Tommy
The Gun That Changed America
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Narrated by:
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Maggi-Meg Reed
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By:
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Karen Blumenthal
About this listen
The fascinating and topical nonfiction story of how one gun changed American courtrooms, streets, and homes, told for a YA audience by award-winning author Karen Blumenthal
John Taliaferro Thompson had a mission: to develop a lightweight, fast-firing weapon that would help Americans win on the battlefield. His Thompson submachine gun could deliver 100 bullets in a matter of seconds - but didn't find a market in the US military. Instead, the Tommy gun became the weapon of choice for a generation of bootleggers and bank-robbing outlaws, and became a deadly American icon. Following a bloody decade - and 80 years before the mass shootings of our own time - Congress moved to take this weapon off the streets, igniting a national debate about gun control.
Critically acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal, author of Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History, and Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929, reveals the fascinating story of this famous and deadly weapon - of the lives it changed, the debate it sparked, and the unprecedented response it inspired in Tommy: The Gun That Changed America.
Praise for Tommy: The Gun That Changed America:
"The Thompson rapid-firing submachine gun is the crux of Blumenthal’s accessible social history, which encompasses military weaponry, gangster warfare, and gun-control legislation.... Engrossing and grisly." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
"Blumenthal’s fascinating biography of the weapon is most dramatic in its chapters on the famous gangsters.... A gripping look at guns, gangsters, and finding the ‘right balance between individual freedoms and community safety.'" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
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American Mafia
- A History of Its Rise to Power
- By: Thomas Reppetto
- Narrated by: Paul Costanzo
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Organized crime - the Italian American kind - has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise - from the 1880s to the post-World War II era - that is as exciting as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia.
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Mob at its best
- By Thomas on 02-14-23
By: Thomas Reppetto
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Get Capone
- The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Jonathan Eig blows the lid off the Al Capone story. Based on never-before-seen government documents and newly discovered letters written by Al Capone himself, Get Capone presents America's greatest gangster as you’ve never seen him before.
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Get this book
- By Jonathan on 05-13-10
By: Jonathan Eig
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Texas Ranger
- The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde
- By: John Boessenecker
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the front lines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution's spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists.
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I love Frank Hamer, but Boessenecker's left leanin
- By A. Taylor on 04-06-19
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The Guns of John Moses Browning
- The Remarkable Story of the Inventor Whose Firearms Changed the World
- By: Nathan Gorenstein
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Few people are aware that John Moses Browning - a tall, humble, cerebral man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West - was the mind behind many of the world-changing firearms that dominated more than a century of conflict. He invented the design used in virtually all modern pistols, created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns, and conceived the machine guns that proved decisive not just in World Wars I and II but nearly every major military action since. Yet few in America knew his name until he was into his 60s.
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Fascinating Story
- By tb on 07-02-21
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First Freedom
- By: David Harsanyi
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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For America, the gun is a story of innovation, power, violence, character, and freedom. From the founding of the nation to the pioneering of the West, from the freeing of the slaves to the urbanization of the 20th century, our country has had a complex and lasting relationship with firearms. Now, in First Freedom, nationally syndicated columnist and veteran writer David Harsanyi explores the ways in which firearms have helped preserve our religious, economic, and cultural institutions for more than two centuries.
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A Must-Read/Must-Listen
- By Nathan on 01-22-19
By: David Harsanyi
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Tulsa 1921
- Reporting a Massacre
- By: Randy Krehbiel
- Narrated by: Kevin Meyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1921, Tulsa’s Greenwood District - known then as the nation’s “Black Wall Street” - was one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, a white mob, inflamed by rumors that a young black man had attempted to rape a white teenage girl, invaded Greenwood. By the end of the following day, thousands of homes and businesses lay in ashes, and perhaps, as many as 300 people were dead.
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Exceptional and
- By Heath on 03-07-20
By: Randy Krehbiel
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Cult of Glory
- The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
- By: Doug J. Swanson
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going - one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors, and officially sanctioned killers.
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Not a book about men who tamed the west
- By W. Larson on 12-30-20
By: Doug J. Swanson
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The Dillinger Days
- By: John Toland
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For 13 violent months in the 1930s, John Dillinger and his gang swept through the Midwest. The criminals of the Depression robbed almost at will, as the Indiana State Police had only 41 members, including clerks and typists. Dillinger's daring escapes at Crown Point jail or through the withering machine gun fire of FBI agents at Little Bohemia Lodge, along with his countless bank robberies, excited the imagination of a despondent country.
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Must have been written by Hoover
- By Jimmy Oneal on 09-03-20
By: John Toland
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The Corporation
- An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 19 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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By the mid 1980s, the criminal underworld in the United States had become an ethnic polyglot; one of the most powerful illicit organizations was none other than the Cuban mob. Known on both sides of the law as "the Corporation", the Cuban mob's power stemmed from a criminal culture embedded in south Florida's exile community - those who had been chased from the island by Castro's revolution and planned to overthrow the Marxist dictator and reclaim their nation.
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uncle joey approved
- By Anonymous User on 04-14-18
By: T. J. English
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The Bourbon King
- The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius
- By: Bob Batchelor
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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October 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Volstead Act, which put the enforcement teeth into Prohibition. But the law didn't stop George Remus from cornering the boozy, illegal liquor marketplace and amassing a fortune that eclipsed $200 million (the equivalent of $4.75 billion today). As eminent documentarian Ken Burns proclaimed, "Remus was to bootlegging what Rockefeller was to oil." Author Bob Batchelor has unearthed a treasure trove of untapped historical archives to cover the life, times, and crimes of the man who ran the largest bootlegging operation in America.
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Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 06-02-20
By: Bob Batchelor
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The Year of Dangerous Days
- Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980
- By: Nicholas Griffin
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Wire, the “utterly absorbing” (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s bustling cities - rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality - from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin.
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Forty Years Ago or Yesterday?
- By Anka on 07-20-20
By: Nicholas Griffin
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Tombstone
- The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell
- By: Tom Clavin
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times best-selling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in 30 seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer.
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Great fun read, western history.
- By Dennis on 06-03-20
By: Tom Clavin