Listen to Popular Titles Audiobooks in History, 20th Century

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Title: Battle of Surigao Strait

Subtitle: Twentieth-Century Battles

Author: Anthony P. Tully

Narrator: Gary Roelofs

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-29-14

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 52 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Surigao Strait in the Philippine Islands was the scene of a major battleship duel during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Because the battle was fought at night and had few survivors on the Japanese side, the events of that naval engagement have been passed down in garbled accounts.

Anthony P. Tully pulls together all of the existing documentary material, including newly discovered accounts and a careful analysis of U.S. Navy action reports, to create a new and more detailed description of the action. In several respects, Tully's narrative differs radically from the received versions and represents an important historical corrective.

The book is published by the Indiana University Press.

Critic Reviews:

"This book is worth buying by serious students of the Pacific War." (The Journal of Naval History)

"The skillful incorporation of personal testimony from those involved is what really elevates this work above run-of-the-mill naval history and turns it into something special." (Warship)

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Title: Double Agent

Subtitle: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring

Author: Peter Duffy

Narrator: George Newbern, Peter Duffy

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-22-14

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The never-before-told tale of the German American who spearheaded a covert mission to infiltrate New Yorks Nazi underground in the days leading up to World War II - the most successful counterespionage operation in US history.

From the time Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, German spies were active in New York. In 1937, a German national living in Queens stole the blueprints for the country's most precious secret, the Norden Bombsight, delivering them to the German military two years before World War II started in Europe and four years before the US joined the fight. When the FBI uncovered a ring of Nazi spies in the city, President Franklin Roosevelt formally declared J. Edgar Hoover as America's spymaster with responsibility for overseeing all investigations. As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German- merican was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents, among them a South African adventurer with an exotic accent and a monocle and a Jewish femme fatale, Lilly Stein, who escaped Nazi Vienna by offering to seduce US military men into whispering secrets into her ear.

A riveting, meticulously researched, and fast-moving story, Double Agent details the largest and most important espionage bust in American history.

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Title: How Could This Happen

Subtitle: Explaining the Holocaust

Author: Dan McMillan

Narrator: Robert Blumenfeld

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-24-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 15 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The Holocaust is the defining event of the twentieth century and perhaps all of modern history. Yet for too long, we have ignored the vital question of how and why such a monstrous event could have happened at all. Now, in How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the existing Holocaust research into a cogent explanation of the genocides causes, revealing how a once progressive society like Germany could commit murder on such a massive scale. Countless barriers stand between stable societies and genocide, McMillan explains, but in Germany these buffers began to topple well before World War II. From Hitlers meteoric rise to deep-rooted European anti-Semitism to the dehumanizing effects of World War I, McMillan uncovers the many factors that made the Holocaust possible.

Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen illustrates how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and societal upheaval unleashed historys most terrifying atrocity.

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Title: Belly of the Beast

Subtitle: A POW's Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival aboard the Infamous WWII Japanese Hell Ship Oryoku Maru

Author: Judith Pearson

Narrator: Dena Pacitti

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-17-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

On December 13, 1944, POW Estel Myers was herded aboard the Japanese prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, with more than 1,600 other American captives. More than 1,100 of them would be dead by journey's end...

The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the Navy's medical corps, Myers arrived in Manilla shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military. While he and his fellow corpsmen tended to the bloody tide of soldiers pouring into their once peaceful Naval hospital, the Japanese overwhelmed the Pacific islands, capturing 78,000 POWs by April 1942. Myers was one of the first captured.

After a brutal three-year encampment, Myers and his fellow POWs were forced onto an enemy hell ship bound for Japan. Suffocation, malnutrition, disease, dehydration, infestation, madness, and simple despair claimed the lives of nearly three quarters of those who boarded "the beast".

Myers survived.

A compelling account of a rarely recorded event in military history, this is more than Estel Myers' true story - this is an homage to the unfailing courage of men at war, an inspiring chronicle of self-sacrifice and endurance, and a tribute to the power of faith, the strength of the soul, and the triumph of the human spirit.

