-
The Fear and the Freedom
- How the Second World War Changed Us
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Fear and the Freedom is Keith Lowe's follow-up to Savage Continent. While that book painted a picture of Europe in all its horror as World War II was ending, The Fear and the Freedom looks at all that has happened since, focusing on the changes that were brought about because of World War II - simultaneously one of the most catastrophic and most innovative events in history.
It killed millions and eradicated empires, while at the same time creating the idea of human rights and giving birth to the UN. It was because of the war that penicillin was first mass-produced, computers were developed, and rockets first sent to the edge of space. The war created new philosophies, new ways of living, new architecture: this was the era of Le Corbusier, Simone de Beauvoir, and Chairman Mao.
But amidst the waves of revolution and idealism there were also fears of globalization, a dread of the atom bomb, and an unexpressed longing for a past forever gone. All of these things and more came about as direct consequences of the war and continue to affect the world that we live in today.
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An education. Somber, detailed, many-faceted
- By Philo on 08-20-16
By: Victor Sebestyen
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They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else
- A History of the Armenian Genocide
- By: Ronald Grigor Suny
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the 20th century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent - more than 1,000,000 people. A century later, the Armenian genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian versions of events.
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Great book, unbiased view finally
- By Raffy Afarian on 10-30-15
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The Long Shadow
- The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century
- By: David Reynolds
- Narrated by: John FitzGibbon
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically-acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18.
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The World According to David Reynolds (feat. WWI)
- By Steve on 02-26-15
By: David Reynolds
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Inventing Japan [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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LA Times Book Award winner and expert on the past and present Japan, Ian Buruma examines the transformation of a country. Following Japan's history from its opening to the West in 1853 to its hosting of the 1964 Olympics, Buruma focuses on how figures such as Commodore Matthew Perry, Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Mitsushito helped shape this complex country.
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Excellent Primer on Modern Japan
- By John Pavliga on 06-13-06
By: Ian Buruma
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Fracture
- Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.
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Lots of good trivia information
- By Jean on 07-23-15
By: Philipp Blom
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The Red Flag
- A History of Communism
- By: David Priestland
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 28 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across 200 years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in 19th-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the 20th century.
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Best History of Communism I Have Seen
- By David on 06-11-15
By: David Priestland
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Great Catastrophe
- Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide
- By: Thomas de Waal
- Narrated by: David Rapkin
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The destruction of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 was the greatest atrocity of World War I. Around one million Armenians were killed, and the survivors were scattered across the world. Although it is now a century old, the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years.
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- By shaq on 02-26-19
By: Thomas de Waal
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From the Ruins of Empire
- The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
- By: Pankaj Mishra
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
A little more than a century ago, as the Japanese navy annihilated the giant Russian one at the Battle of Tsushima, original thinkers across Asia, working independently, sought to frame a distinctly Asian intellectual tradition that would inform and inspire the continent's anticipated rise to dominance.
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Breathtaking Scale, Cohesion and Vision of Asian History
- By Oscar C. Huerta on 03-18-19
By: Pankaj Mishra
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Nonviolence
- The History of a Dangerous Idea
- By: Mark Kurlansky
- Narrated by: Richard Dreyfuss
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this timely, highly original, and controversial narrative, New York Times best-selling author Mark Kurlansky discusses nonviolence as a distinct entity, a course of action, rather than a mere state of mind. Nonviolence can and should be a technique for overcoming social injustice and ending wars, he asserts, which is why it is the preferred method of those who speak truth to power.
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A brief, necessary account of the history of nonviolence
- By Real Talk on 07-29-20
By: Mark Kurlansky
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War and Genocide
- A Concise History of the Holocaust
- By: Doris L. Bergen
- Narrated by: Collene Curran
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In examining one of the defining events of the twentieth century, Doris L. Bergen situates the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts. Unlike many other treatments of the Holocaust, this revised, third edition discusses not only the persecution of the Jews, but also other segments of society victimized by the Nazis: Roma, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet POWs, the disabled, and other groups deemed undesirable.
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Agency - the capacity or state of exerting power
- By Angela on 03-22-17
By: Doris L. Bergen
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Nothing new on the Eastern front basically!
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The Vanquished
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In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes.
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little-known period following WWI is illuminated
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November 1918
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The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.
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Fresh Historical Perspective
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In Hitler's Munich
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In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918-19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his anti-Semitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.
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In Hitler’s Munich
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Hitler's True Believers
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Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
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Fascinating listen
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By: Robert Gellately
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Savage Continent
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Better in print?
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By: Keith Lowe
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Retreat from Moscow
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- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
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Nothing new on the Eastern front basically!
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The Vanquished
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In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes.
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little-known period following WWI is illuminated
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The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.
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Fresh Historical Perspective
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By: Robert Gerwarth
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In Hitler's Munich
- Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
- By: Michael Brenner, Jeremiah Riemer - translator
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
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In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918-19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his anti-Semitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.
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In Hitler’s Munich
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By: Michael Brenner, and others
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Fascinating listen
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Hitler's Empire
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Drawing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, Hitler's Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion - and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain.
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Page Turning Scholarship
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American Fascists
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Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other televangelists first spoke of the United States being a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedoms and our way of life.
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Please, read or listen to this book.
- By D on 06-22-07
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KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
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In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.
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Narrator warning!
- By S R L COTTERILL on 04-24-15
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The Future of Geography
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Humans are venturing up and out, and we’re taking our competitive spirit with us. Soon, what happens in space will shape human history as much the mountains, rivers, and seas have impacted civilizations around the world. It’s no coincidence that Russia, China, and the USA are leading the way. The next fifty years will change the face of global politics and the world order as we know it. In this must-listen work, bestselling author Tim Marshall navigates the new astropolitical reality to show how we got here and where we’re heading.
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Insightful Map for the Space race
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Black Snow
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Overall
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Performance
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Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."
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Top notch!
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The Wages of Destruction
- The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- By: Adam Tooze
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Overall
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An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period.
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Ties the story together in an amazing way
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By: Adam Tooze