American Civil Wars
A Continental History, 1850-1873
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Narrated by:
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Graham Winton
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By:
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Alan Taylor
About this listen
A MASTERFUL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS REVERBERATIONS ACROSS THE CONTINENT BY A TWO-TIME PULITZER PRIZE WINNER.
In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a pivotal twenty-year period in which North America’s three largest countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—all transformed themselves into nations.
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
The outbreak of the Civil War created a continental power vacuum that allowed French forces to invade Mexico in 1862 and set up an empire ruled by a Habsburg archduke. This inflamed the ongoing power struggle between Mexico’s Conservatives—landowners, the military, the Catholic Church—and Liberal supporters of social democracy, led ably by Benito Juarez. Along the southwestern border, Mexico’s Conservative forces made common cause with the Confederacy, while General James Carleton violently suppressed Apaches and Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona. When the Union triumph restored the continental balance of power, French forces withdrew, and Liberals consolidated a republic in Mexico.
Canada was meantime fending off a potential rupture between French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and English-speakers in Ontario. When Union victory raised the threat of American invasion, Canadian leaders pressed for a continent-wide confederation joined by a transcontinental railroad. The rollicking story of liberal ideals, political venality, and corporate corruption marked the dawn of the Gilded Age in North America.
“American Civil Wars demonstrates, as no previous work has, the great political transformations sweeping all of North America during the middle of the nineteenth century. With a geographical frame embracing Canada and Mexico as well as the United States, Alan Taylor once again challenges and deepens our historical perspective.”—Steven Hahn, author of Illiberal America: A History
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- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
By: Scott Lewis
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The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome
- By: Gregory S. Aldrete, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Gregory S. Aldrete
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Original Recording
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The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome traces the breathtaking history from the empire’s foundation by Augustus to its Golden Age in the 2nd century CE through a series of ever-worsening crises until its ultimate disintegration. Taught by acclaimed Professor Gregory S. Aldrete of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, these 24 captivating lectures offer you the chance to experience this story like never before, incorporating the latest historical insights that challenge our previous notions of Rome’s decline.
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Gregory S. Aldrete is a treasure
- By Laurel Tucker on 02-04-19
By: Gregory S. Aldrete, and others
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Made in America
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.
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Bryson Not Reading Makes For a Rare Fail
- By John on 02-28-14
By: Bill Bryson
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The Pagan World
- Ancient Religions Before Christianity
- By: Hans-Friedrich Mueller, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Hans-Friedrich Mueller
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Original Recording
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In The Pagan World: Ancient Religions Before Christianity, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives. Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller, of Union College in Schenectady, New York, makes this ancient world come alive in 24 lectures with captivating stories of intrigue, artifacts, illustrations, and detailed descriptions from primary sources of intriguing personalities.
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The Pagan World
- By arnold e andersen md Dr Andersen on 03-28-20
By: Hans-Friedrich Mueller, and others
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Helter Skelter
- The True Story of the Manson Murders
- By: Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 26 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider's position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the 20th century: the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders? Now available for the first time in unabridged audio, the gripping story of this famous and haunting crime is brought to life by acclaimed narrator Scott Brick.
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Everything I remembered about the case was wrong..
- By karen on 06-22-12
By: Vincent Bugliosi, and others
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Excellent ..
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Best book on the American Revolution that I have read
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Managing through narration
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Excellent ..
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The Age of Reconstruction
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In this international history of Reconstruction, Don Doyle chronicles the world events inspired by the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, France withdrew from Mexico, Russia sold Alaska to the US, and Britain proclaimed the new state of Canada. British workers demanded more voting rights, Spain toppled Queen Isabella II and ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Cubans rose against Spanish rule, France overthrew Napoleon III, and the kingdom of Pope Pius IX fell before the Italian Risorgimento.
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Terrible reading
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Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous borders, the leaders of the American Republic and the British Empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. Taylor’s vivid narrative of an often brutal—sometimes farcical—war reveals much about the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.
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A proper history of an obscure epoch
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Winning Independence
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It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the US a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France’s entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a 'southern strategy'. The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its prewar American empire.
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Superb
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Apostles of Revolution
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Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and James Monroe were in the vanguard of revolutionary ideas in the 18th century. As founding fathers, they risked their lives for American independence, but they also wanted more. Each wished for profound changes in the political and social fabric of pre-1776 America and hoped that the American Revolution would spark republican and egalitarian revolutions throughout Europe, sweeping away the old aristocratic order. Ultimately, each rejoiced at the opportunity to be a part of the French Revolution, a cause that became increasingly untenable as idealism gave way to the bloody terror.
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A bit of a challenging listen but well worth it
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Reconstruction
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The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.
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Outdated edition!!
