Discover Top Full Audiobooks in History, The Americas

Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America's Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster by Al Roker

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329755 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329755] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America's Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster Author: Al Roker Narrator: Mirron Willis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 28 minutes Release date: May 22, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: A gripping narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood—the deadliest flood in US history—from New York Times bestselling author, NBC Host, and legendary weather authority Al Roker. May 1889: After a deluge of rainfall—nearly a foot in less than twenty-four hours—swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork Dam in central Pennsylvania. Though they telegraphed neighboring towns on this last morning in May, warning of the impending danger, residents, used to false alarms, remained in their homes. At 3:10 P.M., the dam gave way, releasing twenty million tons of water. Gathering speed as it flowed southwest, the deluge wiped out entire towns in its path and picked up debris—trees, houses, animals—before reaching Johnstown, fourteen miles downstream. Traveling forty miles an hour, with swells as high as sixty feet, the deadly floodwaters razed the mill town—home to 20,000 people—in minutes. The Great Flood, as it would come to be called, remains the deadliest in US history, killing more than 2,200 people and causing seventeen million dollars in damage. Al Roker tells the riveting story of this tragedy, which remains one of the worst weather-related disasters in American history. Ruthless Tide follows a compelling cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; Henry Clay Frick, the robber baron whose fancy sport fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the structure; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Roker creates a classic account of our natural world at its most terrifying.

Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence by Trey Brown, James R. Clapper

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331329 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331329] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence Author: Trey Brown, James R. Clapper Narrator: Mark Bramhall Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 43 minutes Release date: May 22, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.46 of Total 37 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 14 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: New York Times bestseller The former Director of National Intelligence's candid and compelling account of the intelligence community's successes--and failures--in facing some of the greatest threats to America When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth United States director of national intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence adviser for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the U.S. intelligence community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. In Facts and Fears, Clapper traces his career through the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. Finally, it was living through Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and seeing how the foundations of American democracy were--and continue to be--undermined by a foreign power that led him to break with his instincts honed through more than five decades in the intelligence profession to share his inside experience. Clapper considers such controversial questions as, Is intelligence ethical? Is it moral to intercept communications or to photograph closed societies from orbit? What are the limits of what we should be allowed to do? What protections should we give to the private citizens of the world, not to mention our fellow Americans? Are there times when intelligence officers can lose credibility as unbiased reporters of hard truths by inserting themselves into policy decisions? Facts and Fears offers a privileged look inside the U.S. intelligence community and, with the frankness and professionalism for which James Clapper is known, addresses some of the most difficult challenges in our nation's history.

Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire by Catherine Whitney, Bret Baier

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329969 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329969] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire Series: Part of Three Days Series Author: Catherine Whitney, Bret Baier Narrator: Bret Baier Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 37 minutes Release date: May 15, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.58 of Total 26 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 4 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: President Reagan's dramatic battle to win the Cold War is revealed as never before by the #1 bestselling author and award-winning anchor of the #1 rated Special Report with Bret Baier. 'An instant classic, if not the finest book to date on Ronald Reagan.” — Jay Winik Moscow, 1988: 1,000 miles behind the Iron Curtain, Ronald Reagan stood for freedom and confronted the Soviet empire.  In his acclaimed bestseller Three Days in January, Bret Baier illuminated the extraordinary leadership of President Dwight Eisenhower at the dawn of the Cold War. Now in his highly anticipated new history, Three Days in Moscow, Baier explores the dramatic endgame of America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan’s central role in shaping the world we live in today. On May 31, 1988, Reagan stood on Russian soil and addressed a packed audience at Moscow State University, delivering a remarkable—yet now largely forgotten—speech that capped his first visit to the Soviet capital. This fourth in a series of summits between Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, was a dramatic coda to their tireless efforts to reduce the nuclear threat. More than that, Reagan viewed it as “a grand historical moment”: an opportunity to light a path for the Soviet people—toward freedom, human rights, and a future he told them they could embrace if they chose. It was the first time an American president had given an address about human rights on Russian soil. Reagan had once called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Now, saying that depiction was from “another time,” he beckoned the Soviets to join him in a new vision of the future. The importance of Reagan’s Moscow speech was largely overlooked at the time, but the new world he spoke of was fast approaching; the following year, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, leaving the United States the sole superpower on the world stage. Today, the end of the Cold War is perhaps the defining historical moment of the past half century, and must be understood if we are to make sense of America’s current place in the world, amid the re-emergence of US-Russian tensions during Vladimir Putin’s tenure. Using Reagan’s three days in Moscow to tell the larger story of the president’s critical and often misunderstood role in orchestrating a successful, peaceful ending to the Cold War, Baier illuminates the character of one of our nation’s most venerated leaders—and reveals the unique qualities that allowed him to succeed in forming an alliance for peace with the Soviet Union, when his predecessors had fallen short.

Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America by Deborah Fallows, James Fallows

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331770 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331770] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America Author: Deborah Fallows, James Fallows Narrator: James Fallows, Deborah Fallows Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 42 minutes Release date: May 8, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.1 of Total 10 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: ***NATIONAL BEST SELLER*** A vivid, surprising portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media. A realistically positive and provocative view of the country between its coasts. For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. The America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but itis also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express by Jim DeFelice

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329957 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329957] to listen full audiobooks. Title: West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express Author: Jim DeFelice Narrator: John Pruden Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 49 minutes Release date: May 8, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: The thrilling narrative history of one of the most enduring icons of the American West, the Pony Express, from the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of American Sniper—an exciting tale of daring young men pushing limits to the extremes across the vast, rugged, and unsettled American West. In the spring of 1860 on the eve of a civil war that threatened to tear the country apart, two Americans conceived of an audacious plan for linking the nation’s two coasts, thereby joining its present with its future. All that stood in the way was a 1,900 miles of uninhabited desert, ice-capped mountains, oceanic plains roamed by hostile Indian tribes, whitewater-choked rivers, and rugged, unsettled frontier wilderness where civilized'' men where outnumbered a million to one by grizzlies, mountain lions, wolves, bison, rattlesnakes, and more. Many deemed their revolutionary scheme impossible. Run by the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company, the Pony Express as it came to be known, would use a relay system of daring horseback riders to ferry mail and small packages halfway across a continent in just ten days. The challenges they faced were enormous, yet the Pony Express succeeded, delivering tens of thousands of letters at record speed. The service would quickly become the most direct means of communication between the Eastern United States and its Western territories, helping to firmly connect them to the Union. West Like Lightning traces the development of the Pony Express and follows it from its start in St. Joseph, Missouri—the edge of the civilized world in the mid-nineteenth century—1,500 miles west to Sacramento. Jim DeFelice—who traveled the Express’s route in his research—plumbs the legends, myths, and true facts of the service, viewing it within the context of the American story and exploring its lasting relevance today. Though the Pony Express was eclipsed by the telegraph in less than two years, it remains today an enduring symbol of American values: rugged individualism, perseverance, and speed.