-
The Man Who Saved India
- Narrated by: B. Andrew
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
There is perhaps no political figure in modern history who did more to secure and protect the Indian nation than Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. But, ironically, 70 years after Patel brought together piece-by-piece the map of India by fusing the princely states with British India to create a new democratic, independent nation, little is understood or appreciated about Patel's enormous contribution to the making of India.
Caricatured in political debate, all the nuances of Patel's difficult life and the daring choices he made are often lost, or worse, used as mere polemic. If Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual core of India's freedom struggle and Jawaharlal Nehru its romantic idealism, it was Sardar Patel who brought in the vital pragmatism which held together the national movement and the first ideas of independent India. A naturally stoic man, Patel, unlike Gandhi or Nehru, wrote no personal history. He famously argued that its was better to create history than write it. This is why even his deepest misgivings and quarrels have been easily buried.
But every warning that Patel left for India - from the dangers of allowing groups to create private militias to his thoughtful criticism on India's approach to Kashmir, Pakistan, and China - are all dangerously relevant today. It is impossible to hear about Patel, who died in 1950, and not feel that had he lived on, India might have been a different country. It is also impossible to ignore Patel and understand not only what the idea of India is but also what it could have been, and might be in the future.
The Man Who Saved India is a sweeping, magisterial retelling of Sardar Patel's story. With fiercely detailed and pugnacious anecdotes, multiple award-winning, best-selling writer Hindol Sengupta brings alive Patel's determined life of struggle and his furious commitment to keep India safe. This audiobook brings alive all the arguments, quarrels, and clashes between some of the most determined people in Indian history and their battle to carve out an independent nation.
Through ravages of a failing body broken by decades of abuse in and outside prison, Patel stands out in this audiobook as the man who, even on his death bed, worked to save India. Hindol Sengupta's The Man Who Saved India is destined to define Patel's legacy for future generations.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
-
-
Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
-
Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
-
-
Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
-
The Coming of the Third Reich
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 21 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is no story in 20th-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time.
-
-
Compelling and depressing
- By Tad Davis on 06-30-10
By: Richard J. Evans
-
Paris 1919
- Six Months That Changed the World
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 25 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, renowned historian Margaret MacMillan's best-selling Paris 1919 is the story of six remarkable months that changed the world. At the close of WWI, between January and July of 1919, delegates from around the world converged on Paris under the auspices of peace. New countries were created, old empires were dissolved, and for six months, Paris was the center of the world.
-
-
Good book, well narrated
- By W. F. Rucker on 02-07-09
-
How to Be a Liberal
- The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life
- By: Ian Dunt
- Narrated by: Ian Dunt
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Brexit Britain to Trump's America to Orban's Hungary, liberal values are under attack. In a soaring narrative that stretches from the English Civil War to the 2008 financial crash and the rise of populism, the journalist Ian Dunt tells the epic story of liberalism, from its birth in the fight against absolute monarchy to the modern-day resistance against the new populism. This book explains the political ideas which underpin the modern world. But it is also something much more than that - it is a rallying cry for those who still believe in freedom and reason.
-
-
Almost Quit Listening, But Glad I Stuck With It
- By Donald Arteaga on 04-19-22
By: Ian Dunt
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
-
-
Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
-
Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
-
-
Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
-
The Coming of the Third Reich
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 21 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is no story in 20th-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time.
-
-
Compelling and depressing
- By Tad Davis on 06-30-10
By: Richard J. Evans
-
Paris 1919
- Six Months That Changed the World
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 25 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, renowned historian Margaret MacMillan's best-selling Paris 1919 is the story of six remarkable months that changed the world. At the close of WWI, between January and July of 1919, delegates from around the world converged on Paris under the auspices of peace. New countries were created, old empires were dissolved, and for six months, Paris was the center of the world.
-
-
Good book, well narrated
- By W. F. Rucker on 02-07-09
-
How to Be a Liberal
- The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life
- By: Ian Dunt
- Narrated by: Ian Dunt
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Brexit Britain to Trump's America to Orban's Hungary, liberal values are under attack. In a soaring narrative that stretches from the English Civil War to the 2008 financial crash and the rise of populism, the journalist Ian Dunt tells the epic story of liberalism, from its birth in the fight against absolute monarchy to the modern-day resistance against the new populism. This book explains the political ideas which underpin the modern world. But it is also something much more than that - it is a rallying cry for those who still believe in freedom and reason.
