile Earphones Award recipient Erik Davies's forthright performance adeptly delivers the shocking revelations of this audiobook with authority. Mark North employs intensive research - including classified federal documents unknown to the public and research community - to support his allegations that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson cooperated with the Civello crime family to have John F. Kennedy assassinated. Davies' voice radiates steel and certainty as North thoroughly outlines the trail of corruption and political ambitions that led to this national tragedy.

Members Reviews:

The Gangland Point of View

This book is a very enjoyable listening experience. There are a number of books that hypothesize an LBJ involvement in the Kennedy Assassination, and some of them marshall the evidence quite well. Some recent books focus mostly on LBJ's political connections. Mark North concentrates mostly on the underworld of Dallas and New Orleans.

THANK YOU MARK NORTH!

I hope my friends read this. I am usually skeptical of conspiracy theories. This is too much to deny. It is amazing what our elected leaders continue to feed us in order to maintain power. I only ask that you read this with an open mind.

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Title: Where They Stand

Author: Robert Merry

Narrator: Peter Ganim

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-01-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The author of the acclaimed biography of President James Polk, A Country of Vast Designs, offers a fresh, playful, and challenging way of playing Rating the Presidents, by pitching historians views and subsequent experts polls against the judgment and votes of the presidents own contemporaries.

Merry posits that presidents rise and fall based on performance, as judged by the electorate. Thus, he explores the presidency by comparing the judgments of historians with how the voters saw things. Was the president reelected? If so, did his party hold office in the next election?

Where They Stand examines the chief executives Merry calls Men of Destiny, those who set the country toward new directions. There are six of them, including the three nearly always at the top of all academic pollsLincoln, Washington, and FDR. He describes the Split-Decision Presidents (including Wilson and Nixon)successful in their first terms and reelected; less successful in their second terms and succeeded by the opposition party. He describes the Near Greats (Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, TR, Truman), the War Presidents (Madison, McKinley, Lyndon Johnson), the flat-out failures (Buchanan, Pierce), and those whose standing has fluctuated (Grant, Cleveland, Eisenhower).

This voyage through our history provides a probing and provocative analysis of how presidential politics works and how the country sets its course. Where They Stand invites readers to pitch their opinions against the voters of old, the historians, the pollstersand against the author himself. In this year of raucous presidential politics, Where They Stand will provide a context for the unfolding campaign drama.

Members Reviews:

Excellent Must-Read Study of our Presidents - Highly Recommended

A fascinating study of the American presidency and our American Presidents. Superbly researched and written. You will learn things about the Presidents and American history generally that you likely didn't know and they may well change your opinion about some of the men who've led our Republic since it began. I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion about the topic because you really should read the book. You won't be disappointed.

Straightforward and downright intelligent.

Robert Merry presents a new look at rating the American Presidents. Traditionally, Presidential ratings have been presented by historians who often incorporate their own political judgements in their assessments. Merrry provides additional objective criteria into the ratings based on the results of elections by the people in determining each President's rank.

The book does not debate the assignment of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR as our greatest Presidents, but his results will surprise you by challenging the conventional thinking on where many of the others stand in the rankings. Written in an easily understandable narrative, this book offers a fresh perspective on how we look at the people who have occupied the most powerful position in our country by inserting additional yardsticks into the debate.

Rating the Presidents

It is a game that many have played likely since the earlier days of the republic, that of rating the presidents on how great each man was as president. We all know the greats such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D.

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Title: Reveille in Washington

Author: Margaret Leech

Narrator: Grace Conlin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 21 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-07-12

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 22 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Margaret Leechs Pulitzer Prize-winning history paints a wonderfully vivid and lively picture of Washington, DC, during the Civil War. In addition to the major events and figures such as Lincoln, Leech uses telling anecdotes and draws upon cameo players such as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, and a Confederate lady spy to create a living portrait of a sleepy, unfinished city as it struggles to become the strong capital of a united nation.

Members Reviews:

Incredible!

This book is not only interesting and informative, but captivating from it's very beginning. The obviously rich research foundation here makes the reader beg for more. This is a keeper!

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Title: Border War

Subtitle: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War

Author: Stanley Harrold

Narrator: Brian Holsopple

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-20-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

During the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Aspects of this struggle - the underground railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions, and sectional politics - are well known as parts of other stories. Here, Stanley Harrold explores the border struggle itself, the dramatic incidents that it comprised, and its role in the complex dynamics leading to the Civil War. Border War examines the previously neglected cross-border clash of attitudes and traditions dating many generations back. By the mid-nineteenth century, nowhere else were tensions greater between antislavery and proslavery interests. Nowhere else was there more direct conflict between the forces binding North and South together and those driving them apart. There were mass slave escapes, battles between antislavery and proslavery vigilantes, and fierce resistance in the Border North to the kidnapping of free African Americans. There were also fights throughout the borderlands between fugitive slaves and those attempting to apprehend them. Harrold argues that, during the 1850s, warfare on the Kansas-Missouri line and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were manifestations of a more pervasive border conflict that helped push the Lower South into secession and helped persuade most of the Border South to stand by the Union.

Members Reviews:

The Civil War Before the Civil War

If youve ever seen a popular film or TV series about the Civil War, this book is catnip.

"Border War" delves into how the border Southern states had the highest slave runaway rates, so they came up with the most bizarre laws to stop it, and the ensuing struggles and debates were ferocious.

There's plenty of action, and the "back-in-the-day" atrocities are rivetting, if you have the stomach for it.

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Title: The Civil War

Author: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

Narrator: George C. Scott

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-13-12

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

This volume is a two-part history of the Civil War.

Part I

From 1861 to 1865 America was caught in the convulsions of warthe Civil War. No historical event, short of the American Revolution itself, has so deeply affected the United States.

The Civil War is often called the War between the States by Southern historians, aptly illustrating the political question underpinning the war: Was the United States one nation, or were the United States a group of sovereign entities that could choose to disassociate?

Both sides honored the same constitution, spoke the same language, and worshipped the same God. But the two could not agree on whether America was a union or a compact of states.

Part II

With the advent of war, the Confederate States of America faced serious problems. The Confederate population was 9.1 million compared to the Unions 19.1 million. The South controlled only one quarter of Americas wealth. Its railroad mileage was only half that of the Union, and its navy was badly outnumbered. But the South was fighting a defensive war on its own soil, and military theorists agree that such a war requires a three-to-one superiority for an aggressor to win. Many believed the South could prevail.

Nevertheless, on April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered what remained of his army. But what had the North won?

The United States of America was now one nation under God. But that nation was crippled by the economic costs of the warwholesale destruction, inflation, poverty. The political costs were no less. Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated; Southern leaders were in jail; the federal government had swollen in size and power. Northern politicians then began to reconstruct the South, building state governments that would be loyal to the union. But the conquered South simmered with resentments that could not be legislated out of existence.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel is the author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. He teaches economics and history at San José State University. Before joining the SJSU economics faculty, he lectured as an adjunct at Golden Gate University and Santa Clara University. Hummel served as a tank platoon leader in the US Army during the early seventies; was publications director for the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, in the late eighties; and was a National Fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution for the 2001/02 academic year.

Members Reviews:

Not so much about battle

An excellent account of the political and economic history of the supposedly voluntary union of "These United States" which ultimately culminated in over 600,000 dead Americans.

Gee, and I thought people owning other people as slaves had something to do with the Civil War ..

I admit, I haven't listened to or read the book. But, to explain in the advert about the book that North and South "could not agree on whether America was a union or a compact of states" as the reason for the war without even mentioning Slavery is to whitewash the most compelling reason for the "War between the States."