Listen to Top 100 Audiobooks in History, American

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Bound Away

Subtitle: Virginia and the Westward Movement

Author: David Hackett Fischer, James C. Kelly

Narrator: Bruce Miles

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-14-10

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 22 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward movement. After the Turner thesis, which celebrated the frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy, and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject. They share with Turner the idea of the westward movement as a creative process of high importance in American history, but they understand it in a different way.

Where Turner studied the westward movement in terms of its destination, Fischer and Kelly approach it in terms of its origins. Virginia's long history enables them to provide a rich portrait of migration and expansion as a dynamic process that preserved strong cultural continuities. They suggest that the oxymoron "bound away" - from the folk song "Shenandoah" - captures a vital truth about American history. As people moved west, they built new societies from old materials, in a double-acting process that made America what it is today.

Fischer and Kelly believe that the westward movement was a broad cultural process, which is best understood not only through the writings of intellectual elites, but also through the physical artifacts and folkways of ordinary people. The wealth of anecdotes in this volume offer a new way of looking at John Smith and William Byrd, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, Dred Scott, and scores of lesser known gentry, yeomen, servants, and slaves who were all "bound away" to an old new world.

Critic Reviews:

"An exciting and valuable book.... A must for all interested in the expansion of the American frontier." (Carol S. Ebel, Georgia Historical Quarterly)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Billy, Alfred, and General Motors

Subtitle: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History

Author: William Pelfrey

Narrator: Dickson Lane

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-10-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 101 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

One industry has had more impact on life in America than any other before or since. Here is the story of two men and one company at the start of it all.

You couldn't find two more different men. Billy Durant was the consummate salesman, a brilliant wheeler-dealer with grand plans, unflappable energy, and a fondness for the high life. Alfred Sloan was the intellectual, an expert in business strategy and management, master of all things organizational. Together, this odd couple built perhaps the most successful enterprise in U.S. history, General Motors, and with it an industry that has come to define modern life throughout the world. Their story is full of timeless lessons, cautionary tales, and inspiration for business leaders and history buffs alike.

Billy, Alfred, and General Motors is the tale not just of the two extraordinary men of its title but also of the formative decades of 20th-century America, through two world wars and sea changes in business, industry, politics, and culture. The book includes vivid, warts-and-all portraits of the legends of the golden age of the automobile, from "Crazy" Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and Charles Nash to the brilliant but uncredited David Dunbar Buick and Cadillac founder Henry Leland.The impact of Durant and Sloan on their contemporaries and their industry is matched only by the powerful legacy of their improbable and incredible partnership. Characters, events, and context--all are brought skillfully and passionately to life in this meticulously researched and supremely readable book.

Critic Reviews:

"Anyone interested in the current story of General Motors should read this engrossing description of the beginnings and early growth of this largest of all America's businesses. Billy, Alfred, and the General is an important work on the history of the automobile industry." (John G. Smale, retired Chairman and CEO, Procter and Gamble Company; former Chairman, General Motors Corporation)

"This book is particularly timely, with the auto industry in a period of extreme turbulence that features a restructuring of General Motors, as well as other icons of times gone by. In a sense, we may be reliving in the 21st century the auto drama of the 20th century portrayed so well by Bill Pelfrey. The author's outstanding writing and research skills are evident throughout and make this one of the most important and fascinating books I've read in a very long time." (David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research)

"Every person who is interested in the building of the American automobile industry must read this book. Bill Pelfrey has done a great job researching the early years of Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan and the very different roles they played in the history of General Motors." (Jack Smith, retired Chairman and CEO, General Motors Corporation)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: The Killing of Crazy Horse

Author: Thomas Powers

Narrator: John Pruden

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-02-10

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 72 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

He was the most feared and loathed Indian of his time, earning his reputation in surprise victories against the troops of Generals Crook and Custer at the Rosebud and Little Bighorn. Despite his enduring reputation, he has remained an enigma (even the whereabouts of his burial place are unknown, and no portrait or photograph of him exists). Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Powers brings Crazy Horse to life in this vivid work of American history.

