Last Stands

Why Men Fight When All Is Lost

By: Michael Walsh

Narrated by: Michael Walsh

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

What are we willing to die for? Michael Walsh restores the dignity of lost concepts like honor, duty, sacrifice, and patriotism for our unheroic age.

What is heroism? What are its moral components - altruism, love, self-sacrifice? Why was it once celebrated, and now often dismissed as anachronistic? In this dramatic account of last stands in history - famous or otherwise - Walsh explores the stakes that led men at very different times and places to face overwhelming odds and certain death for the sake of family, home and country.

In Last Stands, Walsh writes about battles in which a small group faced overwhelming odds, and all too often died to the last man - battles like Thermopylae, the Ronceveaux Pass, the Alamo, the siege of Malta, Little Big Horn, Stalingrad, Rorke’s Drift, and the Warsaw Ghetto - explaining why they were fought, what their ultimate outcome was, and their afterlife in history, myth, and culture.

©2020 Michael Walsh (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

Russia “not a colonizer?”

I believe the millions of citizens of various former Soviet republics might quibble with such a statement


He states since the Russo-Japanese conflict, the Russians had no interest in eastern expansion. Mukden, Manchuria, IndoChina are but a few of the commonly known examples of eastern adventurism that the author misses—-not to mention Afghanistan and Pakistan closer to home.


Good grief!



Kinda of makes you wonder what other basic facts he gets wrong.



Those particular shockers, inaccuracies in WW2 strategy, and a certain homogeneity in the examples he uses raises questions about the entire work



Listen to the introduction and the early classical examples and move on.



The rest is redundant, factually suspect and as such, not worth you time.

Amazing Narration of the most Epic Battles of All Time

The author is the most informed I have ever read concerning certain historical battles which were the tipping point of World and American history. His academic yet easy going narration style is both educational and entertaining, a balance which is very hard to accomplish in audiobooks; this author nails both content and delivery in reading his own work. In a word, outstanding! … and it is not a spoiler to relay that through his poignant depiction of his own father in the Epilogue, he truly saves the best for last.

Excellent historical facts

Not politically skewed. Unemotional and unbiased. Written in an interesting and engaging way it will hold your interest. Very well done. Highly recommended.

Detailed History Here for The Taking...

I am a hard grader so that is why there are no 5s in the ratings. That said I think that Mr. Walsh has done a masterful job in the retelling of battles long forgotten and more recent ones that soon will be given the educational values of most younger people these days. The introduction is very important. I found that for me at least some of the earliest and mid-history battles were a little tedious for me to devour, but things quickly picked up. The best thing about every battle were the little known details that surrounded each fight and the reasons they occurred and the outcomes they produced. I would highly recommend this book to any serious student of military history.

Yeah interesting overview of last stands

First of all, let me say that this is a 5-star book, despite my grumbles below. It is well worth your credit and time. That said, here are my complaints:

1. It’s less of a book about the events of the last stands, and more of a book about the context and consequences of the last stands. I would have liked more details of what actually happened.
2. The author uses too many “big” words. This is the 53rd book that I listened to this year and I have a graduate degree, so I appreciate good writing and the occasional use of unusual words. But the author went overboard.
3. The last chapter should have had a better summary.

All that said, I highly recommend this book.

Outstanding

Like all good history books, this one enticed me to delve deeper into subject matters discussed in the book. In all chapters, a very thorough introduction to the geopolitical circumstances of the time really set the stage for the battles. I often found myself pausing the audiobook while I read further into peripheral battles or events that played significant roles in the key battles discussed. Awesome book!!

Gripping, unknown histories of epic wars

Every American soldier should read this book. Inspiring in these times we're living in now.

Great information

Expertly written and told. I learned so much about history, even about events I had already known, but now with more detail and clarity. Michael Walsh is a gifted writer. I love the way he incorporates literature, music and even movies into the narrative.

Outstanding!

Well done through and through! Extremely refreshing in this world of nonsense and misnomer. Bravo Zulu, Mr. Walsh!

Interesting but Ethnocentric

Book was well written and read. I went in cold not knowing about Walsh so was taken off guard when he pauses to moralize, reflect on the loss of masculinity in modern times, or give an analysis that is classically conservative rather than even-handed or analytical. The author has a specific worldview and can’t put it aside when contextualizing these battles, a decent book but I kept on getting pulled out.