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Title: Roza Shanina

Subtitle: Russian Sniper

Author: Robert Corrigan

Narrator: Kay Webster

Format: Unabridged

Length: 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-01-15

Publisher: Robert Corrigan

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Roza Shanina's biography reads like a comic book hero come to life, a heroic female assassin fighting off the Nazi forces at the height of World War II. Seeking vengeance for the death of her brother, Roza Shanina sacrificed her life for service in the Red Army's fight against the invading Nazis during World War II. This book chronicles how she became the most feared sniper during this time, earning the nickname the "unseen terror" while registering over 56 confirmed kills and becoming a hero to the Russian people before her death in 1945.

Members Reviews:

Good read

I enjoyed reading this history of the female sniper of Russia and possibly the greatest female sniper ever anywhere. It helps people to understand the duties and devotion of true soldiers.

Worth the purchase price.

This is a very short piece on this lady and was worth the purchase price.

Very short book but, at least, got essential ...

Very short book but, at least, got essential facts & cover photo was that of Roza Shannina (unlike Lyudmila Pavlichenko book - LADY DEATH by S. Valiant).

Great book

A great story about a little known soldier in WWII. She was a credit to her unit and army. I recommend this book for everyone.

Quick Read

This was a short read at about thirty minutes. The book highlights parts of Roza's private life, with a focus on her career as a female Russian sniper.

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Title: After Hitler

Subtitle: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe

Author: Michael Jones

Narrator: Robert Ian Mackenzie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-09-15

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 69 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

With the world at war, 10 days can feel like a lifetime....

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin. But victory over the Nazi regime was not celebrated in Western Europe until May 8 and in Russia a day later, on the ninth. Why did a peace agreement take so much time? How did this brutal, protracted conflict coalesce into its unlikely endgame?

After Hitler shines a light on 10 fascinating days after that infamous suicide that changed the course of the 20th century. Combining exhaustive research with masterfully paced storytelling, Michael Jones recounts the Fuhrer's frantic last stand; the devious maneuverings of his handpicked successor, Karl Donitz; the grudging respect Joseph Stalin had for Churchill and FDR as well as his distrust of Harry Truman; the bold negotiating by General Dwight D. Eisenhower that hastened Germany's surrender but drew the ire of the Kremlin; the journalist who almost scuttled the cease-fire; and the thousands of ordinary British, American, and Russian soldiers caught in the swells of history, from the Red Army's march on Berlin to the liberation of the Nazis' remaining concentration camps. Through it all, Jones traces the shifting loyalties between East and West that sowed the seeds of the Cold War and nearly unraveled the Grand Alliance. In this gripping, eloquent, and even-handed narrative, the spring of 1945 comes alive - a fascinating time when nothing was certain, and every second mattered....

Members Reviews:

The slow end to World War II in Europe

This is one of a number of new books covering the Second World War without the filter of the cold war and hence provides a more even-handed view of the role of the Soviet Union. This book basically covers the period from Hitlers death to the end of actual fighting and, in doing so, covers a period either not covered in other histories of the period or covered too lightly to yield much information.

The chapters are thematic with most chapters covering a single day of the war after Hitlers suicide, one describing the events which caused the observance of VE day to differ in the West and in the Soviet Union (and now Russia), one covering how the end of the war was celebrated in Russia and one covering the discoveries of the concentration and the extermination Camps. Many of the chapters contain background information explaining why the events being discussed were important and there is a great deal of background information for those who may not be thoroughly familiar with World War II as well as the period leading up to the start of fighting.

What makes this book particularly interesting is the effort the author put into trying to explain why the Soviet government and the Red Army took some of the actions that it did and why actions that the West saw as examples of the Soviet Union just being difficult were critically important to the Soviet Union. Mr Jones goes out of his way to make many of those actions seem quite reasonable from the Soviet perspective and often blames the Western resistance to those actions on US and British ignorance of why these items were of importance to The Soviet Union. While he often makes his case, he also appears to completely miss the point at times.

