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: House of Abraham

Subtitle: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War

Author: Stephen Berry

Narrator: Michael Prichard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-16-07

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 47 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

For all the talk of the Civil War "pitting brother against brother", until now there has never been a single book that traces the story of one family ravaged by that conflict. And no family could better illustrate the personal toll the war took than Lincoln's own. Mary Todd Lincoln was one of 14 siblings who were split between the Confederacy and the Union. Three of her brothers fought, and two died, for the South. Several Todds, including Mary herself, bedeviled Lincoln's administration with their scandalous behavior. The award-winning historian Stephen Berry tells their family saga with the narrative intricacy and emotional intensity of a novelist. The Todds' struggles haunted the president and moved him to avoid tactics or rhetoric that would dehumanize or scapegoat the Confederates. Drawing on his own familial experience, Lincoln was inspired to articulate a humanistic, even charitable, view of the enemy that seems surpassingly wise in our time, let alone his.

With brio and rigor, Berry fills a gap in Civil War history, showing how the war changed one family and how that family changed the course of the war. As they debate each other about the issues of the day and comfort each other in the wake of shared tragedy, the Todds become a singular microcosm and a metaphor for the country as a whole.

Critic Reviews:

"A fast-paced, sobering story, never better told." (Publishers Weekly)

"Compelling....Brings to vibrant life Lexington aristocrats never before studied in depth by Lincoln biographers...remarkable.... A riveting account." (Kirkus Reviews)

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 Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn

Subtitle: A Lakota History

Author: Joseph M. Marshall III

Narrator: Joseph M. Marshall III

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-14-07

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 140 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Here, award-winning Lakota historian Joseph M. Marshall III reveals the nuanced complexities that led up to and followed the battle. Until now, this account has been available only within the Lakota oral tradition. The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn is required listening for anyone enthralled by the tale of the encounter that changed the scope of both America and the American landscape.

Critic Reviews:

"Marshall offers a thoughtful and enlightening alternative look at this iconic chapter in American history." (Booklist)

"Marshall's thoughtful reflections and rich detail (much of it drawn from the oral stories of unidentified Lakota elders)...immerse the reader in the experience of a once free people wrestling with an uncertain destiny." (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: Scorpion Down

Author: Ed Offley

Narrator: Richard Ferrone

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 05-24-07

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 221 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

In this major work of historical reporting, Ed Offley reveals that the sinking of the Scorpion has never been a mystery, but rather a secret buried by the U.S. government in a frantic attempt to keep the Cold War from turning into a hot war. The Soviets had torpedoed the Scorpion in reprisal for the destruction of the Soviet missile sub K-129, which the Americans had sunk in the Pacific just 10 weeks earlier. But why does the U.S. Navy continue to hide the real story of what happened on that fateful day in 1968?

In Scorpion Down, military reporter Ed Offley tells the true story for the first time and dramatically recounts a little-known episode that nearly brought about World War III. And he conclusively demonstrates that the Navy's official account of the Scorpion incident, from the frantic open-ocean hunt for the wreckage to a court of inquiry's final conclusions, is nothing more than a carefully constructed series of lies.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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

Title: Patriotic Fire

Subtitle: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans

Author: Winston Groom

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-01-06

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 114 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

This audio program has all the ingredients of a high-flying adventure story. Unbeknownst to the combatants, the War of 1812 has ended. But Andrew Jackson, a brave, charismatic American general, sick with dysentery and commanding a beleaguered garrison, leads a desperate struggle to hold on to New Orleans and thwart the army that defeated Napoleon. Helping him is a devilish French pirate, Jean Laffite, who rebuffs a substantial bribe from the British and, together with his erstwhile enemy, saves the city from invasion...much to the grateful chagrin of New Orleanians, shocked to find themselves on the same side as the brazen buccaneer.

