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Sand and Steel
- The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 37 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
Peter Caddick-Adams' account of the Allied invasion of France in June 1944 matches the monumental achievement of his book on the Battle of the Bulge, Snow and Steel, which Richard Overy has called the "standard history of this climactic confrontation in the West". Sand and Steel gives us D-Day, arguably the greatest and most consequential military operation of modern times, beginning with the years of painstaking and costly preparation, through to the pitched battles fought along France's northern coast, from Omaha Beach to the Falaise and the push east to Strasbourg.
The Allied invasion of Europe involved mind-boggling logistics, including orchestrating the largest flotilla of ships ever assembled. Its strategic and psychological demands stretched the Allies to their limits, testing the strengths of the bonds of Anglo-American leadership. Drawing on firsthand battlefield research, personal testimony and interviews, and a commanding grasp of all the archives and literature, Caddick-Adams' gripping book, published on the 75th anniversary of the events, does Operations Overlord and Neptune full justice.
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Extra. Ordinary.
- By Anonymous User on 12-15-21
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Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
- By: Ian W. Toll
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.
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Astonishingly good.
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-01-12
By: Ian W. Toll
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Given Up for Dead
- America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island
- By: Bill Sloan
- Narrated by: David Cochran Heath
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On December 8, 1941, just five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked a remote US outpost in the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. It was the beginning of an incredible 16-day fight for Wake Island, a tiny but strategically valuable dot in the ocean. Unprepared for the stunning assault, the small battalion was dangerously outnumbered and outgunned. But they compensated with a surplus of bravery and perseverance, waging an extraordinary battle against all odds.
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For want of a nail...
- By Kindle Customer on 07-21-21
By: Bill Sloan
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The First Wave
- The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II
- By: Alex Kershaw
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows the remarkable men who carried out D-Day’s most perilous missions. The charismatic, unforgettable cast includes the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the glider pilot who braved antiaircraft fire to crash-land mere yards from the vital Pegasus Bridge; the brothers who led their troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; as well as a French commando, returning to his native land, who fought to destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach and beyond.
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Thoughtful and Sobering
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-19
By: Alex Kershaw
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By Tank into Normandy
- By: Stuart Hills, Lord Deedes - foreword
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Stuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6:45 a.m., Sunday, June 4th, 1944. He was 20 years old, un-blooded, fresh from a public-school background, and officer cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk; he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a replacement tank, engaging the enemy in a constant round of close encounters, led to a swift mastering of the art of tank warfare and remarkable survival in the midst of carnage and destruction.
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First “The Big Show” now this?!
- By S. H. Moore on 05-19-21
By: Stuart Hills, and others
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The Last Hill
- The Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle That Defined WWII
- By: Bob Drury, Tom Clavin
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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They were known as “Rudder’s Rangers,” the most elite and experienced attack unit the Army had. In December 1944, they would be the spearhead into Germany, taking the war into Hitler’s homeland at last. Their colonel was given this objective: Take Hill 400. After two days, when they were finally relieved, only 16 Rangers remained to stagger down from the top of Hill 400. The Last Hill is filled with unforgettable action and characters—a gripping, finely detailed saga of what the survivors of the battalion would call “our longest day.”
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more a history of the rangers in ww2
- By M. Johannes on 10-12-23
By: Bob Drury, and others
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D-Day
- June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WW II
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- Narrated by: Jesse Boggs
- Length: 25 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen E. Ambrose draws from hundreds of interviews with US Army veterans and the brave Allied soldiers who fought alongside them to create this exceptional account of the day that shaped the twentieth century. D-Day is above all the epic story of men at the most demanding moment of their existence, when the horrors, complexities and triumphs of life are laid bare and courage and heroism come to the fore.
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What an epic story what great men
- By Michael on 02-12-14
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Utmost Savagery
- The Three Days of Tarawa
- By: Colonel Joseph H. Alexander United States Marine Corps (Ret.)
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 20, 1943, in the first trial by fire of America’s fledgling amphibious assault doctrine, 5,000 men stormed the beaches of Tarawa, a seemingly invincible Japanese island fortress barely the size of the 300-acre Pentagon parking lots. Before the first day ended, one-third of the marines who had crossed Tarawa’s deadly reef under murderous fire were killed, wounded, or missing. In three days of fighting, four Americans would win the Medal of Honor and six thousand combatants would die.