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Title: The California Gold Rush

Subtitle: The History and Legacy of the Forty-Niners and America's Golden Dream

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Dennis E. Morris

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-07-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at Sutter's sawmill. Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and spread throughout the land. Everybody was talking of "Gold! gold!!" until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and pack-mules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day..." - William Tecumseh Sherman

One of the most important and memorable events of the United States' westward push across the frontier came with the discovery of gold in the lands that became California in January, 1848. Located thousands of miles away from the country's power centers on the east coast at the time, the announcement came a month before the Mexican-American War had ended, and among the very few Americans that were near the region at the time, many of them were Army soldiers who were participating in the war and garrisoned there. San Francisco was still best known for being a Spanish military and missionary outpost during the colonial era, and only a few hundred called it home. Mexico's independence, and its possession of those lands, had come only a generation earlier.

Everything changed almost literally overnight. While the Mexican-American War technically concluded with a treaty in February 1948, the announcement brought an influx of an estimated 90,000 "Forty-Niners" to the region in 1849, hailing from other parts of America and even as far away as Asia. All told, an estimated 300,000 people would come to California over the next few years.

Members Reviews:

Good research resource

I haven't finished reading this, and I am already sold. I am using this as one of my references for California Gold Rush history research. I have found details in this book I have yet to find in other sources. I recommend it to those who enjoy reading about this era in California history.

Worth a second read

One of the better books on the CA gold rush. The book is easy to read and not overly written with detail as with some of the other books on the same topic. I would highly recommend this book to anybody looking for their first book on the CA gold rush. I plan on reading this book again.

A good description of the 1849 California gold discovery and its ...

A good description of the 1849 California gold discovery and its subsequent; rush by the stampeders and the great social problems which followed

California Gold Rush

The book is so interesting and contains so many facts that I was unaware of. Men and women were so focused back then...and brave.

History

This is a detailed history of events leading up to the gold rush in California not what I expected but informative.

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Title: The Devils' Alliance

Subtitle: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941

Author: Roger Moorhouse

Narrator: Derek Perkins

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-30-15

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 134 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals - the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners. The pact that they agreed on had a profound and bloody impact on Europe and is fundamental to understanding the development and denouement of the war.

The Devils' Alliance explores the causes and implications of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the creation and dissolution of which were crucial turning points in World War II. Forged by Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, the nonaggression treaty briefly united the two powers in a brutally efficient collaboration. The Germans and Soviets quickly conquered and divided Central and Eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people caught between Hitler and Stalin were expropriated, deported, or killed. Fortunately for the Allies, the partnership ultimately soured. Ironically, however, the powers' exchange of material, blueprints, and technological expertise during the period of the pact made possible for a far more bloody and protracted war than would have otherwise been conceivable.

Combining comprehensive research with a gripping narrative, The Devils' Alliance is the authoritative history of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Critic Reviews:

"A well-researched work offering new understanding of the pact's pertinence to this day." (Kirkus starred review)

Members Reviews:

Fascinating look at much neglected peiod

The central premise of The Devils Alliance is that the 1939 Nazi-Soviet agreement, secured just prior to the German invasion of Poland, is wrongly considered by most historians to be only an incidental event of World War II but was, rather, one of the central events that made the war possible. Mr Moorhouse argues that the alliance is barely mentioned in most histories of the period but should be examined in detail to understand how it affected the ability of Germany to wage war and especially how it affected Germanys ability to wage war against the Soviet Union.

Most histories of of World War II in Europe that I have read do mention the agreement and consider it to have been essential in securing Germanys eastern borders and in allowing Hitler to fight a single front war during his battle against France and England, and all of those books describe the events in western Poland and the effect the German invasion had on the peoples of that part of Poland. However almost describe the events the alliance set in motion for the peoples of eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and none describe how the alliance functioned, the effect it had on Germanys ability to wage war, the effect it had on the Soviet Unions rearmament efforts and the political and social effect it had on the German and Soviet population.

