R.S.

The Guns of August

• UNABRIDGED (19 hrs and 9 mins)
• By Barbara W. Tuchman
• Narrated By Nadia May
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In this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, historian Barbara Tuchman brings to life the people and events that led up to World War I. This was the last gasp of the Gilded Age, of Kings and Kaisers and Czars, of pointed or plumed hats, colored uniforms, and all the pomp and romance that went along with war. How quickly it all changed...and how horrible it became.

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 5 mins)
• By Henry Wiencek
• Narrated By Brian Holsopple
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Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book - based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers - opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 32 mins)
• By Craig Nelson
• Narrated By Paul Hecht
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John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.

Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 58 mins)
• By Paul Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick
• Narrated By Lee Shepherd
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Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln had only three meetings, but their exchanges profoundly influenced the course of slavery and the outcome of the Civil War. Although Abraham Lincoln deeply opposed the institution of slavery, he saw the Civil War at its onset as being primarily about preserving the Union. Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, by contrast saw the Wars mission to be the total and permanent abolition of slavery.

Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Evan Carton
• Narrated By Michael Prichard
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John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes, as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy — and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals — fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.

The New Deal: A Modern History

• UNABRIDGED (19 hrs and 34 mins)
• By Michael Hiltzik
• Narrated By Traber Burns

As America struggles with an economic debacle akin to the Great Depression, nothing could be timelier than an authoritative account of the New Deal, masterfully written by Michael Hiltzik, author of the acclaimed history of the Hoover Dam, Colossus.

In this richly peopled, vividly rendered narrative, Hiltzik describes how the urgent short-term relief measures of Franklin Roosevelt’s Hundred Days evolved into a transformative concept of the federal role in American life.

Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974

• UNABRIDGED (31 hrs and 25 mins)
• By James T. Patterson
• Narrated By Robert Fass

Grand Expectations, the 10th volume of the peerless Oxford History of the United States, weaves the major political, cultural, and economic events of the period into a superb portrait of America from 1945 through Watergate.

23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 58 mins)
• By Ha-Joon Chang
• Narrated By Joe Barrett
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If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists-the apostles of the freemarket-have spun since the Age of Reagan.

The Last Days of Innocence: America at War, 1917-1918

• UNABRIDGED (18 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Meirion Harries, Susie Harries
• Narrated By Patrick Cullen

In just a few years early in the 20th century, the federal government grew from one tiny cog in the machinery of American life into a colossus, controlling the behavior of every individual. Paranoia, suspicion, and hatred of foreigners took hold, forming the mind-set with which the nation made its first acquaintance with communism in 1918. It was a seminal period in the history of the United States and the world, but the American side of the story has remained largely untold.

The Assault on Reason

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Al Gore
• Narrated By Will Patton
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Here is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith have combined with the public sphere's degradation to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason. Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason explains, we have precious little time to waste.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 56 mins)
• By Elizabeth Kolbert
• Narrated By Hope Davis
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Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.