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The Definitive Battle History of Tarawa
- By Iain on 02-23-11
By: Colonel Joseph H. Alexander United States Marine Corps (Ret.)
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Eagle Against the Sun
- The American War With Japan
- By: Ronald H. Spector
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 23 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.
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OK as an overview, but too little detail
- By Mike From Mesa on 03-21-22
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War Stories II
- Heroism in the Pacific
- By: Oliver North, Joe Musser
- Narrated by: Joel Leffert
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Oliver North, popular host of FOX News Channel's top-rated War Stories program, provided an insightful look at Operation Iraqi Freedom in the first hard-hitting book based on his show. Now in this second book, North shares the accomplishments of the heroic men who fought in the Pacific theater of World War II.
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Another winner
- By Kindle Customer on 04-20-05
By: Oliver North, and others
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Four Hours of Fury
- The Untold Story of World War II's Largest Airborne Operation and the Final Push into Nazi Germany
- By: James M. Fenelon
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning of March 24, 1945, more than 2,000 Allied aircraft droned through a cloudless sky toward Germany. Escorted by swarms of darting fighters, the armada of transport planes carried 17,000 troops to be dropped, via parachute and glider, on the far banks of the Rhine River. Four hours later, after what was the war’s largest airdrop, all major objectives had been seized....
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personal and powerful.
- By TXcustomer on 07-09-19
By: James M. Fenelon
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The Force
- The Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII's Mission Impossible
- By: Saul David
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In December of 1943, as Nazi forces sprawled around the world and the future of civilization hung in the balance, a group of highly trained US and Canadian soldiers from humble backgrounds was asked to do the impossible: capture a crucial Nazi stronghold perched atop stunningly steep cliffs. The men were a rough-and-ready group, assembled from towns nested in North America's most unforgiving terrain, where many of them had struggled through the Great Depression relying on canny survival skills and the fearlessness of youth.
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well Done
- By Barbara on 11-18-19
By: Saul David
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The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War.
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Epic Account, Masterful in Its Scope, Power and Resonance
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In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne's narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry.
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You're going to need a French dictionary and a map
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Go yanks go !
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How the War Was Won
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World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy.
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Gave a new understanding of World War II
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Snow & Steel
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Between December 16, 1944 and January 15, 1945, American forces found themselves entrenched in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg defending against an advancing German army amid freezing temperatures, deep snow, and dense fog. Operation Herbstnebel - Autumn Mist - was a massive German counter-offensive that stunned the Allies in its scope and intensity.
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fascinating and thorough, painful narration
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Fire and Steel
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Here is Peter Caddick-Adams's third volume in his trilogy about the final year of the Western front in World War Two. Fire & Steel covers the war's final 100 days—beginning in late January 1945 and continuing until May 8, 1945, when the German high command surrendered unconditionally to all Allied forces. Caddick-Adams's previous two volumes in the acclaimed series—Sand & Steel, which covers the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and Snow & Steel, the definitive study of the Battle of the Bulge—have set the stage for this concluding volume.
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Comprehensive account of Allied Army operations at the end of World War III
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The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War.
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Epic Account, Masterful in Its Scope, Power and Resonance
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In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne's narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry.
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You're going to need a French dictionary and a map
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September Hope
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In September Hope, acclaimed historian John C. McManus explores World War II’s most ambitious invasion, an immense, daring offensive to defeat Nazi Germany before the end of 1944. Operation Market-Garden is one of the war’s most famous, but least understood, battles, and McManus tells the story of the American contribution to this crucial phase of the war in Europe.
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Go yanks go !
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How the War Was Won
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World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy.
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Gave a new understanding of World War II
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Those Who Hold Bastogne
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In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII.
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How Did Anyone Survive?
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Crete 1941
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Nazi Germany expected its airborne attack on Crete in 1941 to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. Little did they know that the British, using Ultra intercepts, had already laid a careful trap. It should have been the first German defeat of the war, but a fatal misunderstanding turned the battle around.
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Engrossing
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Normandy '44
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D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west - the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear in his definitive history, many parts of the OVERLORD campaign, as it was known, are still shrouded in myth and assumed knowledge.
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Excellent account of Normandy but be weary...
