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Forgotten Ally
- China's World War II, 1937 - 1945
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
The epic, untold story of China's devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan.
For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.
Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China's Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists' fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past 10 years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang's American chief of staff, the unforgettable "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China's wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.
Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II, yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No 20th-century event was as crucial in shaping China's worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.
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October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events that led to the emergence of the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state, debate continues over whether, as historian E. H. Carr put it decades ago, these earth-shaking days were a "landmark in the emancipation of mankind from past oppression" or "a crime and a disaster."
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Solid overview of events
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-19
By: Laura Engelstein
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Potsdam
- The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe
- By: Michael Neiberg
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace - a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.
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Richly told and entertaining.
- By John Kaiser on 06-20-15
By: Michael Neiberg
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Fire in the Lake
- By: Frances FitzGerald
- Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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This magisterial work, based on Frances FitzGerald's many years of research and travels, takes us inside the history of Vietnam - the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages, the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks, the disruption created by French colonialism, and America's ill-fated intervention - and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes. Originally published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American, and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize.
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American Hubris; Vietnamese Misery
- By gunnerThrax on 01-24-21
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Hitler
- A Biography
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Alan Robertson
- Length: 46 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.
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An Excellent Read
- By Rodney on 09-19-13
By: Ian Kershaw
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The Cold War's Killing Fields
- Rethinking the Long Peace
- By: Paul Thomas Chamberlin
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In this sweeping, deeply researched book, Paul Thomas Chamberlin boldly argues that the Cold War, long viewed as a mostly peaceful, if tense, diplomatic standoff between democracy and communism, was actually a part of a vast, deadly conflict that killed millions on battlegrounds across the postcolonial world. For half a century, as an uneasy peace hung over Europe, ferocious proxy wars raged in the Cold War’s killing fields, resulting in more than 14 million dead - victims who remain largely forgotten and all but lost to history.
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Interesting but Biased
- By Jonathan W Schneider on 08-13-18
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The End
- The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did.
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Engrossing yet horrifying
- By Liz on 10-14-11
By: Ian Kershaw
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Enemies and Neighbors
- Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
- By: Ian Black
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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In Enemies and Neighbors, Ian Black, who has spent over three decades covering events in the Middle East and is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, offers a major new history of the Arab-Zionist conflict from 1917 to today. Laying the historical groundwork in the final decades of the Ottoman Era, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources - from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting - to recreate the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides.
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Decent historical compilation, poor framing
- By Dan Harris on 07-08-20
By: Ian Black
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Britain's War
- Volume 1, Into Battle, 1937-1941
- By: Daniel Todman
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The most terrible emergency in Britain's history, the Second World War, required an unprecedented national effort. An exhausted country had to fight an unexpectedly long war and found itself much diminished amongst the victors. The outcome of the war was nonetheless a triumph, not least for a political system that proved well adapted to the demands of a total conflict and for a population who had to make many sacrifices but who were spared most of the horrors experienced in the rest of Europe.
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Great Performance, Biased with out a warning!
- By dell992 on 06-21-16
By: Daniel Todman
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The Vanquished
- Why the First World War Failed to End
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- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes.
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little-known period following WWI is illuminated
- By John on 02-16-17
By: Robert Gerwarth
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Vietnam War: A Captivating Guide to the Second Indochina War
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Vietnam War represented a watershed not only in American and Vietnamese history but also internationally. It wasn’t just a battle between two nations, but between two ideologies, two military strategies, and a fight for the hearts and minds of two vastly different national populations.
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quick and accurate
- By BDG-ALPHA on 07-31-20
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Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
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Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
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Cursed Victory
- Israel and the Occupied Territories; A History
- By: Ahron Bregman
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade. The audiobook provides a gripping and unvarnished chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an "enlightened occupation" quickly turned sour and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end.
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Largely just the diplomatic history
- By Norman B. Bernstein on 09-28-15
By: Ahron Bregman
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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What listeners say about Forgotten Ally
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rodney
- 01-23-14
Bland
The concept of this book is interesting - I've read well over a hundred WWII books and I love learning about events from the opposing point of view. A great example of this is Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy - it tells the story leading up to Pearl Harbor from the Japanese point of view - it's well written, extremely interesting and tells a story without inserting opinion.
On the other side you have this book. It's not written very well, it's written from a stand point that all white people are bad and the book is quite contradictory. For example the book constantly complains about how the "white" powers won't assist the Chinese as much as they would like, while also mentioning how corrupt and inept the Chinese leadership is (which is the reason given by the "white" powers on why they won't give more assistance).
Also the author clearly is a socialist and goes out of their way to excuse the actions of the communists whenever possible.
So that's the down side.
