Grab the Essential Full Audiobooks in History, The Americas

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Gregg Hecimovich

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551335 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551335] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative Author: Gregg Hecimovich Narrator: Janina Edwards, Ron Butler Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 59 minutes Release date: October 17, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story. In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery. Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history. At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into Civil War.

American Whitelash: The Resurgence of Racial Violence in Our Time by Wesley Lowery

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/549659 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/549659] to listen full audiobooks. Title: American Whitelash: The Resurgence of Racial Violence in Our Time Author: Wesley Lowery Narrator: Wesley Lowery Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 0 minutes Release date: June 27, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Barack Obama's election in 2008 was a moment of true, unabashed hope. But after two terms shadowed by a growing white supremacist movement, Obama was replaced by an openly nativist administration. So what the hell happened? In Whitelash, Wesley Lowery places a decade of American carnage in historical context, uncovering the horror that racial violence has wrought in our era. As he looks to America's past to understand the rise of Donald Trump and the 'whitelash' following the election of Barack Obama, a frightening pattern emerges. Every period of perceived black advancement has triggered a violent reaction by white Americans, the old system's beneficiaries. But while America's historical racists were conservatives, fighting to maintain their dominance in the status quo, those Lowery meets today are revolutionaries, self-styled soldiers in a holy war to bring the white race back from what they see as the brink of extinction. Interweaving deep historical analysis with gripping first-hand reporting on both victims and perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is entering ever more perilous territory, and how the United States still might find a route of escape. © Wesley Lowery 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan by Stefan Rinke

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/566210 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/566210] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan Author: Stefan Rinke Narrator: Luis Moreno Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 43 minutes Release date: June 27, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Five hundred years ago, a flotilla landed on the coast of Yucatán under the command of the Spanish conquistador Hérnan Cortés. While the official goal of the expedition was to explore and to expand the Christian faith, everyone involved knew that it was primarily about gold and the hunt for slaves.That a few hundred Spaniards destroyed the Aztec empire—a highly developed culture—is an old chestnut, because the conquistadors, who had every means to make a profit, did not succeed alone. They encountered groups such as the Tlaxcaltecs, who suffered from the Aztec rule and were ready to enter into alliances with the foreigners to overthrow their old enemy. In addition, the conquerors benefited from the diseases brought from Europe, which killed hundreds of thousands of locals. Drawing on both Spanish and indigenous sources, this account of the conquest of Mexico from 1519 to 1521 not only offers a dramatic narrative of these events—including the fall of Tenochtitlan and the flight of the conquerors—but also represents the individual protagonists on both sides, their backgrounds, their diplomacy, and their struggles. It vividly portrays the tens of thousands of local warriors who faced off against each other during the fighting as they attempted to free themselves from tribute payments to the Aztecs.Written by a leading historian of Latin America, Conquistadors and Aztecs offers a timely portrayal of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the founding of an empire that would last for centuries.

Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians by Ralph White

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552941 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552941] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians Author: Ralph White Narrator: Mark Bramhall Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 58 minutes Release date: April 4, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: A “captivating” (The Washington Post) true story of “courage, resolve, and determination” (The Christian Science Monitor), author Ralph White’s successful effort to save nearly the entire staff of the Saigon branch of Chase Manhattan bank and their families before the city fell to the North Vietnamese Army. In April 1975, Ralph White was asked by his boss to transfer from the Bangkok branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Saigon Branch. He was tasked with closing the branch if and when it appeared that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese army and ensure the safety of the senior Vietnamese employees. But when he arrived, he realized the situation in Saigon was far more perilous than he had imagined. The senior staff members there urged him to evacuate the entire staff of the branch and their families, which was far more than he was authorized to do. Quickly he realized that no one would be safe when the city fell, and it was no longer a question of whether to evacuate but how. Getting Out of Saigon is an “edge-of-your-seat” (Oprah Daily) story of a city on the eve of destruction and the colorful characters who respond differently to impending doom. It’s a remarkable account of one man’s quest to save innocent lives not because he was ordered but because it was the right thing to do.

Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening by Douglas Brinkley

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/544494 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/544494] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening Author: Douglas Brinkley Narrator: Stephen Graybill Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 29 hours 24 minutes Release date: November 15, 2022 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities. In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight. Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK’s Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day. With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written Silent Spring Revolution reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.