Powers situates the critical battles won by Crazy Horse within the context of the decades-long conflict between Indian tribes and U.S. Army forces commonly called the Great Sioux Wars. He explores the complicated relationship between the tribes - in particular, Crazy Horse's Lakota Sioux - and the federal authorities. And he makes clear why the few battles won by the Indians - regardless of the fear they left in their wake - did not ultimately help them to stem the tide of settlers, gold seekers, and buffalo hunters that flooded the Great Plains after the Civil War.

Critic Reviews:

"This latest account of the murder of Crazy Horse of the Lakota Sioux in 1877 is a complex, detailed and multilevel tale of greed, bad faith, racism and miscomprehension on both sides. John Pruden reads Thomas Powers's long book in a calm, unhurried voice. His pronunciation of the formidable Indian expressions and names is deft and unstrenuous. Though the voices of many are heard from letters, journals and interviews, Pruden does not embellish them; he maintains the narrating voice, avoiding complications in an already complicated but revelatory account." (Washington Post Book World)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: God of Liberty

Subtitle: A Religious History of the American Revolution

Author: Thomas S. Kidd

Narrator: Mark Coffin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-05-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 32 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.

In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd argues that the improbable partnership of evangelicals and Deists saw America through the Revolutionary War, the ratification of the Constitution, and the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. A thought-provoking reminder of the crucial role religion played in the Revolutionary era, God of Liberty represents both a timely appeal for spiritual diversity and a groundbreaking excavation of how faith powered the American Revolution.

Critic Reviews:

"Coffin varies his tone and pacing to enliven the material, and in no way is he artificial in his emphasis." (AudioFile)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Baseball

Author: Ken Burns, Geoffrey C. Ward

Narrator: Ken Burns

Format: Abridged

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-21-10

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 49 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The companion to Ken Burnss magnificent PBS television seriesupdated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of a new, two-part "Tenth Inning" directed with Lynn Novick.

The authors of the acclaimed and best-selling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American phenomenon: baseball. Geoffrey C. Ward's and Ken Burnss moving and fascinating history of the game goes beyond stolen bases, double plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced, American life.

The audiobook covers every milestone of the game, from the rules drawn up in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright to the American Leagues introduction of the designated hitter in 1973; from the 1924 Negro World Series to Jack Roosevelt Robinsons major-league debut; from the first curve ball in 1867 to Nolan Ryans seventh and last no-hitter in 1991.

This new edition brings the authors monumental work into the 21st century: steroids, home-run records, the rise of Latino players, the long-awaited Red Sox World Series victory, and so much more. Baseball is an audiobook that speaks to all Americans.

Critic Reviews:

A rich concoction of narrative, essays....In so many ways you are reminded that rooting for baseball is like breathing. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,

The New York Times)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: The War Lovers

Subtitle: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

Author: Evan Thomas

Narrator: Richard Davidson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 04-27-10

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 36 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, yellow newspapers such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal whipped Americans into a frenzy by claiming that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship. Soon after, the blandly handsome and easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops not only to Cuba but also to the Philippines, Spain's sprawling colony on the other side of the world.

As Evan Thomas reveals in his rip-roaring history of those times, the hunger for war had begun years earlier. Depressed by the "closing" of the Western frontier and embracing theories of social Darwinism, a group of warmongers that included a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated loudly and incessantly that the United States exert its influence across the seas. These hawks would transform American foreign policy and, when Teddy ascended to the presidency, commence with a devastating war without reason, concocted within the White House - a bloody conflict that would come at tremendous cost.

Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, The War Lovers is the story of six men at the center of a transforming event in U.S. history: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, McKinley, William James, and Thomas Reed, and confirms once more that Evan Thomas is a popular historian of the first rank.

Critic Reviews:

"Thomas's thesis is bold and will undoubtedly be controversial, but his protagonists make for rich psychological portraiture, and the book serves as an illuminating case study in the sociocultural underpinnings of American military adventurism." (Publishers Weekly)

"Evan Thomas is a national resource, and this utterly compelling book reminds us why....Most of all, Thomas's book suggests vital lessons for our generation of American leaders and citizens to take very seriously as we confront some of the same public challenges that faced Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries." (Michael Beschloss)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: The Long Way Home

Subtitle: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

Author: David Laskin

Narrator: Erik Synnestvedt

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-16-10

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants - never more so than in 1917, when the nation entered the First World War. Of the 2.5 million soldiers who fought with U.S. armed forces in the trenches of France and Belgium, some half a million - nearly one out of every five men - were immigrants.