- By Bruce on 11-02-17
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The Internal Enemy
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This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake reveals the pivot in the nation’s path between the founding and civil war. Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as "freedom’s swift-winged angels." In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire. Drawn from new sources, Alan Taylor's riveting narrative re-creates the events that inspired black Virginians, haunted slaveholders, and set the nation on a new and dangerous course.
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one of the best audiobooks I've read recently
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Wide Awake
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At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes--mostly working-class Americans in their twenties--became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history.
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Interesting account
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The Failed Promise
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Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.
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A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
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Armies of Deliverance
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Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. So argues Elizabeth R. Varon in Armies of Deliverance, a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike.
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First rate history
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The American Civil War
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For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America’s most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name.
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A Novel Approach (As Opposed to Novelistic)
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The Great Abolitionist
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The Great Abolitionist is the first major biography of Charles Sumner to be published in over fifty years. Acclaimed historian Stephen Puleo relates the story of one of the most influential non-presidents in American history with evocative and accessible prose, transporting listeners back to an era when our leaders exhibited true courage and authenticity in the face of unprecedented challenges.
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A long overdue biography
- By Cedric R. Ross on 11-25-24
By: Stephen Puleo
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Brought Forth on This Continent
- Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
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- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry. Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it.
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Enjoyable perspective
- By Mark Mears on 05-11-24
By: Harold Holzer
What listeners say about American Civil Wars
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- Anonymous User
- 11-14-24
Truly Continental in Scope
This is your chance to find out what you don’t know about the history of Canada and Mexico, as well as the U.S., during this period.
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- Brandon Marken
- 07-12-24
fascinating!
I'm a huge history nerd but whenever I've read books on the US Civil War it's always been focused entirely on the US without any discussion kd how the war affected other countries and how other countries affected the US. This is one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time.
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- Tascha F.
- 07-04-24
Provides a fascinating complex understanding of the time period
Alan Taylor is a writer who excels at contextualizing the complexity of history by creating a sort of ancestral snapshot of each person and event and placing them on a family tree, showing both their relationships to one another and to their time. This approach increases readers’ abilities to build those understandings on their own in other readings, about other times. That’s cool. In this book, he upends a more static understanding of North and South and provides a kaleidoscope of complexity with regards to individuals and social groups from regions both within and outside of our borders.
In this book, Alan Taylor displays his unique brilliance at making legible the complex interplay of extremely diverse international, national, and factional agendas, political aspirations, people’s attachment to their political and social worldviews, economic aspirations, their bluster, their denial, and their honest – if not always successful – efforts. Quoting from a mind-bogglingly large reading list of academic sources, newspapers, diaries, and other historical documents, he brings people back to life in such a way that you could mentally animate what role these historical figures would play today on the world stage or even in a more intimate setting of your own office politics. He makes the complexity and uncertainty decipherable so that we can think about it, argue about it, and explore it just as we would events with which we are familiar today.
A true love of history and our understanding of humanity at present are not served by infatuation with imagined, polished heroes but by complex accounts and considerations of character, influences, dreams, successes, and failures that reveal how these elements are the common denominators in all lives and across all times. Taylor does this superbly for figures North, South, enslaved, free, freed Blacks, embittered whites, Mexican, Spanish, Canadian, British, French, and Indigenous. He juxtaposes Maximilian’s wife, Carlota, sister of Leopold II, who placed faith in herself and in her husband to transform Mexico through better monarchy, with the far more egalitarian Benito Juárez, who ultimately subordinated the lives of the indigenous people in capitulating to a rising oligarchy of American investors who could rebuild Mexico. Both Carlota and Juarez are driven to varying degrees of madness by the results of their efforts.
We see members of the former Confederacy who rue their violent support for the perverse and cruel institution of slavery once the war is over, alongside others who will stop at nothing to bring back the old order. And we see Northerners, who in wartime decried slavery with a furious ardor, eventually languishing in their duty to their fellows after the war was over. There are warriors for justice, warriors for oppression, realists, capitulators, power brokers, and pawns. Even the best, who are not depleted of passionate intensity for doing right, must contend with an ecosystem of others’ dreams and aspirations, which all too often run afoul of the righteous. In the end, we may be judged by others and by ourselves for what we’ve wished for: either peace and fairness or war and acquisition at any price.
The book serves as a reminder to plant the right seeds and dream the right dreams…for everybody’s children. Because when the harshest frost melts away, something new will grow.
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- Matt
- 10-17-24
This is the wrong narrator
Winton does fine with his narration... except for how he pronounces anything that starts with a W. You know that Family Guy sketch about Cool Whip? That's half this book. He should not be narrating a book that has the words "whites, whipped or Whigs" in it as much as this book.
As for Taylor, the book doesn't have a solid structure. He tells the story in order, and mentions a bunch of people for about 2 paragraphs each, only to never mention them again. It makes what should be an interesting story rather dull at times.
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