
Ocean
A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $13.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Ben Eagle
-
By:
-
John Haywood
About this listen
A dazzling and ambitious history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic seas, Ocean is a story that begins with the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge some 200 million years ago and ends with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, providing a template for the methods used by the Spanish in their colonization of the New World.
John Haywood argues that the perception of Atlantic history beginning with the first voyage of the celebrated navigator Christopher Columbus is a mistaken one, and that the seafaring and shipbuilding skills that enabled European global exploration and expansion did not arrive fully formed in the fifteenth century, but instead were learned over centuries and millennia in the Atlantic and its peripheral seas. The pre-Columbian history of the Atlantic is the story of how Europeans learned to master the oceans. This story is key to understanding why it was Europeans, and not any of the world's other seafaring peoples, who "discovered" the world.
Informed by the author's travels around the Atlantic Ocean, Ocean is an in-depth history of a neglected subject, fusing geology, geography, mythology, developing maritime technologies, and the early history of exploration to narrate an enthralling story—one which lies at the very heart of Europe's modern history and its relationship with the world.
©2024 John Haywood (P)2024 Bloomsbury PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
Ancient Christianities
- The First Five Hundred Years
- By: Paula Fredriksen
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.
-
-
Among the best
- By Jacob Kilgore on 04-17-25
By: Paula Fredriksen
-
Roman Britain
- A New History: Revised Edition
- By: Guy de la Bédoyère
- Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author first outlines events from the Iron Age period immediately preceding the conquest in AD 43 to the emperor Honorius's advice to the Britons in 410 to fend for themselves. He then tackles the issues facing Britons after the absorption of their culture by an invading army, including the role of government and the military in the province, religion, commerce, technology, and daily life. For this revised edition, the text and bibliography have been updated to reflect the latest discoveries and research in recent years.
-
Baltic
- The Future of Europe
- By: Oliver Moody
- Narrated by: Kaffe Keating
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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
-
Cerebral Entanglements
- How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives
- By: Allan J. Hamilton
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It took a brain surgeon who's spent a lifetime in the operating room experiencing the brain's union of form and function to write this book. Cerebral Entanglements, unlike most books on the brain, looks at the intimate and vital emotions in our lives, and shows as well, how neuroimaging studies can transform our understanding of crucial emotional or mental health concerns.
-
The Control of Nature
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her—stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
By: John McPhee
-
Spycraft
- Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration
- By: Pete Langman, Nadine Akkerman
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this engaging, accessible account, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman explore the methods spies actually used in the period, including disguises, invisible inks, and even poisons. Drawing on a vast array of archival sources, they show how understanding the tricks and tools of espionage allows us to reimagine well-known stories such as the Babington and Gunpowder plots.
-
-
Needs accompanying PDF
- By Amazon Customer on 09-26-24
By: Pete Langman, and others
-
Ancient Christianities
- The First Five Hundred Years
- By: Paula Fredriksen
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.
-
-
Among the best
- By Jacob Kilgore on 04-17-25
By: Paula Fredriksen
-
Roman Britain
- A New History: Revised Edition
- By: Guy de la Bédoyère
- Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author first outlines events from the Iron Age period immediately preceding the conquest in AD 43 to the emperor Honorius's advice to the Britons in 410 to fend for themselves. He then tackles the issues facing Britons after the absorption of their culture by an invading army, including the role of government and the military in the province, religion, commerce, technology, and daily life. For this revised edition, the text and bibliography have been updated to reflect the latest discoveries and research in recent years.
-
Baltic
- The Future of Europe
- By: Oliver Moody
- Narrated by: Kaffe Keating
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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
-
Cerebral Entanglements
- How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives
- By: Allan J. Hamilton
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It took a brain surgeon who's spent a lifetime in the operating room experiencing the brain's union of form and function to write this book. Cerebral Entanglements, unlike most books on the brain, looks at the intimate and vital emotions in our lives, and shows as well, how neuroimaging studies can transform our understanding of crucial emotional or mental health concerns.