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Title: An Unspeakable Crime

Subtitle: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank

Author: Elaine Marie Alphin

Narrator: Kevin Orton

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-04-14

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Was an innocent man wrongly accused of murder? On April 26, 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan planned to meet friends at a parade in Atlanta, Georgia. But first she stopped at the pencil factory where she worked to pick up her paycheck. Mary never left the building alive. A black watchman found Mary's body brutally beaten and raped. Police arrested the watchman, but they weren't satisfied that he was the killer. Then they paid a visit to Leo Frank, the factory's superintendent, who was both a northerner and a Jew. Spurred on by the media frenzy and prejudices of the time, the detectives made Frank their prime suspect, one whose conviction would soothe the city's anger over the death of a young white girl.

The prosecution of Leo Frank was front-page news for two years, and Frank's lynching is still one of the most controversial incidents of the twentieth century. It marks a turning point in the history of racial and religious hatred in America, leading directly to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League and to the rebirth of the modern Ku Klux Klan. Relying on primary source documents and painstaking research, award-winning novelist Elaine Alphin tells the true story of justice undone in America.

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Title: Cape Cod Shore Whaling: America's First Whalemen

Author: John Braginton-Smith, Duncan Oliver

Narrator: Sally Martin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-06-14

Publisher: New Street Communications, LLC

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

While Nantucket has long enjoyed an illustrious position in America's whaling history, Cape Cod's contribution to the industry is relatively unknown, yet it was a Cape Codder who taught the Nantucketers how to hunt whales. In Cape Cod Shore Whaling, authors Duncan Oliver and John Braginton-Smith uncover Cape Cod's integral role in shaping whalefishery, which began along the Cape's sandy shores and evolved into the far-flung whaling expeditions that drove Nantucket's economy into the nineteenth century. Drawing on rare documents never before published, whaling journals and diaries, Oliver and Braginton-Smith recreate a bygone age when men fought one another for rights to the sea.

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Title: The Rise of the National Basketball Association

Author: David George Surdam

Narrator: Todd Barsness

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-07-14

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Today's National Basketball Association commands millions of spectators worldwide, and its many franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the league wasn't always so successful or glamorous: in the 1940s and 1950s, the NBA and its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America, were scrambling to attract fans. Teams frequently played in dingy gymnasiums, players traveled as best they could, and their paychecks could bounce higher than a basketball. How did the NBA evolve from an obscure organization facing financial losses to a successful fledgling sports enterprise by 1960?

Drawing on information from numerous archives, newspaper and periodical articles, and Congressional hearings, The Rise of the National Basketball Association chronicles the league's growing pains from 1946 to 1961. David George Surdam describes how a handful of ambitious ice hockey arena owners created the league as a way to increase the use of their facilities, growing the organization by fits and starts. Rigorously analyzing financial data and league records, Surdam points to the innovations that helped the NBA thrive: regular experiments with rules changes to make the game more attractive to fans, and the emergence of televised sports coverage as a way of capturing a larger audience.

Notably, the NBA integrated in 1950, opening the game to players who would dominate the game by the end of the 1950s decade: Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. Long a game that players loved to play, basketball became a professional sport well supported by community leaders, business vendors, and an ever-growing number of fans.

Critic Reviews:

"If you're a fan of the NBA - and I mean a real fan of the league and its history - Surdam's book won't disappoint. Surdam tells well the story of the founders creating a league in which uncertainty and excitement were part of every contest." (EH.Net)

"A fascinating story about the evolution of the NBA. Surdam's command of the economic history of the formative years of the NBA is flat-out impressive. He tells a very compelling story of the role of a small group of owners who stayed with the sport and the league when it was always on the verge of financial collapse and then began to cash in when the league caught on in the 1960s, a long-shot gamble that paid off big." (James Quirk, coauthor of Hard Ball: The Abuse of Power in Pro Team Sports)

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Title: First World War: Still No End in Sight

