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Close Calls
- How Eleven US Presidents Escaped from the Brink of Death
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
Historians tell the stories of tragic and untimely presidential deaths, but often forgotten are the near misses. JFK and his fellow servicemen spent six days on a desert island with only coconuts to eat after a deadly attack during WWII. Abe Lincoln was forced to take a train trip in disguise while America's first female detective worked to foil an early assassination attempt. And when Andrew Jackson was attacked by an upset citizen who had been stalking him for months, frontiersman Davey Crockett was the one to save him. With pacy, immediate writing and including supplemental archival materials, this book chronicles thrilling undertold stories of US presidents' moments of bravery.
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- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Part Blackhawk Down, part The Riddle of the Sands, former MI6 officer Harry Ferguson has written an extraordinarily gripping non-fiction thriller. Operation Kronstadt not only reveals the early days of intelligence services but also uncovers a truly dramatic story from the Russian Revolution involving a daring rescue attempt and a "mission impossible" against the best defended naval target in Russia.
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Gripping Story
- By Anonymous User on 06-21-10
By: Harry Ferguson
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Night of the Assassins
- The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1943, and the three Allied leaders - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - are meeting for the first time at a top-secret conference in Tehran. But the Nazis have learned about the meeting, and Hitler sees it as his last chance to turn the tide. Although the war is undoubtedly lost, the Germans believe that perhaps a new set of Allied leaders might be willing to make a more reasonable peace in its aftermath. And so, a plan is devised - code name Operation Long Jump - to assassinate FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.
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Very inaccurate background.
- By Anna Goforth on 04-19-22
By: Howard Blum
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A Higher Form of Killing
- Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare
- By: Diana Preston
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In six weeks during April and May 1915, as World War I escalated, Germany forever altered the way war would be fought. On April 22, at Ypres, German canisters spewed poison gas at French and Canadian soldiers in their trenches; on May 7, the German submarine U-20, without warning, torpedoed the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 civilians; and on May 31, a German Zeppelin began the first aerial bombardment of London and its inhabitants.
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Very Informative
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-23
By: Diana Preston
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No Mission Is Impossible
- The Death-Defying Missions of the Israeli Special Forces
- By: Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In No Mission Is Impossible, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal return with the intensely absorbing, fast-paced story of 30 of the boldest missions of the Israeli special forces. Bar-Zohar and Mishal depict in electrifying detail major battles, raids in enemy territory, and death-defying commando missions while also sharing the personal stories of both soldiers and top commanders, revealing their hopes and fears. The stories are often of victories, but sometimes they're of immense failures.
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Kept me somewhat entertained. Forgettable though
- By Oliver Nielsen on 05-06-16
By: Michael Bar-Zohar, and others
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Above and Beyond
- By: Casey Sherman
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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From the authors of the best-selling The Finest Hours comes the riveting, deeply human story of President John F. Kennedy and two U-2 pilots, Rudy Anderson and Chuck Maultsby, who risked their lives to save America during the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the ominous two weeks of the Cold War's terrifying peak, two things saved humanity: the strategic wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the U-2 aerial spy program. On October 27, 1962, Kennedy, strained from back pain, sleeplessness, and days of impossible tension, was briefed about a missing spy plane.
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Narrator’s mispronunciations detracted from the story
- By Stephen E. Smith on 08-01-18
By: Casey Sherman
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Act of War
- Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo
- By: Jack Cheevers
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In 1968, a small, dilapidated American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking, ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties.
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Mesmerizing book
- By Jean on 09-18-14
By: Jack Cheevers
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Road to Surrender
- Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
- By: Evan Thomas
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who oversaw J. Robert Oppenheimer under the Manhattan Project; Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo.
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Why they decided to drop the atomic bombs
- By William R. Todd-Mancillas (Name includes hyphen and capitalized M). on 08-08-23
By: Evan Thomas
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One Minute to Midnight
- Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
- By: Michael Dobbs
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis.
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On the verge of annihilation.
- By MikeCG on 01-22-09
By: Michael Dobbs
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1941: Fighting the Shadow War
- A Divided America in a World at War
- By: Marc Wortman
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War, historian Marc Wortman thrillingly explores the little-known history of America's clandestine involvement in World War II before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that infamous day, America had long been involved in a shadow war. Winston Churchill, England's beleaguered new prime minister, pleaded with Franklin D. Roosevelt for help. FDR concocted ingenious ways to come to his aid without breaking the Neutrality Acts.
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Fascinating, well worth the time to read or listen.
- By tennreader on 06-07-16
By: Marc Wortman