This book is quite different. It covers the 22 months of the agreement in detail and provides wonderful information about subjects I have never seen covered at all.

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Title: Finding the Wreck of the Titanic: The Search Efforts and the Discovery of the World's Most Famous Ship

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: John Gagnepain

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-03-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"Only a vestige remains of the men and women that but a moment before quickened her spacious apartments with human hopes and passions, sorrows, and joys. Upon that broken hull new vows were taken, new fealty expressed, old love renewed, and those who had been devoted in friendship and companions in life went proudly and defiantly on the last life pilgrimage together. In such a heritage we must feel ourselves more intimately related to the sea than ever before, and henceforth it will send back to us on its rising tide the cheering salutations from those we have lost." - Senator William A. Smith, Chairman of the Subcommittee appointed for the United States Senate Inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic

Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the largest ship in the world, hit an iceberg, setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately make it history's most famous, and notorious, ship. In the century since it sank on its maiden voyage, the Titanic has been the subject of endless fascination, as evidenced by the efforts to find its final resting spot, the museums full of its objects, and the countless books, documentaries, and movies made about the doomed ocean liner. Thanks to the undying interest in the story, millions of people are familiar with various aspects of the ship's demise. The sinking of the ship is still nearly as controversial now as it was over 100 years ago, and the drama is just as compelling.

Members Reviews:

Four Stars

Good

excellent short summary of the discovery of TITANIC

with plenty of quotes and plenty of pictures, this short and well-produced book is a fine introduction to the discovery of the legendary lost Titanic.

A behind the scenes look at finding the Titanic

Fact filled with great pictures. A good ending to the Charles Rivers Titanic series.

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Title: Combat Veterans' Stories of World War II: Volume 2: Pacific, China, and Burma, August 1942 - September 1945

Author: Norman Black

Narrator: Capt. Kevin F. Spalding USNR-Ret

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-08-15

Publisher: Norman Black

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 31 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The stories of 15 combat veterans featured in this audiobook tell of the experiences of average Americans who fought US enemies on Pacific islands, in China, and in Burma during World War II. They relate much previously unavailable information about the military in which they served and the battles they fought. The possibility of death and permanent physical and mental injury was their common experience. This audiobook is a "must listen" for those who think they have learned all there is to know about World War II.

Members Reviews:

This book should be required listening in schools

This is the second of Norman Black's books I've listened to - see my other review for more details.

Truly I can't say enough good things about these books. This is not a rip-roaring Hollywood story where chisel-jawed superstars chew quirky cigars and call people by random nicknames. This is a collection of first-hand accounts of the reality of warfare directly from the mouths of the people who fought in battles, who lost friends, who saw bravery and cruelty close-up and somehow managed to live to tell the tale.

These audiobooks are not recounted like a storybook - and they are better for it - Kevin Spalding narrates the books excellently to bring to life the stream of consciousness that the various combatants gave up while being interviewed for their accounts of their experiences.

Honestly, these accounts should be preserved as historical documents - the style is more like PBS or a well-researched BBC documentary and pretty soon all the people involved in these conflicts will be gone and we'll allow ourselves to gradually forget what they went through and how completely, utterly brutal the times they lived in were. It sounds like hyperbole to say they should be a part of the public archives but I assure you they really should be.

Listening to the matter-of-fact narratives from the guys (combatants in that era were almost exclusively male) who describe such wonderful normality of life prior to enlistment juxtaposed by such truly humbling descriptions of what they went through. Really, I thought I knew a fair bit about this time in world history but to hear these men speak of the real horror of war, of the people they lost, the almost throw-away lines line "and then a sniper shot him through the head not more than three feet away from me" is just an eye-opener.

