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American Bloods
- The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
"American Bloods is an unflinching history of our nation . . . This is a breakout book for John Kaag―the natural extension of his genre-defining writing.”―Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times
A history of a family spanning centuries and continents―one that unfolds into a new portrait of America.
The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers―geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual―that would become the very core of the United States. John Kaag’s American Bloods is the account of a remarkable American family, of its participation in the making of a nation, and of how its members embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Kaag follows eight members of this family from the British Civil War in the seventeenth century through the founding of the colonies, the American Revolution, Transcendentalism, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and the rise of first-wave feminism, all the way to the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Bloods were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with everyone from Emerson and Thoreau to John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” an original untamed spirit that would recede in the making of America but would never be extinguished entirely. American Bloods is an enduring reminder of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States, and a composite portrait of America like no other.
Critic reviews
"American Bloods is an unflinching history of our nation, told through the wild, fearful tales of a remarkable American dynasty. This is a breakout book for John Kaag—the natural extension of his genre-defining writing.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times
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Story
In April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army steamrolled through Burma, capturing the only ground route from India to China. Supplies to this critical zone would now have to come from India by air—meaning across the Himalayas, on the most hazardous air route in the world. SKIES OF THUNDER is a story of an epic human endeavor, in which Allied troops faced the monumental challenge of operating from airfields hacked from the jungle, and took on “the Hump,” the fearsome mountain barrier that defined the air route.
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Lincoln vs. Davis
- The War of the Presidents
- By: Nigel Hamilton
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
From renowned biographer Nigel Hamilton, author of the epic FDR at War trilogy and the bestselling JFK: Reckless Youth, comes the greatest untold story of the Civil War: how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance — and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union.
By: Nigel Hamilton