-
The Control of Nature
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her—stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
By: John McPhee
-
Spycraft
- Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration
- By: Pete Langman, Nadine Akkerman
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this engaging, accessible account, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman explore the methods spies actually used in the period, including disguises, invisible inks, and even poisons. Drawing on a vast array of archival sources, they show how understanding the tricks and tools of espionage allows us to reimagine well-known stories such as the Babington and Gunpowder plots.
-
-
Needs accompanying PDF
- By Amazon Customer on 09-26-24
By: Pete Langman, and others
-
Embers of the Hands
- Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
- By: Eleanor Barraclough
- Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society.
-
-
Author is an excellent reader!
- By K on 02-11-25
-
The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945
- Modern War Studies
- By: Robert M. Citino
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 25 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world's leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this book, Citino charts the path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a "war of movement," inexorably led to Nazi Germany's defeat.
-
-
The fake English with a pseudo German accent,
- By Neil on 11-29-24
By: Robert M. Citino
-
The Roads to Rome
- A History of Imperial Expansion
- By: Catherine Fletcher
- Narrated by: Catherine Fletcher
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Roads to Rome is a journey into a past that remains intimately connected to our present. Traveling from Scotland to Cádiz to Istanbul and back to Rome, the listener meanders through nations and empires that have risen and fallen. We encounter spies, bandits, innkeepers, a Byzantine noblewoman on the run, aristocrats on their Grand Tour, Napoleon, John Keats, the Shelleys, Frederick Douglass, and Mussolini.
-
The Eurasian Century
- Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern Century
- By: Hal Brands
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hal Brands argues that a better understanding of Eurasia's strategic geography can illuminate the contours of rivalry and conflict in today's world. The Eurasian Century explains how revolutions in technology and warfare, and the rise of toxic ideologies of conquest, made Eurasia the center of twentieth-century geopolitics—with pressing implications for the struggles that will define the twenty-first.
-
-
Worth the read.
- By Chip Eckert on 02-24-25
By: Hal Brands
-
Paris in Ruins
- Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism
- By: Sebastian Smee
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the "Terrible Year" by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans-then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.
-
-
Stunningly great narrator!
- By Julie Seavello on 12-26-24
By: Sebastian Smee
-
Vanishing Treasures
- A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Katherine Rundell
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes.
-
-
Passionate and Impassioning
- By Anonymous on 12-11-24
-
Drink
- A Cultural History of Alcohol
- By: Iain Gately
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Ben on 02-23-22
By: Iain Gately
-
Cabin
- Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
- By: Patrick Hutchison
- Narrated by: Patrick Hutchison
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations. CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction.
-
-
Excellent read
- By Tom on 02-13-25
-
The Book Censor's Library
- A Novel
- By: Bothayna Al-Essa, Ranya Abdelrahman - translator, Sawad Hussain - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish-allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians.
-
-
Thought-provoking and original
- By Alex, artiste of the perfect pairing on 04-28-25
By: Bothayna Al-Essa, and others
-
The Spice Ports
- Mapping the Origins of the Global Sea Trade
- By: Nicholas Nugent
- Narrated by: Bruce Mann
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We may think of "globalism" as a recent development but its origins date back to the fifteenth century and beyond, when seafarers pioneered routes across the oceans with the objectives of exploration, trade, and profit. These voyages only became possible after certain technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping—enabled navigation across unprecedented distances.
-
-
A timeline of events
- By Akos Szilvasi on 02-13-25
By: Nicholas Nugent
-
Continental Reckoning
- The American West in the Age of Expansion
- By: Elliott West
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 23 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations.
-
-
Great Historian, Worth Listening
- By Janice on 01-19-25
By: Elliott West
-
The Notebook
- A History of Thinking on Paper
- By: Roland Allen
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.
-
-
A fascinating look at an often overlooked powerful tool.
