Thunder in the Argonne: A New History of America's Greatest Battle

Battles and Campaigns Series

De: Douglas V. Mastriano

Narrado por: Gary L. Willprecht

In July 1918, sensing that the German Army had lost crucial momentum, Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch saw an opportunity to end the First World War. In drafting his plans for a final grand offensive, he assigned the most difficult sector - the dense Argonne forest and the vast Meuse River valley - to the American Expeditionary Forces under General John J. Pershing. There, the Doughboys faced thickly defended German lines with terrain deemed impossible to fight through. From September 26 through the November 11 armistice, US forces suffered more than 20,000 casualties a week, but the Allies ultimately prevailed in a decisive victory that helped to end the Great War.

In Thunder in the Argonne, Douglas V. Mastriano offers the most comprehensive account of this legendary campaign to date. Not only does he provide American, French, and British perspectives on the offensive, but he also offers - for the first time in English - the German view. Mastriano presents a balanced analysis of successes and failures at all levels of command, examining the leadership of the principals while also illuminating acts of heroism by individual soldiers.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive is widely regarded as one of America's finest hours, and the amazing feats of Sergeant Alvin York, Major Charles Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion, and Lieutenant Sam Woodfill - all accomplished in the midst of this maelstrom - echo across the ages.

The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky.

"Read this book!" (Major General David T. Zabecki, USA, ret.)

"Mastriano's command of the sources enriches the book throughout." (Michigan War Studies Review)

"An excellent read for anyone interested in World War I, the AEF, or the American soldier under fire." (NYMAS Review)

©2018 The University Press of Kentucky (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Reader needs to meet a period

The reader never met a paragraph or period that he felt needed a separate breath taken, or a new thought by the writer that needed the grace of a pause.

Worthy entry in need of a better narrator

The subject matter is compelling and the author is able to analyze and succinctly discuss the greater meaning of this campaign with enough tactical detail to keep the reader's interest. My enjoyment of this otherwise sorely needed entry into WWI literature was marred by the narration. The American narrator mispronounces many of the names of people and places in a manner so jarring that I found myself muttering the actual name out loud. The assumption would be erroneous that the narrator is a professional who is paid for his ability to convey the author's writing into the spoken word without distraction. There is an expectation that a professional narrator covering scientific or medical terminology should perform a modicum of research on how to pronounce necessary terminology and names prior to the recording session. The same courtesy was not shown to this author.

Great story. Distracting narration.

The story of the largest American offensive is well written. It presents a balanced view and fairly points out the weaknesses in the American army as well as its strengths.

Here is the problem. The narrator made no effort to learn how to pronounce any of the names. That includes American names. It is terribly distracting.

Solid Scholarship, Terrible Editorializing

A nice job pulling together the actions of the AEF in ending the war, and a good argument for their importance. The overt, often shockingly negative, editorializing, warmongering, and particularly the endless promotion of Christian Nationalist doctrine, made it a struggle. The author seems to view most American commanders as incompetent glory hounds, saved by the heroism of their men, among whom only "good Christians" were capable of true patriotism and real bravery.

inspirational words of self sacrifice, wasted

Brilliant last chapter, eloquent and accurate. My regret is that the rioting, anarchic youth of 2020 will not be disposed to read this book before tearing down another statue they are intrinsically incapable of understanding. It is the true tragedy of history.

The narrator makes this almost unlistenable.

TL;DR - Narrator’s pronunciations will drive you nuts and the content is as much opinions as it is history.
I’ve been hard into WW1 for about two years now. I have over 40 audio books on the subject here on Audible. I listen to them while at work. This is the first one I probably won’t even get through. The narrator’s pronunciation of many words is incredibly irritating. Some of the words are pretty WW1 specific, like “boche” which he pronounces “bush”, or German junkers (pronounced “yung ker”) which he pronounces just straight-up “junkers”. While you’d think he should have done SOME research on the subject of the book he was to narrate and should know better, I can forgive mispronunciations of those somewhat obscure words. It’s the more common words that really drive me nuts. “Gallipoli” he pronounces “Guh-lop-oh-lee”. Seriously? Even worse are some everyday words or terms. Several times the author uses the term “wreaked havoc on” to which the narrator reads as “wrecked havoc on”. He awkwardly pluralizes the word “fire” every time he reads is, which has to be over a hundred times. Examples of this are “they came under heavy artillery fires” or “they were pinned down by enfilading German machine gun fires”. The most annoying pronunciation, to me, is the one that he uses the most: the word “Allies” pronounced as “Uh-lies”, as in “the Uh-lied armies advanced” or “this proved beneficial to the Uh-lies”, or “Germany didn’t have the most faith in its main Uh-lie.” I’ve never heard the word pronounced this way in my 38 years, and it’s nearly used at least once in every paragraph. He’s relentless.
Aside from these narration peeves, the book itself seems a bit pretentious. In the introduction alone it touts something along the lines of having the German perspective and actually adds the term “,a first” after making the claim. Much of the writing seems to be more of an opinion of the author than a “new history”. For example, he spends a good amount of time defecating on Wilson’s pacifistic positions and literally says a lot of the doughboy’s blood was on his hands because of it. This was pretty brazen for a guy to write 100 years later and not experiencing the actual political climate or social zeitgeist at the time. There’s also an unnecessary amount of time spent on a bunch of different soldiers’ religious convictions and how their Christian beliefs lead them to do this or that heroic feat. I find this off-putting in a “history of” type of book. I wish I could get my credit back that I spent on this title.

Did the author just use AI to write this book?

What a frustrating listen. The author repeats himself so much that I kept wondering if I had accidentally gone back to a prior chapter. I kept thinking, "yeah, I know, you already said all of this". The subject matter is so important that to have such poor writing was so frustrating. And the narrator, holy cow! The word "allies" was pronounced so poorly throughout the book, and the cadence of his narration was so horrible, that I thought for sure this was narrated by an AI program. If you are going to narrate a book with foreign names, just do a bit of research to learn how to say them. I normally don't mind when foreign words are mispronounced but the everyday words were problematic too. This book feels just as I imagine an AI book, written and narrated, would be. There are so many other better audiobooks on the subject. Just pick one of them.