
The Raider
The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II
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Narrated by:
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Mark Deakins
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By:
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Stephen R. Platt
About this listen
The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one of the most controversial officers in the history of the Marine Corps, who dedicated his life to bridging the cultural divide between the United States and China
“He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.”
These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World War—and the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend.
By December of 1941, at the age of forty-five, Carlson had already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Mao’s Communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Inspired by their guerilla tactics and their collaborative spirit—which he’d call “gung ho,” introducing the term to the English language—and driven by his own Emersonian ideals of self-reliance, Carlson would go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders, the progenitors of today’s special operations forces, who fought behind Japanese lines on Makin Island and Guadalcanal, showing Americans a new way to do battle.
In The Raider, Cundill Prize-winning historian Stephen R. Platt gives us the first authoritative account of Carlson’s larger-than-life exploits: the real story, based on years of research including newly discovered diaries and correspondence in English and Chinese, with deep insight into the conflicted idealism about the Chinese Communists that would prove Carlson’s undoing in the McCarthy era.
Tracing the rise and fall of an unlikely American war hero, The Raider is a story of exploration, of cultural (mis)understanding, and of one man’s awakening to the sheer breadth of the world.
©2025 Stephen R. Platt (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A life well-lived is a work of art. The life of Marine Corps legend Evans Carlson was certainly that, and so too is Stephen R. Platt’s biography, The Raider. This compelling story is meticulously researched and told on a canvas that spans hemispheres, revolutions, and world wars. What a life! What a book!”—Elliot Ackerman, author of Places and Names and 2034
"Evans Carlson's legacy is both legendary and mythical. Dr. Stephen Platt, an expert in modern Chinese history, cuts through the fabulism to provide an accurate and insightful portrait of Carlson, both as a Marine and as a man. Carefully researched and thoughtfully written, The Raider is highly recommended."—Frank Kalesnik, former Command Historian, United States Marine Forces, Special Operations Command and Chief Historian, Marine Corps History Division
“Through the life of one man caught, in a way, between the U.S. and China, Stephen R. Platt tells a larger tale about the two countries whose relationship helped shape the last century and which may define this one. A fascinating, moving, and unexpected story.”—Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
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The Wars of the Lord
- The Puritan Conquest of America's First People
- By: Matthew J. Tuininga
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Puritan Christianity, Matthew J. Tuininga shows, shaped both the spiritual and military conquests of New England from beginning to end.
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Decent Interval (25th Anniversary Edition)
- An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
- By: Frank Snepp, Gloria Emerson - foreword
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 32 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.
By: Frank Snepp, and others
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Ground Combat
- Puncturing the Myths of Modern War
- By: Ben Connable
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Ground Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war.
By: Ben Connable
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Queen of All Mayhem
- The Blood-Soaked Life and Mysterious Death of Belle Starr, the Most Dangerous Woman in the West
- By: Dane Huckelbridge
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr”—was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic, and dangerous women in the history of the American West.
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Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
- China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Angela Lin
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen R. Platt is widely respected for his incisive nonfiction, particularly in regard to his knowledge and understanding of China. With Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Platt details the absorbing narrative of the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the loss of 20 million lives. Occurring in the 1850s, this is the story of a cultural movement characterized by intriguing personages such as influential military strategist Zeng Guofan and brilliant Taiping leader Hong Rengan.
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InTOLerable Reader
- By Adam on 07-07-12
By: Stephen R. Platt
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The Last Great Dream
- How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
- By: Dennis McNally
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Fascinating, far-reaching, and definitive, THE LAST GREAT DREAM is the ultimate guide to a generation-defining countercultural movement, an Underground 101 course for newcomers and aficionados alike.
By: Dennis McNally
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Freedom Ship
- The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea
- By: Marcus Rediker
- Narrated by: Cornell Womack
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Marcus Rediker, one of the leading scholars of maritime history, puts his command of archival research on full display in this luminous portrait of the Atlantic waterfront as a place of conspiracy, mutiny, and liberation. Freedom Ship is essential listening for anyone looking to understand the complete story of one of North America's most significant historical moments.
By: Marcus Rediker
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Crisis on Mount Hood
- Stories from a Hundred Years of Mountain Rescue
- By: Christopher Van Tilburg
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In Crisis on Mount Hood, author and emergency room doctor Christopher Van Tilburg looks at the history of America's oldest all-volunteer mountain rescue team, the Hood River Crag Rats, and his own three-decade commitment to search and rescue. Centered on Oregon's iconic 11,249-foot-high Mount Hood, considered by many to be the world's most-climbed glaciated peak, this dramatic narrative leads listeners through a century of life-and-death challenges.
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Great descriptions and stories about mountain rescues
- By helen leonard on 05-31-25
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The Sword of Damocles
- Our Nuclear Age
- By: Michael Hall, James Hall
- Narrated by: Susan Fouche
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This work, The Sword of Damocles: Our Nuclear Age, deals with our history as well as today's headlines. I had the opportunity to study that precarious period in a unique way. As a museum director with a forty-year career behind me, I met and worked with some of the leaders in the field of nuclear weapons testing.
By: Michael Hall, and others
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Eagle Days
- Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain
- By: Victoria Taylor
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Eagle Days transforms the Luftwaffe’s historical role during the RAF’s ‘Finest Hour’ from a cartoonish antagonist to a multidimensional, flawed-yet-formidable opponent. The narrative contains not just the voices of the air crews who conducted the fighting, but uniquely never-before-translated primary source material of other contemporary eyewitnesses, (Luftwaffe’s paratroopers, anti-aircraft gunners and air signalmen). Eagle Days will offer all fans of this period a refreshing, comprehensive and exciting account of the Luftwaffe’s real experiences during the Battle of Britain.
By: Victoria Taylor
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Taking Midway
- Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of World War II
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.
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Great way to learn history
- By Anonymous User on 05-27-25
By: Martin Dugard
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Second Front
- Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign
- By: Marc Milner
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In June 1944, an Allied army of British, American, and Canadian troops sought to open up a Second Front in Normandy. But they were not only fighting to bring the Second World War to an end. After decades of Anglo-American struggle for dominance, they were also contending with one another—to determine who would ascend to global hegemony once Hitler's armies fell. Marc Milner traces this bitter rivalry as it emerged after the First World War and evolved during the fragile peace which led to the Second.
By: Marc Milner
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Marine Raiders
- The True Story of the Legendary WWII Battalions
- By: Carole Engle Avriett
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The United States' first Special Forces unit in World War II was known as the Marine Raiders. As one Raider explained, Raiders learned a deadly proficiency with the bayonet, they learned to use knives in hand-to-hand combat, and they learned to throw them with the infallible accuracy of vaudeville experts. Marine Raiders gives a gripping account of what it took to become a member of the elite battalions known as Raiders and how they survived their desperate fight in the South Pacific.
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Unreal heroes!
- By Stacey Clark on 12-31-21
Outstanding book about a unknown hero
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