- By Andrew Darlow on 12-28-24
By: Roland Allen
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Northmen
- The Viking Saga AD 793-1241
- By: John Haywood
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Northmen is there to tell the tale, to pay homage to what was lost and celebrate what was won. Focusing on key events, including the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, medieval history expert John Haywood recounts the saga of the Viking Age, from the creation of the world through to the dwindling years of halfhearted raids and elegiac storytelling in the 13th century.
-
-
Boring 😴
- By Anonymous User on 09-24-21
By: John Haywood
-
A Perfect Frenzy
- A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time, A Perfect Frenzy offers a striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South, and reveals the seeds of the nation’s racial divide.
-
-
Evan's Review
- By Evan on 04-05-25
By: Andrew Lawler
-
The Certainty Illusion
- What You Don't Know and Why It Matters
- By: Timothy Caulfield
- Narrated by: Timothy Caulfield, Tyrone Savage
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a world where there is so much conflicting information about how we are supposed to live, what can we really know? Knowing the truth, what’s real from what’s fake, should be easy. In today’s world, that’s far from the case. In The Certainty Illusion, Timothy Caulfield lifts the curtain on the forces contributing to our information chaos and unpacks why it’s so difficult—sometimes even for experts—to escape the fake.
-
-
Truth is still important
- By BiLL on 01-27-25
-
Spice
- The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World
- By: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.
-
-
Spice or Megellan?
- By BarbieAlaska on 06-21-24
By: Roger Crowley
-
El Cid
- The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary
- By: Nora Berend
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
El Cid was perhaps the most famous warrior involved in the indiscriminate fighting—irrespective of religion—on the Iberian Peninsula during the eleventh century. In the centuries after his death, he was transformed into a perfect Christian knight. In modernity, he was seen as the incarnation of Spain’s special national character—Franco chose El Cid as the emblem of Nationalist Spain. Yet not only those on the political right, but many others, including academics and those on the political left, were in his thrall.
By: Nora Berend
-
Summer of Fire and Blood
- The German Peasants' War
- By: Lyndal Roper
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords.
-
-
A Lost History Recovered
- By C. C. Kissinger on 03-12-25
By: Lyndal Roper
-
Northmen
- The Viking Saga AD 793-1241
- By: John Haywood
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Northmen is there to tell the tale, to pay homage to what was lost and celebrate what was won. Focusing on key events, including the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, medieval history expert John Haywood recounts the saga of the Viking Age, from the creation of the world through to the dwindling years of halfhearted raids and elegiac storytelling in the 13th century.
-
-
Boring 😴
- By Anonymous User on 09-24-21
By: John Haywood
-
A Perfect Frenzy
- A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time, A Perfect Frenzy offers a striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South, and reveals the seeds of the nation’s racial divide.
-
-
Evan's Review
- By Evan on 04-05-25
By: Andrew Lawler
-
The Certainty Illusion
- What You Don't Know and Why It Matters
- By: Timothy Caulfield
- Narrated by: Timothy Caulfield, Tyrone Savage
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a world where there is so much conflicting information about how we are supposed to live, what can we really know? Knowing the truth, what’s real from what’s fake, should be easy. In today’s world, that’s far from the case. In The Certainty Illusion, Timothy Caulfield lifts the curtain on the forces contributing to our information chaos and unpacks why it’s so difficult—sometimes even for experts—to escape the fake.
-
-
Truth is still important
- By BiLL on 01-27-25
-
Spice
- The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World
- By: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.
-
-
Spice or Megellan?
- By BarbieAlaska on 06-21-24
By: Roger Crowley
-
El Cid
- The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary
- By: Nora Berend
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
El Cid was perhaps the most famous warrior involved in the indiscriminate fighting—irrespective of religion—on the Iberian Peninsula during the eleventh century. In the centuries after his death, he was transformed into a perfect Christian knight. In modernity, he was seen as the incarnation of Spain’s special national character—Franco chose El Cid as the emblem of Nationalist Spain. Yet not only those on the political right, but many others, including academics and those on the political left, were in his thrall.
