Download the Top 100 Audiobooks in History, American

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Title: The Gunning of America

Subtitle: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

Author: Pamela Haag

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-19-16

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we're told.

In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation's history they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different from buttons or typewriters.

Focusing on the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, one of the most iconic arms manufacturers in America, Haag challenges many basic assumptions of how and when America became a gun culture. Under the leadership of Oliver Winchester and his heirs, the company used aggressive, sometimes ingenious sales and marketing techniques to create new markets for their product. Guns have never "sold themselves"; rather, through advertising and innovative distribution campaigns, the gun industry did.

Through the meticulous examination of gun-industry archives, Haag challenges the myth of a primal bond between Americans and their firearms. Over the course of its 150-year history, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company sold over eight million guns. But Oliver Winchester - a shirtmaker in his previous career - had no apparent qualms about a life spent arming America. His daughter-in-law, Sarah Winchester, was a different story. Legend holds that Sarah was haunted by what she considered a vast blood fortune and became convinced that the ghosts of rifle victims were haunting her.

In this provocative and deeply researched work of narrative history, Haag fundamentally revises the history of arms in America and, in so doing, explodes the clichés that have created and sustained our lethal gun culture.

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Title: The American Fisherman

Subtitle: How Our Nation's Anglers Founded, Fed, Financed, and Forever Shaped the U.S.A.

Author: Willie Robertson, William Doyle

Narrator: Nick Sullivan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-15-16

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

From the Duck Dynasty star and New York Times best-selling author comes a rollicking popular history of fishing in America.

American Fisherman traces the impact fishing has had in shaping America's history and reveals the influential role it has played in defining our lives.

Willie Robertson persuasively argues that America became what it is today in no small part because of the anglers that call it home. From harvesting New England cod to fly fishing for Yellowstone trout to raising Pacific Northwest salmon, the fishing industry has long played an essential role in the establishment of many of the nation's earliest ports, most notably along the East Coast. Robertson explores how fishing has informed our culture in literature, movies, and television, from classics like The Old Man and the Sea, A River Runs Through It, and Moby-Dick to The Perfect Storm, In the Heart of the Sea, and The Deadliest Catch to popular local television fishing programs from coast to coast.

Robertson also analyzes the economics of this $50 billion annual business, which supports a host of industries, including tourism and manufacturing as well as conservationism. Told in Robertson's charming down-home voice, American Fisherman is a spirited and unique look at America and its people.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

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Title: Railroads and the American People

Subtitle: Railroads Past and Present

Author: H. Roger Grant

Narrator: Todd Barsness

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-26-13

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

In this social history of the impact of railroads on American life, H. Roger Grant concentrates on the railroad's "Golden Age," 1830-1930. To capture the essence of the nation's railroad experience, Grant explores four fundamental topics - trains and travel, train stations, railroads and community life, and the legacy of railroading in America. Grant recalls the lasting memories left by train travel, both of luxurious Pullman cars and the grit and grind of coal-powered locals.

He discusses the important role railroads played for towns and cities across America, not only for the access they provided to distant places and distant markets but also for the depots that were a focus of community life. Finally, Grant reviews the lasting heritage of the railroads as it has been preserved in word, stone, paint, and memory. Railroads and the American People is a sparkling paean to American railroading by one of its finest historians.

The book is published by Indiana University Press.

Critic Reviews:

"With its wealth of vignettes... Railroads and the American People does a fine job of humanizing the iron horse" (Wall Street Journal)

"With plenty of detail, Grant brings a bygone era back to life, addressing everything from social and commercial appeal, racial and gender issues, safety concerns, and leaps in technology. But Grant never loses sight of the big picture and the essential role the railroads played in American life. He writes with authority and clarity in a work that can appeal to both casual and hardcore enthusiasts." (Publishers Weekly)

"Is it necessary to comment on an established author such as Roger Grant. Heavens, he is a fine scholar and writes better than Hemingway!" (John White, author of The American Railroad Passenger Car)

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Title: Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains (Frontier Military)

Author: Douglas C. McChristian

Narrator: George Utley

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-08-17

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Of all the US Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned in the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad.

Douglas C. McChristian has written the first complete history of Fort Laramie, chronicling every critical stage in its existence, including its addition to the National Park System. He draws on an extraordinary array of archival materials including those at Fort Laramie National Historic Site to present new data about the fort and new interpretations of historical events.

Emphasizing the fort's military history, McChristian documents the army's vital role in ending challenges posed by American Indians to US occupation and settlement of the region, and he expands on the fort's interactions with the many Native peoples of the Central Plains and Rocky Mountains. He provides a particularly lucid description of the infamous Grattan fight of 1854, which initiated a generation of strife between Indians and US soldiers, and he recounts the 1851 Horse Creek and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties.

Meticulously researched and gracefully told, this is a long-overdue military history of one of the American West's most venerable historic places.

The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press.

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