-
-
Almost Quit Listening, But Glad I Stuck With It
- By Donald Arteaga on 04-19-22
By: Ian Dunt
-
The Bhutto Dynasty
- The Struggle for Power in Pakistan
- By: Owen Bennett-Jones
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major new investigation into the Bhutto family, examining their influence in Pakistan from the colonial era to the present day.
-
-
Excellent coverage of the dynasty
- By Junaid Qurashi on 04-26-21
-
Winter Is Coming
- Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
- By: Garry Kasparov
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.
-
-
A polemic against Putin
- By David on 05-27-16
By: Garry Kasparov
-
The War That Ended Peace
- The Road to 1914
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 31 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
-
-
Detailed review of 1882 to 1914
- By smarmer on 04-06-14
-
RFK
- His Words for Our Times
- By: C. Richard Allen, Edwin O. Guthman, Robert F. Kennedy
- Narrated by: James Lurie, Jim Meskimen
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, RFK: His Words for Our Times, a celebration of Kennedy’s life and legacy, was published to enormous acclaim. Now, a quarter century later, this classic volume has been thoroughly edited and updated. Through his own words we get a direct and intimate perspective on Kennedy’s views on civil rights, social justice, the war in Vietnam, foreign policy, the desirability of peace, the need to eliminate poverty, and the role of hope in American politics.
-
-
Astounding
- By Colleen Mooney on 10-21-24
By: C. Richard Allen, and others
-
Gandhi & Churchill
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 29 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fast-paced epic, best-selling historian and master storyteller Arthur Herman spotlights two giants of the 20th century. Gandhi & Churchill shows how their 40-year rivalry revolutionized India and the British Empire, paving the way for a new era. Gandhi championed India's independence, Churchill the British Empire.
-
-
A motif that works well
- By Maine Dave on 11-30-09
By: Arthur Herman
-
The Russian Revolution
- By: Richard Pipes
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 41 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Groundbreaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world", The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that aroused great controversy. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat - "the capture of governmental power by a small minority."
-
-
Destruction of the Lenin Myth
- By philip on 09-08-19
By: Richard Pipes
-
Modern Times
- The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 37 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with May 29, 1919, when photographs of the solar eclipse confirmed the truth of Einstein's theory of relativity, Johnson goes on to describe Freudianism, the establishment of the first Marxist state, the chaos of "Old Europe", the Arcadian 20s, and the new forces in China and Japan. Also discussed are Karl Marx, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Castro, Kennedy, Nixon, the '29 crash, the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, and the massive conflict of World War II.
-
-
The Anti-Howard Zinn
- By Pork C. Fish on 05-22-12
By: Paul Johnson
-
Becoming Hitler
- The Making of a Nazi
- By: Thomas Weber
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Becoming Hitler, award-winning historian Thomas Weber examines Adolf Hitler's time in Munich between 1918 and 1926, the years when Hitler shed his awkward, feckless persona and transformed himself into a savvy opportunistic political operator who saw himself as Germany's messiah. The story of Hitler's transformation is one of a fateful match between man and city. After opportunistically fluctuating between the ideas of the left and the right, Hitler emerged as an astonishingly flexible leader of Munich's right-wing movement.
-
-
talented malevolence c a dash of amazing luck
- By emilio squillante on 11-05-18
By: Thomas Weber
-
The Death of Democracy
- Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.
-
-
I can't trust the author's account of these events
- By Example: Mark Twain on 11-10-19
-
Jan Smuts
- Unafraid of Greatness
- By: Richard Steyn
- Narrated by: Anton Engelen
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness is a re-examination of the life and thoughts of Jan Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary listenership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. The author, a former editor of The Star, argues that Smut's role in the creation of modern South Africa should never be forgotten, not least because of his lifetime of devoted service to this country. The book draws a parallel between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both architects of a new South Africa, much lionised abroad yet often distrusted at home.
-
-
Fascinating life, interesting human
- By ar_berkeley on 06-14-24
By: Richard Steyn
-
Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
-
-
Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
-
Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 28 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I.
-
-
The heart of evil
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-20-14
By: Ian Kershaw
Critic reviews
"It is dangerous to put dreamers in power. Sardar Patel's pragmatism was the perfect antidote to Nehru's idealism in the early years of Independence. If only Patel had lived longer, India would have been spared the excesses of the License Raj and the Kashmir problem. This is one of the messages of this lively, highly readable book." (Gurcharan Das, best-selling author)
Related to this topic
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
-
-
Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
-
The Death of Democracy
- Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.