Included in these accounts is that of the well-known journalist Norman Hatch who was famously photographed feeding a small cat water by the tracks of a tank. To hear his own words covering the background of not just this well-published photo but also how he got to be there in the first place along with his gritty experiences of so many things that he saw and could not unsee should be enough in itself for you to get this book...but if that's the only reason then you're going to be pleased to find that there is so much more to this comprehensive collection of reality and testaments from real people who went through hell and came out the other side.

I received this audiobook as a gift from Kevin Spalding after I mentioned how much I liked the other book in the series by Norman Black. Don't let that put you off - my praise for this audiobook is completely genuine. It's definitely worth your time.

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Title: The Greatest Battles in History: The Battle of Britain

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Philip Andrew Hodges

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-06-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"The gratitude of every home in our island, in our empire, and indeed throughout the world except in the abodes of the guilty goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unweakened by their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." (Winston Churchill, August 20, 1940)

At the end of August 2012, the BBC ran a report about the commemoration of a young man who had been killed over 70 years earlier. "A Battle of Britain pilot who was killed when his Spitfire crashed following a dogfight in the skies above Kent has been honored. Flying Officer Oswald St John 'Ossie' Pigg lost his life in the crash at Elvey Farm on September 1, 1940. The 22-year-old had been involved in an aerial fight with a Messerschmitt. A plaque was unveiled near the site by his niece, Stephanie Haigh, and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight carried out a flypast on Thursday."

Just 12 days before Pigg's death, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already immortalized the men of the Royal Air Force with one of the West's most famous wartime quotes. But the sentiment and gratitude Churchill expressed back in 1940 is very much alive today. The sacrifice made by "the few", the British and Allied fighter pilots who won the Battle of Britain in 1940, remains close to the hearts of the British public. The piece by the BBC is typical of the national sentiment manifested in air shows, museums, TV programs, and books.

Members Reviews:

Good Starting Point

This is a good starting point for someone curious about the Battle of Britain. Not in depth, but footnoted and with sources at the end. Good for the beginner.

Quick view of a great battle.

This is a brief review of the battle. It's not a really in-depth study . If you want details about background or personalities, you have to find another history.

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Title: Potsdam

Subtitle: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe

Author: Michael Neiberg

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-05-15

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 31 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July 1945 Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace - a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.

Award-winning historian Michael Neiberg brings the turbulent Potsdam Conference to life, vividly capturing the delegates' personalities: Truman, trying to escape from the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, who had died only months before; Churchill, bombastic and seemingly out of touch; Stalin, cunning and meticulous. For the first week, negotiations progressed relatively smoothly. But when the delegates took a recess for the British elections, Churchill was replaced - both as prime minster and as Britain's representative at the conference - in an unforeseen upset by Clement Attlee, a man Churchill disparagingly described as "a sheep in sheep's clothing". When the conference reconvened, the power dynamic had shifted dramatically, and the delegates struggled to find a new balance. Stalin took advantage of his strong position to demand control of Eastern Europe as recompense for the suffering experienced by the Soviet people and armies. The final resolutions of the Potsdam Conference, notably the division of Germany and the Soviet annexation of Poland, reflected the uneasy geopolitical equilibrium between East and West that would come to dominate the 20th century.

As Neiberg expertly shows, the delegates arrived at Potsdam determined to learn from the mistakes their predecessors made in the Treaty of Versailles. But riven by tensions and dramatic debates over how to end the most recent war, they only dimly understood that their discussions of peace were giving birth to a new global conflict.

Members Reviews:

Richly told and entertaining.

Richly told account of the end of WW2 that leaves you wanting to know more. There were frequent comparisons with the end of WW1 that help contextualize the wars and their aftermath. I especially enjoyed the story of Truman assuming the presidency after being almost entirely ignored by Roosevelt, told nothing about the bomb, kept completely in the dark over what happened at Yalta. Neiberg even indicates that no substantive report was written about Yalta or what the agreements were. It's hard to imagine no one thought about the likelihood of Truman becoming president. Neiberg is generally positive and even handed about Truman.

