Longest Year

America at War and at Home in 1944

By: Victor Brooks

Narrated by: Travis Smith

Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

The D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, launched on June 6, 1944, is widely referred to as the longest day of World War Two. Historian Victor Brooks argues that 1944 was, in effect, the longest year for Americans of that era both in terms of United States casualties and in deciding the outcome of war itself.

Brooks also argues that only the particular war events of 1944 could have produced the reshuffling of the cards of life that, in essence, changed the rules for most of the 140 million Americans in some fashion. Rather than focusing on military battles and strategy alone, the author chronicles the year as a microcosm of disparate military, political, and civilian events that came together to define a specific moment in time.

As war was raging in Europe, Americans on the home front continued to cope (with some prospering). As US forces launched an offensive against the Japanese in the Mariana Islands and Palau, folks at home enjoyed morale-boosting movies and songs such as To Have and Have Not and "G.I. Jive". And as American troops invaded the island of Leyte - launching the largest naval battle during the war - President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey were in the home stretch leading up to the election of 1944.

It has been said that the arc of history is long. Throughout American history, however, some years have been truly momentous. This book makes the case that 1944 was one such year.

©2015 Victor Brooks (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Pronunciation

The producer and reader needed to consult some experts on the correct pronunciation of names and places.

Five Stars for Victor Brooks

From the very outset I found this book fascinating even though I too have written extensively on World War II. The ease at which the reader presents Brooks’ work was quite enjoyable.
I heartily recommend this book to any serious WWII buff.

Spoiled by an amateurish narrator

Though I didn’t find much new here, this is a worthy enough history lesson for readers with an interest in the World War II era at home and in both the European and Pacific theaters. I’m fond of books — and there’ve been a number of them — that focus on a single eventful year.

Unfortunately, the author has been ill-served by the young (or at least youthful-sounding) reader, who narrates as if this is his first-ever assignment. Smith is clearly trying to convey a sort of breathless excitement, like someone reading aloud an urgent telegram, and in this attempt he speaks as if every phrase contains at least one italicized word.

But it’s also clear, from the words he chooses to emphasize, that he has no idea what he's reading. For example, take this line: "While the nurses captured on Bataan and Corregidor were treated relatively decently by their Imperial captors, the servicemen who had come under Japanese control were often suffering privations, torture, and humiliations….”

For all its unnecessary wordiness, what this means is simply that women POWs were treated better than the men. If you were reading it with any understanding, you’d want to emphasize “nurses” and “servicemen.” But Smith, instead, emphasizes “Imperial” and “Japanese,” as if to contrast them — apparently not realizing that the “Imperial captors” ARE the Japanese.

His weirdest trait is, in almost every case, pronouncing the simple word “a” as a long A, like a sideshow barker or old-time snake-oil salesman, so that we get "the United States was ay wartime nation,” "in ay nondescript location,” "on ay North African stopover,” "and blurted out ay single sentence,” "ay whole new battlefront,” "and chronicle ay rather different kind of battle,” "his commander was ay micro-manager,” "within range of ay powerful artillery formation,” ad infinitum. It’s amazing how phony this sounds and how annoying it quickly becomes.

Narrator access to a dictionary maybe?

This is a good book nearly ruined by the narrator's lack of understanding the subject matter and/or not doing any kind of research into locations he would be talking about. Forget the annoying pronunciation of common last names of the characters involved, (MAC-Arthur) The place names are so mis-pronounced as to drive any person at all familiar with them up the wall. I have read and listened to many books about WWII. I did finish this audio book out of sheer obstinance, but I kept looking to see how much time was left for the entire part 2 of the book.

PLEASE, audio book publishing companies. Give narrators opportunities to do research before reading OR a list of pronunciations for locations & proper names in future books.