-
-
I can't trust the author's account of these events
- By Example: Mark Twain on 11-10-19
-
Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
-
-
Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
-
Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 28 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I.
-
-
The heart of evil
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-20-14
By: Ian Kershaw
-
The Palestinian Delusion
- The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process
- By: Robert Spencer
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the "peace process", Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict.
-
-
The Real Facts
- By Canes580 on 01-25-20
By: Robert Spencer
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
-
-
Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
-
The Death of Democracy
- Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.
-
-
I can't trust the author's account of these events
- By Example: Mark Twain on 11-10-19
-
Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
-
-
Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
-
Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 28 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I.
-
-
The heart of evil
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-20-14
By: Ian Kershaw
-
The Palestinian Delusion
- The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process
- By: Robert Spencer
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the "peace process", Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict.
-
-
The Real Facts
- By Canes580 on 01-25-20
By: Robert Spencer
-
Heaven on Earth
- The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism
- By: Joshua Muravchik
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science". Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man" inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes.
-
-
A biased yet informative masterpiece
- By CodyPeacock12349 on 04-04-21
By: Joshua Muravchik
-
Democracy
- Stories from the Long Road to Freedom
- By: Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Grace Angela Henry
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy.
-
-
A Case for Democracy
- By Jean on 05-18-17
By: Condoleezza Rice
-
The Russian Revolution
- By: Richard Pipes
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 41 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Groundbreaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world", The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that aroused great controversy. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat - "the capture of governmental power by a small minority."
-
-
Destruction of the Lenin Myth
- By philip on 09-08-19
By: Richard Pipes
-
The Nazi Menace
- Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history.
-
-
Bad Melodramatic Reading
- By Tess on 08-18-20
-
Armed Struggle
- The History of the IRA
- By: Richard English
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The IRA has been a much richer, more complexly layered, and more protean organization than is frequently recognized. It is also more open to balanced examination now - at the end of its long war in the north of Ireland - than it was even a few years ago. Richard English's brilliant audiobook offers a detailed history of the IRA, providing invaluable historical depth to our understanding of the modern-day Provisionals, the more militant wing formed in 1969 dedicated to the removal of the British Government from Northern Ireland and the reunification of Ireland.
-
-
A comprehensive history of the IRA
- By Stefan Filipovits on 02-04-20
By: Richard English
-
Stalin
- Passage to Revolution
- By: Ronald Grigor Suny
- Narrated by: Robbie Stevens
- Length: 28 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the 20th century's most ruthless dictators. In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him.
-
-
Great
- By Anonymous User on 02-05-23
-
Never Alone
- Prison, Politics, and My People
- By: Natan Sharansky, Gil Troy
- Narrated by: Natan Sharansky, Gil Troy, Peter Lownds
- Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1977, Natan Sharansky, a leading activist in the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free Jewish emigration, was arrested by the KGB. He spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason against the state. Never Alone reveals how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Danna Azrieli on 02-06-21
By: Natan Sharansky, and others
-
Twelve Who Ruled
- The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution
- By: R. R. Palmer, Isser Woloch - foreword
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Reign of Terror continues to fascinate scholars as one of the bloodiest periods in French history, when the Committee of Public Safety strove to defend the first Republic from its many enemies, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in revolutionary France. R. R. Palmer's fascinating narrative follows the Committee's deputies individually and collectively, recounting and assessing their tumultuous struggles in Paris and their repressive missions in the provinces.
-
-
A Warning
- By Josh Rowe on 03-20-21
By: R. R. Palmer, and others
-
A New World Begins
- The History of the French Revolution
- By: Jeremy D. Popkin
- Narrated by: Pete Cross, Jeremy D. Popkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society - even if, after more than 200 years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the listener in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society.
-
-
Narration
- By Kindle Customer on 04-26-22
By: Jeremy D. Popkin
-
Inventing Japan [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Excellent Primer on Modern Japan
- By John Pavliga on 06-13-06
By: Ian Buruma
-
The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
-
-
Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
-
The Mighty and the Almighty
- Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Does America have a special mission, derived from God, to bring liberty and democracy to the world? How much influence does the Christian right have over U.S. foreign policy? And how should America deal with violent Islamist extremists? Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State and best-selling author of Madam Secretary, offers a thoughtful and often surprising look at the role of religion in shaping America's approach to the world.
-
-
The point??
- By Thomas on 11-04-06