In The Long Way Home, David Laskin, author of the prize-winning history The Children's Blizzard, tells the stories of 12 of these immigrant heroes. Starting with their childhoods in Europe, Laskin unfolds the saga of their journeys to Ellis Island, their struggles to start over in the land of opportunity, and the ordeal of their return to Europe in uniform to fight - and win - a war that had already killed tens of millions.

Three of these soldiers died on the battlefield; two won the Congressional Medal of Honor; all were transformed forever by their experiences in combat. It is a transformation that continues to be felt in the pride and pain and cherished memories of immigrant families that have long since assimilated.

In tracing the lives of these 12 men, Laskin tells the story of an immigrant generation - a generation that streamed into this country in unprecedented numbers around the turn of the last century, that sweated to support their families through back-breaking physical labor, and that fought loyally for their adopted country on the battlefields of Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne forest. Based on stories, letters, and diaries passed on by descendants - as well as Laskin's personal interviews with two foreign-born Doughboys who were still alive at the time he was researching the book, The Long Way Home is a reverent work of history and a deeply moving evocation of the dreams and sacrifice at the heart of the American experience.

Critic Reviews:

[A] quietly absorbing glimpse of some of the brave soldiers who helped win WWI. (Publishers Weekly)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Andersonville

Subtitle: The Last Depot

Author: William Marvel

Narrator: Jeremy Gage

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-08-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 20 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Between February 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of war were taken to the stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 of them died. Most contemporary accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy of higher-ranking officials.

In this carefully researched and compelling revisionist account, William Marvel provides a comprehensive history of Andersonville Prison and conditions within it. Based on reliable primary sources including diaries, Union and Confederate government documents, and letters rather than exaggerated postwar recollections and such well-known but spurious 'diaries' as that of John Ransom, Marvel's analysis exonerates camp commandant Henry Wirz and others from charges that they deliberately exterminated prisoners, a crime for which Wirz was executed after the war.

According to Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other necessities combined to create a crisis beyond Wirz's control. He also argues that the tragedy was aggravated by the Union decision to suspend prisoner exchanges, which meant that many men who might have returned home were instead left to sicken and die in captivity.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: American History to 1877

Subtitle: Barrons EZ-101 Study Keys

Author: Robert D. Geise

Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-11-10

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Designed to be compatible with virtually every standard textbook in their subject field, Barrons EZ-101 Study Keys give you a valuable overview of your college-level course. Classroom-style notes emphasize important facts, remind you of what you need to remember for term papers and exams, and help guide you through the complexities of lectures and textbooks.

In American History to 1877, all key topics are covered, from the first Americans through the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Also covered are brief key quotations and notes on major figures, such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, John Marshall, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and many more.

Critic Reviews:

An excellent introduction for students at the high-school or college levels. (Midwest Book Review)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Napa

Author: James Conaway

Narrator: John Morgan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-15-09

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 70 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

James Conaway's remarkable bestseller delves into the heart of California's lush and verdant Napa Valley, also known as America's Eden. Long the source of succulent grapes and singular wines, this region is also the setting for the remarkable true saga of the personalities behind the winemaking empires. This is the story of Gallos and Mondavis, of fortunes made and lost, of dynasties and destinies.

In this delightful, full-bodied social history, James Conaway charts the rise of a new aristocracy and, in so doing, chronicles the collective ripening of the American dream. More than a wine audiobook, Napa is a must-listen for anyone interested in our country's obsession with money, land, power, and prestige.

Critic Reviews:

"Narrator John Morgan remains animated and engaged. He doesn't create character voices, but listeners will find scant need for them to identify the sources of quotes. His pace suits the enjoyable stories of locals struggling to survive and migrant laborers seeking a better life. The Spanish, French, and Italian vocabulary of enology taxes him a little but doesnt spoil his excellent performance." (AudioFile)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]