United States Military History

Best-selling military historian H. W. Crocker III turns his guns on the epic story of America's involvement in the First World War with TheYanks Are Coming!. The year 2014 marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great War, and in Crocker's sweeping, American-focused account, listeners will learn: How George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, "Wild Bill" Donovan, Harry S. Truman, and many other American heroes earned their military spurs in during World War I.

In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Francis Marion and his band of militia freedom fighters kept hope alive for the patriot cause during the critical British southern campaign. Like the Robin Hood of legend, Marion and his men attacked from secret hideaways before melting back into the forest or swamp. Employing insurgent tactics that became commonplace in later centuries, Marion and his brigade inflicted losses on the enemy that were individually small but cumulatively a large drain on British resources and morale.

Learn about the roles of soldiers and their training, as well as the advanced equipment, vehicles, and weapons the Army uses. When duty calls, the Army is always ready to defend.

Eyewitness to the Alamo is the actual account of the siege and Battle of the Alamo by those who were present during the attack. This book is the first complete accounting of the Battle of the Alamo by one of our country's foremost authorities on the event. Contains over 100 descriptions of the Battle of the Alamo by people who were witnesses or who claimed to have witnessed the event. These accounts are the basis for all of the histories, traditions, myths, and legends of this famous battle.

This prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

"Lee Is Trapped, and Must Be Taken": Eleven Fateful Days After Gettysburg: July 4 to July 14, 1863 focuses on the immediate aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg and addresses how Maj. Gen. George G. Meade organized and motivated his Army of the Potomac in response to President Abraham Lincoln's mandate to bring about the "literal or substantial destruction" of Gen. Robert E. Lee's retreating Army of Northern Virginia.

Proud and talented, history now remembers this conflicted man solely through the lens of his last desperate act of treason. Yet the fall of Benedict Arnold remains one of the Revolutionary period's great puzzles. Why did a brilliant military commander, who repeatedly risked his life fighting the British, who was grievously injured in the line of duty, and fell into debt personally funding his own troops, ultimately became a traitor to the patriot cause?

During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty's name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an "Indian lover," Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight for the British.

In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln's presidency and the trials of the Civil War. He supplies fascinating details on the crisis over Fort Sumter and the relentless office seekers who plagued Lincoln. He introduces listeners to the president's battles with hostile newspaper editors and his quarrels with incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also interprets Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son, Willie, to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

This audiobook is the classic one-volume history of the American Civil War by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton. Covering events from the prelude of the conflict to the death of Lincoln, Catton blends a gripping narrative with deep, yet unassuming, scholarship to bring the war alive in an almost novelistic way. It is this gift for narrative that led contemporary critics to compare this book to War and Peace, and call it a "modern Iliad." Now over 50 years old, This Hallowed Ground remains one of the best-loved and admired general Civil War books.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

Nothing Like It in the World is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise comes to life. The U.S. government pitted two companies - the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads - against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. As its peak the work force approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as 15,000 workers on each line. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, lived off buffalo, deer, and antelope.

In this compelling biography, McPherson follows Abraham Lincoln from his early frontier days to his turbulent years in the White House. This concise yet comprehensive account reveals why Lincoln still remains a quintessential American icon.

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. By the time rescue arrived, all but 317 men had died. The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered

Discover the captivating history of the first American wars in Africa! In this audiobook, you’ll learn about the Barbary Wars of 1801 to 1805 and 1815, the first American wars outside of North America. The enemies were the Muslim Barbary pirates of the North African coast. Discover how American sailors were captured and turned into slaves in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Why did this happen? And why didn’t the US Navy do more to stop it? Discover the answers to these in this comprehensive guide!

This audiobook is about the Banana Wars that lasted from the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy of 1934. When you listen to this story, you’ll learn how and why the US marines invaded Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. You’ll also learn how the US Marines occupied and ruled Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic for years.

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants: Edda L. Fields-Black shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats.

A fresh window on American history: the eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil, even if the rest of us die - a road map that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today.

Covering a time of great hope and incredible change, Reconstructing America is a dramatic look at life after the Civil War in the newly re-United States. Railroad tycoons were roaring across the country. New cities sprang up across the plains, and a new and different American West came into being: a land of farmers, ranchers, miners, and city dwellers. Back East, large-scale immigration was also going on, but not all Americans wanted newcomers in the country.

Fact-packed WW2 history book for elementary/primary school children - a must read! Includes over 40 photographs, bringing the war to life! Did you know? Project Pigeon aimed to use trained pigeons to guide bombs to their targets! Did you know? “Mad Jack” Churchill charged into battle playing the bagpipes!Are you ready for an extraordinary journey through one of the most exciting and important chapters in history? Buckle up, because we're about to embark on an adventure through the thrilling twists and turns of WWII! Hold on tight because we're going to explore the pages of history like ...