- By S. H. Moore on 02-22-20
By: James Holland
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Winston Churchill
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In his short biography of Winston Churchill, author Peter Caddick-Adams writes that the recipe for Winston Churchill's success during his wartime premiership of 1940-45 can be found in the First World War. He argues that Britain's survival under Churchill was precisely because the nation, and its leaders, had undergone a "dress rehearsal in 1914-18; conscription, rationing, convoys, air raids, mass production, women's uniformed services, coalitions and war cabinets. It had all happened before."
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The Hitler Years: Triumph, 1933-1939
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In this first volume of a new chronicle, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending on Germany's comprehensive military defeat of Poland in 1939.
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Exceptionally informative and detailed telling of Hitler’s rise in 1933-1939
- By M. Price on 06-22-24
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The Battle of Britain
- Five Months That Changed History; May-October 1940
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The Battle of Britain paints a stirring picture of an extraordinary summer when the fate of the world hung by a thread. Historian James Holland has now written the definitive account of those months based on extensive new research from around the world, including thousands of new interviews with people on both sides of the battle.
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The battle up to The Battle of Britain
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Landing on the Edge of Eternity
- Twenty-Four Hours at Omaha Beach
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When Company A of the US 116th Regiment landed on Omaha Beach in D-Day's first wave on June 6, 1944, it lost 96 percent of its effective strength. Sixteen teams of US engineers arriving in the second wave were unable to blow the beach obstacles, as first wave survivors were still sheltering behind them. This was the beginning of the historic day that Landing on the Edge of Eternity narrates hour by hour.
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Good introduction to first hours of D-Day.
- By Barry Davis on 10-19-24
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Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931-1941
- War in the Far East Series, Book 1
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- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
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Storm Clouds over the Pacific begins the story long before Pearl Harbor, showing how the war can only be understood if ancient hatreds and long-standing geopolitics are taken into account. Harmsen demonstrates how Japan and China's ancient enmity led to increased tensions in the 1930s, which, in turn, exploded into conflict in 1937.
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Interesting Story
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Countdown to D-Day
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- Narrated by: Roger Clark
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In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness. His superior, theater commander, crusty old Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had led the Reich to victory in the early years of the war, is now fed up with the whole Nazi regime. He lives comfortably in a plush villa in a quiet Paris suburb, waiting for the inevitable Allied invasion that will bring about their final defeat.
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Well worth the length
- By James McNamara Richmond on 02-02-21
By: Peter Margaritis
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Armor and Blood
- The Battle of Kursk: The Turning Point of World War II
- By: Dennis E. Showalter
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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While the Battle of Kursk has long captivated World War II aficionados, it has been unjustly overlooked by historians. Drawing on the masses of new information made available by the opening of the Russian military archives, Dennis E. Showalter at last corrects that error. This battle was the critical turning point on World War II's Eastern Front. In the aftermath of the Red Army's brutal repulse of the Germans at Stalingrad, the stakes could not have been higher.
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Big Ups to Prof. Showalter and Audible
- By Placeholder on 08-28-13
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The Dead and Those About to Die
- D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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A white-knuckle account of the First Infantry Division’s harrowing D-Day assault on the eastern sector of Omaha Beach - acclaimed historian John C. McManus has written a gripping history that will stand as the last word on this titanic battle. Nicknamed the Big Red One, First Division had fought from North Africa to Sicily, earning a reputation as stalwart warriors on the front lines and rabble-rousers in the rear. Yet on D-Day, these jaded combat veterans melded with fresh-faced replacements to accomplish one of the most challenging and deadly missions ever.
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Detailed Account of D-Day
- By Pamela Dale Foster on 07-04-14
By: John C. McManus
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Invading Hitler's Europe
- From Salerno to the Capture of Göring: The Memoir of a US Intelligence Officer
- By: Roswell K. Doughty, Reiner Decher - introduction
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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On the day that Roswell K. Doughty graduated from Boston University, he also received a commission as a second lieutenant in the army of the United States of America. It was not until 1942 that he was called to active duty—to face some of the toughest fighting of the Second World War. He subsequently saw action in North Africa, then at the disastrous Salerno landings in Italy - where the Allied divisions involved suffered 4,000 casualties—about which the author reveals that suspected intelligence breaches led to the Allies' plans becoming known to the Germans.
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excellent
- By Rosendo on 11-01-22
By: Roswell K. Doughty, and others
What listeners say about Sand and Steel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Julie Rae Loving
- 12-25-22
Well Researched and thought out
Of all the many WW2 history's I have now read, I have little doubt that more time and effort went into researching this volume. Well Done! Worth the 37 hours.
