
Crescent Dawn
The Rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Age
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Narrated by:
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Mark Elstob
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By:
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Si Sheppard
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Crescent Dawn by Si Sheppard, read by Mark Elstob.
A groundbreaking history of the wars of the Ottoman Expansion, a truly global conflagration that crisscrossed three continents and ultimately defined the borders and future of a modern Europe.
The determined attempt to thwart Ottoman dominance was fought across five theaters from the Balkans to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, from Persia to Russia. This intercontinental melee is expertly re-told in this fascinating new history by historian Si Sheppard.
But this is not the story of a clash of civilizations between East and West as you might assume. Europe was not united against the Turks; the scandal of the age was the alliance between King Francis I of France and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Meanwhile, the resistance of the Saadi dynasty of Morocco to Ottoman encroachment played a critical role in denying Constantinople direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. By the same token, though religious imperatives were critical to the motivations of all the key actors involved, these in no way fell neatly along the Christian Muslim divide. Crescent Dawn expertly shows how the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V desired nothing more than to eradicate the Protestant heresy metastasizing throughout his domains, but the threat of Turkish invasion forced him to stay his hand and indulge his Lutheran subjects to ensure a common defense. Nevertheless, the collective effort to constrain the expansion of the Ottoman superpower did succeed with the ultimate victory in 1571 the tipping point in reordering the trajectory of history.
Crescent Dawn features some of the legendary figures of the era – from Mehmet the Conqueror, and Suleiman the Magnificent on the Ottoman side, to Charles V and Vasco de Gama on the other – and some of the most exotic locales on Earth – from the sumptuous palaces of Constantinople to the bloody battlefields of the Balkans to the awe-inspiring mountains of Ethiopia. This is a colorful history that brings the great battles of the age to life and clearly shows how the western struggle against the Ottomans constituted the first truly world war.
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Story
This is the definitive, inside story of Ukraine's long fight for freedom. Told through Miller’s personal experiences, vivid front-line dispatches and illuminating interviews with unforgettable characters, The War Came To Us takes listeners on a riveting journey through the key locales and pivotal events of Ukraine’s modern history.
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A Man on Fire
- The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- By: Douglas R. Egerton
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Few Americans covered as much ground as Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Born in 1823 to a family descended from Boston's Puritan founders, he attended Harvard, like all the men in his family, and prepared for the settled life of a minister. Instead, he rejected both privilege and convention, and embraced radical causes, attaching himself to nearly every major reform movement of the day, from women's rights to abolitionism. More than merely a fellow traveler, Higginson was a proponent of direct action.
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Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness
- Arab Travellers in the Far North
- By: Ibn Fadlan, Paul Lunde - translator, Caroline Stone
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab explorers journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Ibn Fadlan's chronicles of his travels are one of the most important documents from the period, and this illuminating new translation offers insight into the world of the Arab geographers and the medieval lands of the far north. Based on an expedition to the upper Volga River in 922 AD,
By: Ibn Fadlan, and others
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Bagration 1944
- The Great Soviet Offensive
- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 20 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field, which had been crucial to earlier success.
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Impressive amount of detail, as expected from the author.
- By Zoran Jovic on 03-30-25
By: Prit Buttar
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The Dark Path
- The Structure of War and the Rise of the West
- By: Williamson Murray
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Although the fundamental nature of war has not altered over the centuries, constant change, innovation, and adaptation have repeatedly reshaped how wars are fought in the West. Revolutions in military practice cannot be separated from larger social developments in areas like logistics, finance and economics, and the culture of military organizations.
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Perfection
- 400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty
- By: Margarette Lincoln
- Narrated by: Polly Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Victorian women ate arsenic to achieve an ideal, pale complexion, while in the 1790s balloon corsets were all the rage, designed to make the wearer appear pregnant. Women of the eighteenth century applied blood from a black cat's tail to problem skin, while doctors in the 1880s promoted woolen underwear to keep colds at bay. Beautification and the pursuit of health may seem all-consuming today, but their history is long and fantastically varied. Ranging across the last four hundred years, Margarette Lincoln examines women's health and beauty in fascinating detail.
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Texas
- An American History
- By: Benjamin Heber Johnson
- Narrated by: Tom Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Americans turn on their laptops, play video games, go to church, vote, eat TexMex, shop for groceries, listen to music, grill steaks, or watch football, they are, knowingly or not, paying tribute to Texas. Tracing the profound and surprising story of the Lone Star State, Benjamin Heber Johnson shines new light on why Texas has had such a powerful influence on United States history.
