
The Force
The Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII's Mission Impossible
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Narrated by:
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Matthew Waterson
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By:
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Saul David
About this listen
Hailed as "masterly" (Wall Street Journal) and a "monumental achievement" (Douglas Brinkley), this book tells the riveting, true story of the group of elite US and Canadian soldiers who sacrificed everything to accomplish a crucial but nearly impossible WWII mission.
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. Brought together by the promise to take part in the military's most elite missions, they formed a unique brotherhood tested first by the crucible of state-of-the-art training—including skiing, rock climbing, and parachuting—and then tragically by the vicious fighting they would face.
The early battle in the Italian theatre for the strategic fort cost the heroic US-Canadian commando unit—their first special forces unit ever assembled—enormous casualties. Yet the victory put them in position to continue their drive into Italy, setting the stage for the Allies' resurgence toward victory in WWII. The unit, with its vast range of capabilities and mission-specific exercises, became a model for the "Green Berets" and other special forces groups that would go on to accomplish America's most challenging undertakings behind enemy lines.
Knitting first-hand accounts seamlessly into the narrative-drawing on interviews with surviving members and their families; the memoirs, letters, and diaries of Forcemen; and declassified documents in the American, Canadian, British, and German archives—The Force tells a story that is as deeply personal as it is inspiring.
©2019 Saul David (P)2019 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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SOG
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Critic reviews
"The Force brilliantly recounts the heroic exploits of the first U.S. and Canadian Special Operations team, tasked with decommissioning a supposedly impregnable Nazi stronghold. Every chapter is filled with harrowing adventure, life and death struggle, and bedrock patriotism. The amount of new cutting-edge research is impressive. A monumental achievement!"—Douglas Brinkley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race
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Story
From the authors of the New York Times best-selling The Heart of Everything That Is and Halsey's Typhoon comes the dramatic untold story of a daredevil bomber pilot and his misfit crew who fly their lone B-17 into the teeth of the Japanese Empire in 1943, engage in the longest dogfight in history, and change the momentum of the war in the Pacific - but not without making the ultimate sacrifice.
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A WWII Pacific Tale
- By A. L. DeWitt on 11-15-16
By: Bob Drury, and others
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Empireworld
- How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
- By: Sathnam Sanghera
- Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world.
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Great info about colonialism
- By Ayako E. on 10-04-24
By: Sathnam Sanghera
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One Fine Day
- Britain's Empire on the Brink
- By: Matthew Parker
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 27 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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September 29, 1923. Once the Palestine Mandate officially takes effect, the British Empire—now covering a quarter of the world’s land and boasting a population of 460 million—is the largest the world has ever seen. But it is also an empire in rapid transition. Nationalist and Pan-African movements are gaining momentum throughout West Africa, thanks as much to Marcus Garvey as to the sustained efforts of local activists and politicians. Moving from London to Kuala Lumpur, Australia to the West Indies, One Fine Day is a breathtaking and unflinching tour of the British Empire at its pinnacle.
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Broad history
- By Ian D. Sheldon on 05-10-24
By: Matthew Parker
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The Cold War's Killing Fields
- Rethinking the Long Peace
- By: Paul Thomas Chamberlin
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sweeping, deeply researched book, Paul Thomas Chamberlin boldly argues that the Cold War, long viewed as a mostly peaceful, if tense, diplomatic standoff between democracy and communism, was actually a part of a vast, deadly conflict that killed millions on battlegrounds across the postcolonial world. For half a century, as an uneasy peace hung over Europe, ferocious proxy wars raged in the Cold War’s killing fields, resulting in more than 14 million dead - victims who remain largely forgotten and all but lost to history.
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Interesting but Biased
- By Jonathan W Schneider on 08-13-18
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Operation Vengeance
- The Astonishing Aerial Ambush That Changed World War II
- By: Dan Hampton
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943, the United States military began to plan one of the most dramatic secret missions of World War II. Its code name was Operation Vengeance. Naval Intelligence had intercepted the itinerary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, whose stealth attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s entry into the war. Harvard-educated, Yamamoto was a close confidant of Emperor Hirohito and a brilliant tactician who epitomized Japanese military might.
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I want 1/2 my money back
- By DPM on 08-11-20
By: Dan Hampton
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Agent of Influence
- How to Use Spy Skills to Persuade Anyone, Sell Anything, and Build a Successful Business
- By: Jason Hanson
- Narrated by: Jason Hanson
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover how to use proven spy techniques to bolster your business strategies - from self-advocation to selling to interviewing - and ultimately make more money with this unique guide.