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- tug
- 06-06-23
Great book
I loved the detail. I will undoubtedly listen again with a book of relevant maps at hand.
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- Mark Haviland
- 03-11-23
A wonderful history!
The author covers what I expected to be familiar territory in a refreshing, thoughtful and incredibly detailed manner. The narrative and the narration are really first class and, no matter how many times you’ve read about D-Day, this is a must read. You’ll quickly notice this is not only a smashing history, it’s a tribute to all the participants.
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- Jenna
- 06-19-24
Monumental Achievement
Incredible! Great oration for a stunning account of D-Day. Tons of great information colored by touching anecdotes and expert analysis.
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- J.Brock
- 03-24-23
Not for The Uninformed
Peter Caddick-Adams has written one of the most extensive histories on D-Day with “Sand and Steel.” It’s quite an undertaking for the studied listener. Most readers have undertaken other D-Day books since it’s a noted military history buff topic, but this is another step up on the ladder of extensive study. Highly recommend for the learner listener. This would be very daunting for someone who hasn’t studied the topic before. Ease into it and be prepared for a lengthy listen!! But it’s exceptionally well done. Derek Perkins narration is perfect. He always makes a long, dense listen a pleasure.
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- Patrick
- 03-31-24
Excellent
The book was a bit long. Really enjoyed how the commonwealth beaches were covered. It gave a much better description of the substantial casualties they suffered. Also insights to German side I had not heard of before. Finally i enjoyed how author compared more recent scholarship to that of previous decades.
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- S. Wood
- 10-27-23
Too many disconnected vignettes
The narrator does a good job but the story was hard to follow because of disconnected vignettes and unnecessary detail. With about ten hours left I switched to D-Day by Stephen Ambrose, which was easier to follow and much more interesting. Ambrose breaks his story up into larger chunks, allowing him to tell the story while Sand and Steel comes off as more of a recitation of facts.
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- William Helms
- 06-29-21
Disappointed
Book presents a lot of detail but attempt to focus on personal experience is full of fodder that makes reading painful. There are much better books on Overload and Neptune history.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Mike From Mesa
- 11-11-21
Details, details, details
The story of the D-Day landings is probably among the most written about events of the 20th century and what Sand and Steel gives us is a ton of details, most of which are interesting but seemed to me to be of secondary importance As with other books on the subject it covers the long period from the initial troop movements to Great Britain up to and including the actual landings themselves and covers some subjects not often covered otherwise.
Each chapter is filled with the experiences of some of the soldiers involved, in some cases so many as to blur the view of what happened, but always interesting. So we hear about what it was like to cross The Atlantic on a troop ship, what training was like in the UK, the strained relationship between US black and white soldiers, life for British civilians during this period and the affect of having relatively highly paid US soldiers stationed in a country barely able to get along due to wartime rationing, the weather, the crossing to France and the landings. Much of this has been covered in other books on the period but the section on the experiences of black soldiers in Great Britain has rarely been mentioned in what I have read before and what is covered in the book is in greater detail than I have ever seen before.
Here we not only read about Eisenhower's chief meteorologist Group Captain Stagg, but also about his subordinates and the German meteorologist as well. Here we not only read about Rommel and the construction of the Atlantic Wall, but also about the mix of different arms from different countries with different ammunition requirements and the efforts of the French population to slow down and sabotage the construction. Here we read about not only the French resistance but also about the successful German attempts to infiltrate the resistance and what they learned. And most of all we read about the landings themselves, in far too much detail to follow without either a thorough knowledge of the beaches themselves or a decent set of maps. The sections on the landings, at more than 12 hours, cover each section of each beach and left me understanding little of the geography involved but with the understanding that none of the beaches was a "cake walk". The audio version of the author's other book on the war, Snow and Steel, includes a download with maps but this one does not and is in great need of one.
The narration is absolutely first class and I never tired of it during the entire 37+ hours of the book, but I think that, as interesting as the book itself is, it would have benefitted from some editing to shorten some sections. I can only give a qualified recommendation and suggest that anyone not completely familiar with the Normandy coast area get a detailed map if they want to follow what is covered in the last 3rd of the book. While I would have given this book 4 stars if it had maps I only feel able to give it 3 stars due to the lack of those maps. The one thing that the book left me with was the feeling that those who took part in freeing France, Belgium and The Netherlands and defeating Germany were giants in their own way and left me forever grateful for their actions.
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5 people found this helpful