The good side is that the book covers a lot of new ground and while I would triple check any facts given out in the book at least you're learning new stuff, even if it's only in general terms. For that reason I'll give the book 3 stars. If the subject matter had been approached by someone with less of a bias and was more historical and less opinionated it could be a four star book, and if it was written better it could be a five start book.
The reader does an acceptable job - nothing special but nothing bad.
Overall the book is worth getting if you're interested in the time period as there are extremely limited options available on Audible. However know what you're getting isn't a great book or even a good book - but it will have to do until a good or great book comes along.
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- Rhea
- 10-11-13
The ill fated chang kai-shek
As I believe that I am the first person to write a review on this fast moving account of the china's war of resistance I feel that it is necessary to proclaim how valuable this book is for the WWII buff. Most people are aware of the fact that China was involved in the war but they are not aware to what extent. China in fact was the first theater of WWII and experienced some of the first and most brutal communal war crimes of the war. This book is some what biased towards the Nationalist point of view and that of Chang Kai-Shek in particular. However it explains the communist point of view as well. After reading-listening to this book I came away with a feeling that the communists let the Nationalist camp bare the brunt of all the fighting while waiting for the war to end. Having saved its forces for the upcoming civil war the Communists were better poised to fight then the badly beat National forces. Thus leading to the current communist government in Bejing. As you might be able to tell I was left with a bad taste with the actions of the communist forces durring the battle for Chinas fight for survival. I would suggest this book to any one who was either interested sino-american relations or just WWII it's self.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Acteon
- 01-22-14
A big missing piece
What made the experience of listening to Forgotten Ally the most enjoyable?
Discovering things that put much into perspective: China's situation in the 20th century and its evolution, Japan's invasion of China and China's war of resistance, the relationship between the Kuomingtang and the communists (Russian and Chinese), the relationship between western countries and Asia a few decades ago, the character of the much maligned Chiang Kai-shek and the enormous difficulties he faced, how American views of China were formed.
Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Yes, he is generally quite good. His pronunciation of Chinese words is mostly OK (recognizable, which is already better than what I've heard from certain professors specializing in Asia or even China).
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Yes....not much of the former though I'm afraid.
Any additional comments?
A must for anyone who wants to understand 20th century history.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-10-16
Questionable historical perspective
Good enough book, however the author apparently chooses to embrace his/her biases, rather than try to avoid them (or at least address and apologize for them). The book focuses on - and gives all benefits of doubt and the author's sympathy to - Shang of the Nationalists. Mao is largely ignored or glossed over while General Stilwell is essentially blamed for the failures of Shang's regime, as well as his well known character flaws.
It's not clear why the author chooses to give Shang ample context and paint scenes of his humanity to cover up or lessen the fact that he was the leader of a notoriously ineffective and corrupt government that ultimately failed, while attacking Stilwell for his (mostly) accurate criticism of the failures of the Nationalists and ignoring Stilwell's precarious position as soldier and diplomat, as well as Stilwell's genuine and well-documented regard for the Chinese.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Keaton
- 04-13-15
Fantastic Historical Account
For history buffs or even those who just want an interesting true story I would highly recommend this book. It is intriguing as well as aptly performed. Well worth the credit.
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3 people found this helpful
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- DLKFC
- 12-28-14
Simon Vance is the best
Any additional comments?
Simon Vance is my favorite narrator, fiction or nonfiction. Terrific job with the pronunciation of innumerable Chinese names and places. A wonderful book on an all-too-often forgotten part of the Second World War.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tracy Nelson
- 06-12-21
Overplays the CCP
Very interesting that should be told. However, the author paints Mao and the CCP in far too friendly light considering their collaboration by inaction.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lewis Freifeld
- 02-06-14
Enlightening and Interesting
All I've ever really focused on in the past regarding WW2 is America vs the Nazi's in Europe and against the Japanese in Asia. This book deals with the events leading up to our involvement in China and establishes the underpinnings for what has evolved into current day China and Taiwan. Other than trying to understand all of the players involved in this story it was a great historical saga!
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- Steve Chapman
- 01-23-24
Important study of the role of China during World War II.
The scholarship was fairly balanced with equal criticism of China, US and British roles in the opposition to Japan on the China mainland during World War II. On the downside, the narration was awful specifically the pronunciation of Chinese names and words. Listeners will have a hard time understanding the people in places referred to in the narration because the pronunciation of Chinese words is so poor.
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- Ed
- 02-01-21
Outstanding read, top notch recording, challenging listen
The book itself is an excellent account of a poorly-understood aspect of World War II and its impact on China’s role in modern geopolitics. The recording is excellent. However, the, at times, rapid iteration of names, places, and affiliations may be difficult to follow without repeating portions of the narration, especially if the listener doesn’t already have somewhat of an, understanding of the regional geography of China and of many of the primary and secondary personalities in Chinese, Japanese, US, British, Russian, and German geopolitics at the time. If this is the case, the written version of the book, would be preferable.
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