France War

Discover the remarkable history of the Napoleonic Wars. The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought between France and various coalitions in Europe between 1803 and 1815 (though some put the start date at 1799). The prelude to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic Wars is the French Revolution, and the conflicts that continued after Napoleon seized power would radically affect Europe and indeed political philosophies not confined by artificial boundaries.

From 1941 to 1944, Bignor Manor, a farmhouse in Sussex, provided board and lodging for men and women of the French Resistance before they were flown by moonlight into occupied France. Barbara Bertram, whose husband was a conducting officer for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), became hostess for these daring agents and their pilots during their brief stopovers in their house.

Paul Johnson's book is a refreshing return to a concept whose time has come once again: the Great Man theory of biography. It serves as "the greatest possible refutation of those who hold that events are governed by forces, classes, economics, and geography rather than the powerful wills of men and women". Napoleon truly was the Great Man of his age, a towering and terrible genius who managed to conquer the Continent.

Within this audiobook, you'll meet some truly remarkable figures who shaped the destiny of a great nation—from visionary artists to brilliant inventors, and from cunning leaders to fearless rebels. You'll bear witness to the many struggles and triumphs of a people who fought for their freedom and their dreams, and who changed the course of history forever.

Paris, 1938. Two women meet: Mielle, a shy pacifist and shunned Mennonite who struggles to fit in with the elite cohort of foreign correspondents stationed around the city; the other, Jane, a brash American journalist, who is soon to become a fascist propagandist. When World War II makes landfall in the City of Lights, Mielle falls under Jane’s spell, growing ever more intoxicated by her glamour, self-possession, and reckless confidence. But as this recklessness devolves into militarism and an utter lack of humanity, Mielle is seized by a series of visions that show her an inescapable truth.

Combining impeccable scholarship and literary elegance, David Wetzel depicts the drama of machinations and passions that exploded in a war that forever changed the face of European history.

How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? If you're the US Army in 1944, you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That's not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we've been given, but it's the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do.

Deep in the Blitzkrieg, one unlucky tourist must fight to survive. When aspiring pilot John Archer finds himself caught in the middle of the devastating Nazi invasion of France, he quickly realizes that his vacation could cost him his life. As an American swept up in a wave of refugees fleeing the chaos of the German advance, deep down he knows he’s in way over his head. When an unfortunate capture leads to Archer discovering vital information about the Nazi’s plans, he knows he has no choice but to slip out from under his enemy’s nose and tell the Allies what he’s found.

Alan Riding introduces a pageant of 20th-century artists who lived and worked under the Nazis and explores the decisions each made about whether to stay or flee, collaborate or resist. We see Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf singing before French and German audiences; Picasso painting and occasionally selling his work from his Left Bank apartment; and Marcel Carné and Henri-Georges Clouzot, among others, directing movies....

Jomini was regarded as the preeminent strategist and writer of his generation, while Clausewitz was virtually unknown outside the General Staff of the Prussian Army. In the intervening period, Clausewitz has come to be regarded as the most important writer and strategic analyst of the period, whereas the writings of Jomini have been discarded and largely ignored. As a result, many military historians and strategists have only recently begun to understand how important Jomini was and how relevant his writings remain today.

With the SAS: Across the Rhine is the story of the latter part of Captain Ian Wellsted's military career with the Special Air Service. This is a very personal account, revealing the many emotional as well as physical strains placed upon men in the fighting line. The author takes us back to his time employed with the 79th armored Division (the famous "Hobart's Funnies") preparing for D-Day and his desire for more exciting action, which led first to the Parachute Regiment and then the SAS.

Some historians have called the Seven Years’ War the first true world war, and they make a good point. Ultimately, this globally coordinated war involved five continents and at least 29 states and tribal confederacies, with a casualty toll in the millions and the maps forever altered. As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War was the last in a long series of colonial conflicts between the French and British and also changed the map in America. At the end of the war, disputed borders were finally settled, and both empires were left reeling from the costs of war.

This is the true story of four brave women secretly sent into the darkness of Nazi-occupied France to carry out Winston Churchill’s plan to "set Europe ablaze." Caught in a web of deception surrounding the preparations for the D-Day invasion, their mission ended in betrayal and sacrifice. An engrossing history based on first-hand interviews with agents of the Special Operations Executive and revelations about the secret organization and the courageous women who served it.

For nearly 200 years huge wooden warships called “ships of the line” dominated war at sea and were thus instrumental in the European struggle for power and the spread of imperialism. Foremost among the great naval powers were Great Britain and France, whose advanced economies could support large numbers of these expensive ships. This book, the first joint history of these great navies, offers a uniquely impartial and comprehensive picture of the two forces - their shipbuilding programs, naval campaigns, and battles, and their wartime strategies and diplomacy.

Thomas of Hookton is a seasoned veteran of King Edward's army and a natural leader in what will be remembered as the Hundred Years' War. Accompanied by a small but able band of soldiers, Thomas is sent to Gascony to capture the castle of Astarac. But he has ulterior motives for accepting the charge: Gascony is the home of the black knight, Guy de Vexille, who brutally slaughtered his father. It is also reputed to be the place where the Grail was last seen.

The Napoleonic Wars, which took place between 1803 and 1815, were spearheaded by probably France’s best tactician and military strategist to date: General Napoleon Bonaparte. His tactics and strategies were so grounded that it has served as the basis for many major warfare campaigns and maneuvers, both during his lifetime as well as after his demise. Even France’s sworn enemy for most of the medieval era, the British, acknowledged his ingenuity despite his ultimate defeat at the hands of the British army at the end of life.

Based on official American, French, and German documents, histories, personal memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's key participants, Escape from Paris crosses the traditional lines of World War II history with tense drama of air combat over Europe, the intrigue of occupied Paris, and courageous American and Allied pilots and French resistance fighters pitted against Nazi thugs. All of this set in one of the world's most beautiful and captivating cities.

When Daniel Guiet was a child and his family moved country, as they frequently did, his father had one possession, a tin bread box, that always made the trip. Daniel was admonished never to touch the box, but one day he couldn't resist. What he found astonished him: a .45 automatic and five full clips; three slim knives; a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; thin pieces of paper with random numbers on them; several passports with his father's photograph, each bearing a different name.

The Hundred Years War was a series of conflicts waged between England and France between 1337 and 1453. The war involved several generations of kings on both sides and was fought over a single issue: whether the English had the right to rule the kingdom of France. The Hundred Years War was an important element in the creation of modern Europe and in the definition of the national characters of both England and France. This audiobook tells the story of this long, complex, and fascinating conflict.

If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence - a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations.