War Years

Download The Hundred Years’ War Biography Bundle to experience the life of these four influential characters of Europe’s greatest war.

The beginning of modern Europe was a time of confusion, excitement, suspicion, hope, despair, and ideas. It was a time of a lot of change spread out over just a few hundred years, but the end result was a completely different world than the one that had come before it. This audiobook includes details of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era, where Europe saw significant shifts across the continent in phases.

The Hundred Years' War changed language, national identity, weaponry, and even the way people think about war. It is part of the greater narrative of human history and gives a snapshot of how human nature can behave when pressed by the extremity of such a conflict - sometimes with unspeakable honor and courage and other times with cowardice, selfishness, and arrogance.

Este Diario de la Segunda Guerra Mundial es el fruto de años de trabajo, de tenaces investigaciones, que han hilado una madeja de incontables sucesos para darnos una imagen amplia de la totalidad de la guerra. No solo es extraordinario el alcance de esta obra, que cubre seis años de un conflicto que se extendió por los cinco continentes, también lo es el método que emplea para capturar de manera concisa sus distintos aspectos. Este audiolibro contiene los 12 meses del año 1944.

Summer, 1851. Racial tensions in America were higher than ever. The year before, President Millard Fillmore had passed the Fugitive Slave Act to return runaway slaves to the South. In February, Congress had established the reservation system, forcing Native Americans to leave their homelands. White Americans were strengthening dominance over people of color across the continent. In Oregon City, one biracial man named Jacob Vanderpool found himself in the crosshairs of this racist discrimination.

Although it ended over 550 years ago, the Hundred Years' War still looms large in the historical consciousness of England and France, even if the name of the famous war is a misnomer. Actually a series of separate conflicts between the English and French monarchies, interspersed with periods of peace, its historical image is an odd one, in part because its origins were based on royal claims that dated back centuries.

If you had to name the most destructive conflicts in human history, you likely wouldn’t put the Thirty Years’ War near the top of that list, but in fact, this conflict resulted in more than eight million fatalities throughout Europe. It resulted in widespread destruction, and it bankrupted the majority of the powers involved. For such a destructive war, the Thirty Years’ War is not well-known, and yet it changed the geopolitical face of Europe as well as the role of religion and nation-states in society. This audiobook tells the compelling story of the Thirty Years’ War.

The Seven Years’ War, also known as the French and Indian War in North America, was fought between 1756 and 1763, and it involved all of Europe’s great powers and many of the so-called middle powers. By the end of the conflict, Britain would gain control over Canada and Florida, but the war would nearly bankrupt the country as it doubled its national debt. Still, the war marked the beginning of the era of British dominance in North America. The war also had profound consequences for indigenous groups in North America.

A candid and multifaceted look at life as a security contractor in Iraq in the early years after the American invasion. It’s not just a story of surviving IEDs and firefights while protecting American contractors—though those moments are vividly recounted—it’s also an exploration of the broader, often unexpected, experiences that defined the author’s two and a half years in Iraq.

On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?

Lt. Hal Robert, a native of Canada, was one of many veterans of World War II and the Korean War. During the last years of his life, his nerves were frazzled from so many bad wartime memories. Before he died at age 41, his son—the author—was able to coax him to share his experiences. In this biography, he traces his father’s life and connection to the wars, beginning with when he signed up with the Lord Strathcona Horse regiment at Camp Shilo, Manitoba, on June 27, 1938.

Peter Ratcliffe served in the SAS for 25 years. Blooded in Oman in the 1970s, he also saw action in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands War, and in the Gulf campaign. From his early days in the Paras to his time as Regimental Sergeant-Major in the Gulf, he has lived and fought by the motto 'who dares wins'. Eye of the Storm is his insider's account of that exceptional career.

Not everyone sensed it right away, but after McClellan was dethroned in the fall of 1862, the focus of the war had shifted ever so subtly. Before that, the war was about reconciliation and bringing the two sides back together - with or without slavery. After Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, there was no going back. The purpose of the war had changed. It was no longer about reuniting the two sides but about total victory, crushing the South, and eliminating slavery.

Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the greatdrama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and anew, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global powervacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles thatensued emerged the modern world as we know it.

Revisited 60 years on. Capt Hugh Pilkington enjoyed the full and fun life of a rubber planter in pre-war Malaya. Then war broke out and he found himself fighting in Johor. Blasted by a sniper, he was hospitalised in Singapore, only for the hospital to be overrun by the Japanese in a horrific massacre. Then as a POW he was soon sent to labour on the Death Railway in Thailand. Can you imagine the horrors? All the while he kept secret diaries, written on paper stolen from the Japanese.

Dark clouds cast a shadow over 17th century Europe and color the continent in a dark fog. When they break out, a deluge of blood and sweat rolls over the countries, destroying landscapes and wiping out entire cities. There has never been a more merciless war in the history of Europe. Between state-building and religious conflicts, soldiers are sent to certain death and villages are razed to the ground.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

In early 1860, pundits across America confidently predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, after all, led the only party that bridged North and South. But the Democrats would split over the issue of slavery, leading Southerners in the party to run their own presidential slate. This opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low 39.8 percent of the popular vote.

In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian's world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government's mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable - that they are all being driven to their deaths - he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope.

Although it ended over 550 years ago, the Hundred Years’ War still looms large in the historical consciousness of England and France, even if the name of the famous war is a misnomer. The war was transformative in many respects, and the impact it had on the geopolitical situation of Europe cannot be overstated. While some might think of the war as being a continuation of the feudal tradition of knights and peasants, the Hundred Years’ War revolutionized Western European warfare, and it truly helped to usher in the concept of nationalism on the continent.