Author: Frank Furedi

Narrator: Greg Wagland

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-01-14

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

That the conflicts unleashed by Great War did not end in 1918 is well known. World War II and the Cold War clearly constitute key moments in the drama that began in August 1914. This audiobook argues that the battle of ideas which crystallised during the course of the Great War continue to the present. It claims that the disputes about lifestyles and identity - the Culture Wars of today - are only the latest expressions of a century long conflict. There are many influences that contributed to the outbreak of World War One. One significant influence was the cultural tension and unease that disposed significant numbers of artists, intellectuals and young people to regard the War as an opportunity give meaning to their existence. Later these tensions merged with social unrest and expressed themselves through the new ideologies of the Left and the Right. While these ideologies have become exhausted the conflicts of culture persist to this date. That is why there is Still No End In Sight for the battle of ideas set in motion in August 1914. Modern wars did not only lead to the loss of millions of lives. Wars also played a significant role in changing attitudes towards the political ideals of modern time. The Great War called into question the future of liberal democracy. It led to the emergence of radical ideologies, which were in turn discredited through the experience of the Second World War and the Cold War. The current Culture Wars have significantly eroded the status of the values associated with modernity.Through exploring the battle of ideas set in motion in August 1914 - First World War: Still No End In Sight - provides a framework for understanding the changing focus of political conflict from ideology to culture.

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Title: Kennedy and Reagan

Subtitle: Why Their Legacies Endure

Author: Scott Farris

Narrator: Scott Farris

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-07-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

It's been 50 years since JFKs assassination and nearly 20 since Ronald Reagan disappeared from public life. While they never ran head-to-head, they developed their legacies in competing ways and those legacies battle each other even today. The story of one illuminates the other, and explains our expectations for the presidency and whom we elect. Even though one is the model Democrat and the other the model Republican, their appeal is now bipartisan. Republicans quote Kennedy to justify tax cuts or aggressive national defense; Democrats use Reagans pragmatism to shame Republicans into supporting tax increases and compromise. Partly a "comparative biography" that explores John F. Kennedys and Ronald Reagans contemporaneous lives from birth until 1960, Scott Farris's follow-up to his widely praised Almost President shows how the experiences, attitudes, and skills developed by each man later impacted his presidency. Farris also tackles the key issues - civil rights, foreign affairs, etc. - that impacted each mans time in office. How did previous life experiences form their views on these issues, and how do their dealings around each issue compare and contrast? Bookended by an examination of their standing in public opinion and how that has influenced subsequent politicians, plus an exploration of how the assassination of Kennedy and attempted assassination of Reagan colored our memories, this book also shows how aides, friends and families of each man have burnished their reputations long after their presidencies ended.

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Title: Hell in An Loc: The 1972 Easter Invasion and the Battle That Saved South Viet Nam

Author: Lam Quang Thi

Narrator: Gregg A. Rizzo

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-27-13

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

In 1972 a North Vietnamese offensive of more than 30,000 men and one hundred tanks smashed into South Vietnam and raced to capture Saigon. All that stood in their way was a small band of 6,800 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers and militiamen, and a handful of American advisors with U.S. air support, guarding An Loc, a town sixty miles north of Saigon and on the main highway to it.

This depleted army, outnumbered and outgunned, stood its ground and fought to the end and succeeded. Against allexpectations, the ARVN beat back furious assaults from three North Vietnamese divisions, supported by artillery and armored regiments, during three months of savage fighting.

Critic Reviews:

"A meticulous account created specifically to set the historical record straight, Hell in An Loc is highly recommended." (

Midwest Book Review)

"This book is a unique work, written by a participant in the war, from a fresh historical vantage point, utilizing new evidence. Hell in An Loc will be a powerful addition to the historiography of the Vietnam conflict." (Andrew Wiest, author of

Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN)

"General Thi has brought his unique perspective as a Vietnamese citizen and as a South Vietnamese officer to an important battle of the Vietnam War. The value of this book is its operational detail about the South Vietnamese, which surpasses any of the accounts in print up to this point." (Dale Andrade, author of

America's Last Vietnam Battle)

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