The narrator was spot on & appropriately captured the gravity of the story.

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Title: The Doolittle Raid

Subtitle: The History and Legacy of the First American Attack on Tokyo During World War II

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Robert Slone

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-02-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"The Japanese people had been told they were invulnerable... An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about the reliability of their leaders. There was a second, and equally important, psychological reason for this attack ... Americans badly needed a morale boost." (Jimmy Doolittle)

All Americans are familiar with the "day that will live in infamy." At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out America's entire naval presence in the Pacific.

The Americans would turn the war in the Pacific around in the middle of 1942, but in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, the country was in desperate need of a morale boost, and it would come in the form of the Doolittle Raid. In part to show that the Japanese were not invincible, and in part to reassure the American public that the nation would not lose the war, the Doolittle Raid included both Army and Navy units that launched 16 land-based medium bombers from an aircraft carrier, a feat that was the first of its kind but also one involving a great deal of risk.

Members Reviews:

The story seems to overlook a lot of the challenges ...

The story seems to overlook a lot of the challenges that the crews underwent in their training for this difficult mission, and then only gives very limited accounts of what happened to many of the crews after the bombing was over and they were trying to find a safe haven to land.

"We weren't scared. Nobody knew what it was to be shot at. It was just like a sport."

Interesting WW2 book with genuine photos about the famed B-25 raid meant to show that the Japanese weren't invincible and reassure the American public that the USA would not lose the war even after the brutal carnage at Pear Harbor. Tho few of the bombers landed safely after the event it certainly accomplished it's goal. One final noteworthy passage from the book before I go that caught my attention, "I don't want to set the world on fire, just Tokyo."

The Doolittle raiders

A Really interesting good book to read about the first attack on Japan after peal Harbour from an aircraft carrier in 1942. Also the first Americans to drop bombs over Japan from air planes then leaf by Jimmy Doolittle

Thirty-Seconds over Tokyo...in 15-minutes of Reading

I cannot adequately express how disappointed I was at the conclusion of this short story. The book would be trite if the topic were not so commendable and the courage of the crews less common. Readers deserve more than a short story; the flight crews deserved a great deal more. There was not one single revelation of historical fact, let alone significance.

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Title: Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World

Subtitle: A Concise History: Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society

Author: Rebecca E. Karl

Narrator: Bobby Brill

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-24-15

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Throughout this lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong's life and thought, Rebecca E. Karl places the revolutionary leader's personal experiences, social visions and theory, military strategies, and developmental and foreign policies in a dynamic narrative of the Chinese revolution. She situates Mao and the revolution in a global setting informed by imperialism, decolonization, and third worldism, and discusses worldwide trends in politics, the economy, military power, and territorial sovereignty. Karl begins with Mao's early life in a small village in Hunan province, documenting his relationships with his parents, passion for education, and political awakening during the fall of the Qing dynasty in late 1911.

She traces his transition from liberal to Communist over the course of the next decade, his early critiques of the subjugation of women, and the gathering force of the May 4th movement for reform and radical change. Describing Mao's rise to power, she delves into the dynamics of Communist organizing in an overwhelmingly agrarian society, and Mao's confrontations with Chiang Kai-shek and other nationalist conservatives. She also considers his marriages and romantic liaisons and their relation to Mao as the revolutionary founder of Communism in China.

The book is published by Duke University Press.

Members Reviews:

Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World

This biography filled out many area of misunderstanding for me since Mao is a complex figure with the enormous vision that grass roots mobilisation of the proletariat could unify and re-dress the inequalities in China that all methods to achieve these aims were tried, by him, regardless of the human cost. So many of the reforms seem to have been beneficial - such as allowing women equality in the workforce but at every step there were disastrous ramifications. This book carefully explains how Mao managed to cause such havoc, hardship and ruin and yet remain a revered historical figure in China, by many, today.