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Outmaneuvered
- America's Tragic Encounter with Warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan
- By: James A. Warren
- Narrated by: Jonathan Beville
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Most scholars and analysts believe that the primary cause of our abysmal war record since Vietnam has been the US military’s overwhelmingly conventional approach to conflict, which favors kinetic operations, highly mobile precision firepower, and sophisticated systems of command and control. Here, James Warren argues that a much more formidable obstacle to success has been pervasive strategic ineptitude at the highest levels of decision-making, including the presidency, the national security council, and the foreign policy community in DC.
By: James A. Warren
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Second-Class Saints
- Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality
- By: Matthew L. Harris
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 9, 1978, the phones at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were ringing nonstop. On that historic day, LDS church president Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation lifting the church's 126-year-old ban barring Black people from the priesthood and Mormon temples. It was the most significant change in LDS doctrine since the end of polygamy almost 100 years earlier. Drawing on never-before-seen private papers of LDS apostles and church presidents, Harris probes the plot twists and turns, the near-misses and paths not taken, of this incredible story.
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Incredible book with fascinating insights into just how the racist policies of the Mormon church changed. Excellent narration!
- By Levi on 03-05-25
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The Spanish Civil War (Revised Edition)
- By: Hugh Thomas
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 33 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterpiece of the historian's art, Hugh Thomas's The Spanish Civil War remains the best, most engrossing narrative of one of the most emblematic and misunderstood wars of the twentieth century. Revised and updated with significant new material, including new revelations about atrocities perpetrated against civilians by both sides in this epic conflict, this "definitive work on the subject" (Richard Bernstein, the New York Times) has been given a fresh face forty years after its initial publication in 1961.
By: Hugh Thomas
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Baltic
- The Future of Europe
- By: Oliver Moody
- Narrated by: Kaffe Keating
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Baltic's time has come. It is not only critical to Europe's security and increasingly a centre of political and military power in its own right; it is a reservoir of ideas and experiences that could shape the continent's future. This books explores the history, their culture, their peculiarities and national dilemmas of all nine Baltic countries. At its core is a search for fresh answers to Europe's problems, at a point where the continent's previously dominant powers appear tired and divided.
By: Oliver Moody
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Seven Social Movements That Changed America
- By: Linda Gordon
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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How do social movements arise, wield power, and decline? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these questions in a groundbreaking work, narrating the stories of many of America's most influential twentieth-century social movements. Beginning with the turn-of-the-century settlement house movement, Gordon then scrutinizes the 1920s Ku Klux Klan and its successors, the violent American fascist groups of the 1930s.
By: Linda Gordon
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Emilie Du Chatelet
- Daring Genius of the Enlightenment
- By: Judith P. Zinsser
- Narrated by: Sarah K. Lippmann
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The captivating biography of the French aristocrat who balanced the demands of her society with passionate affairs of the heart and a brilliant life of the mind. Although today she is best known for her fifteen-year liaison with Voltaire, Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more than a great man's mistress. After marrying a marquis at the age of eighteen, she proceeded to fulfill the prescribed-and delightfully frivolous-role of a French noblewoman of her time.
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The Revolutionary Self
- Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual 1770-1800
- By: Lynn Hunt
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women's expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers' satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval.
By: Lynn Hunt
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The Witch of Pungo
- Grace Sherwood in Virginia History and Legend
- By: Scott O. Moore
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1706, Grace Sherwood was "ducked" after her neighbors in Princess Anne County accused her of witchcraft. Binding and throwing her into the Lynnhaven River, they waited to see whether she would float to the top (evidence of her guilt) or sink (proof of her innocence). Incredibly, she survived. This bizarre spectacle became an early piece of Virginia folklore as stories about Sherwood, the "Witch of Pungo," spread. Her legend still looms large in Tidewater.
By: Scott O. Moore
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The Viking Saint
- Olaf II of Norway
- By: John Carr
- Narrated by: Maria Isabel Pita
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Vikings and sainthood are not concepts normally found side by side. But Norway’s King Olaf II Haraldsson (c. 995-1030) embodied both to an extraordinary degree. As a battle-eager teenager he almost single-handedly pulled down London Bridge (as in the nursery rhyme) and took part in many other Viking raids. Olaf lacked none of the traditional Viking qualities of toughness and audacity, yet his routine baptism grew into a burning missionary faith that was all the more remarkable for being combined with his typically Viking determination and energy—and sometimes ruthlessness as well.
By: John Carr
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Vatican Spies
- From the Second World War to Pope Francis
- By: Yvonnick Denoël, Alan McKay - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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"Officially" the Vatican has no espionage service; but does no one carry out intelligence operations on its behalf? During the Second World War and Cold War, Rome was teeming with spies. A band of undercover monsignors and priests hunted for Vatican "moles," led clandestine diplomacy, investigated assassinations of priests and other scandals threatening the Church, and conducted high-risk missions behind the Iron Curtain.
By: Yvonnick Denoël, and others