Winston Groom brings his considerable storytelling gifts to the re-creation of this remarkable battle and to the portrayal of its main players. Against the richly evocative backdrop of French New Orleans, he illuminates Jackson's brilliant strategy and tactics, as well as the antics and cutthroat fighting prowess of Laffite and his men. Patriotic Fire brings this extraordinary military achievement vividly to life.

Critic Reviews:

"His vivid account of how that victory was won merits a place in both public and private collections." (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: The Civil War Part 2

Author: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

Narrator: George C. Scott

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-10-06

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The United States at War series is a collection of presentations that review the political, economic, and social forces that have erupted in military conflict and examine how the conflict resolved, or failed to resolve, the forces that caused war.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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

Title: James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights

Author: Richard Labunski

Narrator: Richard Poe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-14-06

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 183 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Richard Labunski offers a dramatic account of a time when the entire American experiment hung in the balance, only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes, the diminutive and exceedingly shy James Madison. Here is a vividly written account of not one, but several major political struggles that changed the course of American history.

To do this, Madison would have to win a seat in the First Congress. Labunski shows how the vengeful Henry prevented Madison's appointment to the Senate and then used his political power to ensure that Madison would run against his good friend, Revolutionary War hero James Monroe, in a House district teeming with political enemies. Overcoming great odds, Madison won by a few hundred votes, allowing him to attend the First Congress and sponsor the Bill of Rights.

Packed with colorful details about life in early America, this compelling and important narrative is the first serious book about Madison written in many years. It will return this under-appreciated patriot to his rightful place among the Founding Fathers and shed new light on a key turning point in our nation's history.

The Pivotal Moments in American History series seeks to unite the old and the new history, combining the insights and techniques of recent historiography with the power of traditional narrative. Each title has a strong narrative arc with drama, irony, suspense, and most importantly great characters who embody the human dimension of historical events. The general editors of Pivotal Moments are not just historians; they are popular writers themselves, and, in two cases, Pulitzer Prize winners: David Hackett Fischer, James M. McPherson, and David Greenberg. We hope you like your American History served up with verve, wit, and an eye for the telling detail!

Critic Reviews:

"Engaging....A lively look at the rickety early republic and Madison's great balancing act." (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: Rough Crossings

Subtitle: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution

Author: Simon Schama

Narrator: Simon Schama

Format: Abridged

Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-18-06

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 85 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

National Book Critics Circle, Nonfiction, 2007

Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, who would you want to win?

Tens of thousands gave their answer, voting with their feet for Britain and King George. In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves, Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom, escaped from farms, plantations, and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.

With powerfully vivid storytelling, often in the voices of the slaves themselves and the white abolitionists who became their emancipators and protectors, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.

Critic Reviews:

"Schama once again gives his readers something rare: history that is both well told and well documented. In this wonderfully sprawling epic...he manages to bring a scene, a person, a conversation dramatically to life. Would that more historians wrote like this." (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: Interview with James L. Swanson

Author: James L. Swanson

Format: Original Recording

Length: 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-09-06

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 70 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history, the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild 12-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America's notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame and wealth for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought.

Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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

Title: Ordeal by Hunger

Author: George R. Stewart

Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-23-05

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 125 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers, an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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

Title: Since Yesterday

Subtitle: The 1930s in America

Author: Frederick Lewis Allen

Narrator: Christopher Lane

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-15-05

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 47 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

In this panorama, subtitled The 1930s in America, Frederick Lewis Allen combines an eye for the significant trivia of everyday existence with a facility for neatly dissecting the political monoliths of the era. Whether discussing the varieties of bathtub gin or elucidating Keynesian economics, Allen displays, in the words of Edward Weeks of The Atlantic, "a talent for terse and telling resume which is the envy of any historian."

©1939 Frederick Lewis Allen; (P)1994 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic Reviews:

"Mr. Allen's shining service is to recall the things that have blurred equally with those that have stuck in memory. No one else does this sort of thing so well....Somehow it conveys the impression of the American people telling their own story in autobiographical form." (The New York Times)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]