By: Nora Berend
-
Summer of Fire and Blood
- The German Peasants' War
- By: Lyndal Roper
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords.
-
-
A Lost History Recovered
- By C. C. Kissinger on 03-12-25
By: Lyndal Roper
-
The Strategists
- Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler: How War Made Them and How They Made War
- By: Phillips Payson O'Brien
- Narrated by: Justin Price
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Churchill. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Roosevelt. Five of the most impactful leaders of WW2, each with their own individualistic and idiosyncratic approach to warfare. But if we want to understand their military strategy, we must first understand the strategist. In The Strategists, Professor Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they fought WW2.
-
The Last Tsar
- The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs
- By: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Tsar Nicholas II fell from power in 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest. Though Nicholas’s life is often described as tragic, it was not fate that doomed the Romanovs—it was poor leadership and a blinkered faith in autocracy. Based on a trove of new archival discoveries, The Last Tsar narrates how Nicholas’s resistance to reform doomed the monarchy.
-
-
Confusion
- By Michael L. Cook on 01-24-25
-
Continental Reckoning
- The American West in the Age of Expansion
- By: Elliott West
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 23 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations.
-
-
Great Historian, Worth Listening
- By Janice on 01-19-25
By: Elliott West
-
Somewhere Toward Freedom
- By: Bennett Parten
- Narrated by: Jonathan Beville
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Historian Bennett Parten provides a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.
-
-
Compelling history, well told!
- By Nina Lovel on 02-26-25
By: Bennett Parten
-
Embers of the Hands
- Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
- By: Eleanor Barraclough
- Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society.
-
-
Author is an excellent reader!
- By K on 02-11-25
-
Oathbreakers
- The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe
- By: Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious’s sons tried to overthrow him—and then placed their knives at the other’s neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other’s blood.
-
-
The drama is exceptional
- By Nathan on 04-03-25
By: Matthew Gabriele, and others
-
Mark Twain
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 44 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.
By: Ron Chernow
-
Reagan
- His Life and Legend
- By: Max Boot
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 32 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this “monumental and impressive” biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president’s aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides “the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date” (Robert Mann).
-
-
Has An Agenda
- By CC on 01-07-25
By: Max Boot
-
Alexandria
- The City That Changed the World
- By: Islam Issa
- Narrated by: Islam Issa
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Combining rigorous research with myth and folklore, Alexandria is an authoritative history of a city that has shaped our modern world. Soon after being founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandria became the crucible of cultural exchange between East and West for millennia and the undisputed global capital of knowledge. It was at the forefront of human progress, but it also witnessed brutal natural disasters, plagues, crusades, and violence.
-
-
More than a city history
- By Ramsey S on 12-11-24
By: Islam Issa
-
Save Our Souls
- The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder
- By: Matthew Pearl
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were the Walkers—the ship’s captain Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, their three teenage sons, and their dog—along with the ship’s crew. The family had spotted a promising fishing location when a terrible storm arose, splitting their vessel in two and leaving those onboard adrift on the perilous sea. When the castaways awoke the next morning, they discovered they had been washed ashore—on an island inhabited by a large but ragged and emaciated man who introduced himself as Hans.
-
-
Awful
- By aleris on 02-11-25
By: Matthew Pearl
-
The Extinction of Experience
- Being Human in a Disembodied World
- By: Christine Rosen
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control.
-
-
Insightful!
- By Face on 05-04-25
By: Christine Rosen
-
The Sinners All Bow
- Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River.
-
-
Another Great Book by This Author
- By Christine on 04-14-25
What listeners say about Ocean
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah C
- 03-14-25
Prehistory of the Atlantic
I loved the fascinating subject matter, especially the commentary on and possible historical basis for various mythical voyages, settlements, and islands. The narrator is a native English speaker but he can’t pronounce lots of words. Maybe he read his pages too quickly. I enjoyed this book but the narrator’s constant mispronunciations were distracting. Examples: merSENtile for mercantile; UNNanimous for YOUnanimous (unanimous);
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!