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Former CIA agent turns sales man
- By James M. on 11-11-19
By: Jason Hanson
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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
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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.
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Readers Style Distracts Heavily
- By Seth Gecko on 01-03-25
By: Robert M. Citino
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Forty Autumns
- A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
- By: Nina Willner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family - of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than 40 years and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love.
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Excellent look into the divided Germanys
- By Mary Aalgaard on 01-18-18
By: Nina Willner
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Indestructible
- One Man's Rescue Mission That Changed the Course of WWII
- By: John R. Bruning
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In this remarkable WWII story by New York Times best-selling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family - imprisoned by the Japanese - and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way. From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his fiery days as a pioneering naval aviator, Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn played by his own set of rules and always survived on his wits and fists. But when he fell for a conservative Southern belle, her love transformed him from a wild and reckless airman to a cunning entrepreneur.
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You will love Pappy's story
- By A. L. DeWitt on 11-15-16
By: John R. Bruning
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The Chosen Few
- A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan
- By: Gregg Zoroya, William H. McRaven - foreward
- Narrated by: Gregg Zoroya
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A single company of US paratroopers—calling themselves the "Chosen Few"—arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides.
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Wow! What an amazing group of men!
- By Myla on 06-22-18
By: Gregg Zoroya, and others
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The League
- How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire
- By: John Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Daniel Thomas May
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.
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what a great book. loved it completely.
- By Daniel Mosca on 11-08-18
By: John Eisenberg
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Scarface and the Untouchable
- Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago
- By: Max Allan Collins, A. Brad Schwartz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Max Allan Collins, A. Brad Schwartz
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A Mystery Writers of America “Grand Master” - author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition, longtime Dick Tracy writer, and multiple Shamus Award winner - teams with an acclaimed rising young historian in this riveting, myth-shattering dual portrait of Al Capone, America’s most notorious gangster, and Eliot Ness, the legendary Prohibition agent whose extraordinary investigative work crippled his organization.
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HERE ISTHE REAL STORY OF NESS AND CAPONE!!
- By Sandra J Sanders on 08-18-21
By: Max Allan Collins, and others
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The Court at War
- FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made
- By: Cliff Sloan
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice. But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. The Court at War explores this pivotal period.
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Fascinating history
- By Richard on 03-14-24
By: Cliff Sloan
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Book of Queens
- The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror
- By: Pardis Mahdavi
- Narrated by: Pardis Mahdavi, Shila Ommi, Suzanne Toren, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The untold story of generations of Middle Eastern freedom fighters—horsewomen who safeguarded an ancient breed of Caspian horse—and their efforts to defend their homelands from the Taliban and others seeking to destroy them, Book of Queens reaches back centuries to the Persian Empire and a woman disguised as a man, facing an invading army, protected only by light armor and the stallion she sat astride. Mahdavi draws a thread from past to present.
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The amazing story
- By Emily Herndon on 05-11-25
By: Pardis Mahdavi
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No Surrender
- A Father, a Son, and an Extraordinary Act of Heroism That Continues to Live on Today
- By: Christopher Edmonds, Douglas Century
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Part contemporary detective story, part World War II historical narrative, No Surrender is the inspiring true story of Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville-born enlistee who risked his life during the final days of World War II to save others from murderous Nazis, and the lasting effects his actions had on thousands of lives - then and now.
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Personal and impactful
- By Rodney on 10-10-19
By: Christopher Edmonds, and others
Great story, not so great narrating
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Matthew Waterson's narration is stirring. He draws the reader in and deeply engaged. Can't recommend higher.
Amazing Brave Men
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Good story that felt rushed at the end
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Average History, Average Performance
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Simply fascinating and amazing
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The force
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A lot of Force build up info…not too much on the actual fighting
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Story itself is potentially engaging. Given the lackluster narration, however, I cannot recommend this audio.
I gotta say, seems to me that a lot of that rage is self-inflicted. I mean, ‘com on, ya sorta have to be some kind of idiot not to reject out of hand, you know, one who claims dems support “post-birth abortions.” Being mad as hell can’t justify not taking vociferous objection to blatant idiocy.
Important military action rendered uninspiringly
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A gritty military history about singularly extraordinary men
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Awesome
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