Showing results by narrator "Matthew J. Chandler-Smith" in All Categories

Jim Morrison—the name still evokes an image of a rough-hewn rock star, absolutely oozing both profound intellectual wisdom as well as an inordinate amount of cool charisma. Few could encapsulate two ends of the spectrum as well as he did, but Jim Morrison was both the wild man and the soft-spoken poet. He was Mr. Mojo Risin’, ready to party, and that quiet voice searching for soft asylum all at the same time. This book examines both of these dynamic poles of Jim Morrison’s personality and more.

The word "holodomor" derives from a combination of two Ukrainian words: holod (hunger) and mor (extermination). This term is used to describe one of the least-known events of state-sponsored mass starvation: the Great Famine of Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933. Around four million Ukrainians died during the famine, and yet, the extent of this human catastrophe was virtually unknown in the West. Up to 1991, the Soviet Union refused to acknowledge that any famine had taken place in Ukraine at all.

Princess Diana had a whirlwind of a life, or in the words of Sir Elton John, she “lived her life like a candle in the wind”. After her marriage to Prince Charles, she became not just a princess but a global icon. Diana could draw crowds by the thousands, but despite her rising popularity, she couldn’t keep her marriage together. Not many have had the kind of life that Princess Diana led, but to be sure, this was no fairy tale with a happy ending. This book tells the tragic story of the life of Princess Diana, from beginning to end.

On a battlefield so littered with dead bodies that General Ulysses S. Grant said it would have been possible to walk across it in any direction without a foot touching the ground, the Union Army notched a brutal but significant victory against the Confederate Army. The two-day battle, with the highest number of casualties recorded in the fighting up to that time, dashed the hopes of a short war. Still, few could have grasped that this battle was only the beginning of a national campaign of slaughter that would see so many Yankee and Rebel deaths.

Frank Sinatra’s very name seems synonymous with legend. Sinatra grew up in hardscrabble Hoboken, New Jersey, and rose to prominence as one of music’s first superstars. While becoming one of the best-selling artists of all time, he remade popular music in his own image. From his crooning days on a street corner in Hoboken to his waltzing across the world stage, the swagger of Frank Sinatra was unmistakable.

He jumped shackled into rivers and lakes, he was buried alive, and, on occasion, he even escaped from milk cans. Harry Houdini’s stunts are legendary, but what drove this man to such lengths of spectacle?In this book, we explore both the stunts Houdini pulled off on stage as well as the life he led off stage.

The October Revolution of 1917, which saw the fall of the tsar and the installation of a provisional government in Russia, was a momentous event in modern history. However, the Russian Revolution was far from the end of the story of the establishment of Communism in Russia. Within months, the Red Bolsheviks were under attack by the reactionary Whites. The civil war raged for more than two years, leaving millions dead and many millions more displaced. Although less well-known than the revolution, the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 did far more to shape the modern world.

The deciding battle of the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans, was won by the Americans on January 8, 1815, a few scant weeks after the British and American negotiators signed the Treaty of Ghent that ended the war, at least on paper. Assessed from that perspective, it might be regarded as an unnecessary battle of no importance, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Jackson Pollock was without a doubt one of the twentieth century’s most controversial painters. He started out painting abstracts in the style of Pablo Picasso but soon branched out, establishing the “drip” method, which entails dripping or flinging paint directly onto the canvas. For this, he was both praised and demonized; still, he persisted on his own chosen path.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a born philosopher. It seems that ever since he crawled out of the cradle, he questioned the world around him. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Where are we headed as a society? These were things that Nietzsche would endlessly speculate about, probing the depths in order to find answers to these most difficult of questions. In the process, he had nihilistic visions of supermen, antichrists, and Zarathustra. For Friedrich Nietzsche, a man who was accustomed to questioning everything, reality itself was a long, strange trip.

One of the most powerful men who ever lived was a Holy Roman Emperor and controlled vast swathes of the planet. Quite a bit has been written over the centuries about Charles V, but even so, historical texts do not always reveal the complex personality that this man possessed. He was a man of purpose who felt destined to hold both Europe and the Christian faith together. He knew this would be no easy task, but he nevertheless threw himself into it whole-heartedly. This is the life and the story of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.

Andy Warhol and his pop art helped define the 1960s and 1970s in America. Born the son of poor Austro-Hungarian immigrants in Pittsburgh, he was fortunate enough to attend the Carnegie Institute and study art. After graduation, he moved to New York, where he became a successful commercial artist sketching women’s accessories for ads before soaring to popularity with his silkscreen paintings of Campbell soup cans and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe.

Spencer Tracy was a man who truly immersed himself in his craft. Ever since he was a boy, he dreamed of making his way to the big screen to play larger-than-life roles, and he didn’t stop until he made that dream a reality. Tracy brought a whole string of box office hits to the Golden Age of Film; still, his life wasn’t perfect. The actor struggled with alcohol addiction, and due to infidelity, his marriage at home would be strained. After separating from his wife, he kept in place a long-term relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn until the day he died.

The Mitanni Empire came to prominence at a time when the Egyptians, the Hittites, and the Assyrians were all angling for supremacy. Mitanni made alliances and conquered other lands, excelled at the military art of charioteering, suffered invasions, endured assassinations, and saw a dynasty rise and fall. For more than 3,000 years, the Mitanni Empire remained largely forgotten. Recently, archaeological excavations and translations of ancient texts have shed some light on these remarkable people who were the equals of their more-famous peers in Egypt, Hatti, and Assyria.

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.

A prominent Lakota Sioux chief and medicine man, Sitting Bull was both a man of peace and a man of war as he sought to simultaneously fight and negotiate on behalf of his people during the westward expansion of the United States. His visions inspired and led the Native American warriors to victory in the legendary Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. This triumph would, however, be short-lived, and Sitting Bull and his loyal band of followers would be forced to surrender their freedom only five years later. This book reveals his incredible life and legacy in full.

With the help of a newspaper reporter, a legend was created of Jesse James as a hero and defender of the South. That legend gave Jesse James 20 years to rob and kill at will, as it was usually disguised in the press as heroism. No lawman was ever able to bring Jesse James down; ultimately, he died at the hands of one of his own men. This book tells the story of his life from beginning to end.

The Boxer Rebellion saw impoverished Chinese peasants strike a blow against the Western powers, particularly the British, who had come to challenge China’s sovereignty. The uprising was both a harbinger of things to come for China and a by-product of simmering decades of friction between the Chinese and the British. The Chinese had been able to call the shots during the initial engagement of trade with the West, but lost control after the British began smuggling opium into the country.

For 28 years, the Berlin Wall was a symbol of communist oppression and tyranny. The barricade was built in August 1961 to keep East German citizens from defecting to West Germany. This is the story of an oppressive symbol — a wall erected to form a prison for those within its border — but it is also the story of triumph over tyranny when finally, 28 years after it was first built, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989.

Saint Peter, also known as Peter the Apostle, was one of the main figures of the early Christian Church. He began his life as a simple fisherman who caught fish in the Sea of Galilea, but one day, this fisherman became a “fisher of men” instead. In good time, he would help to form one of the largest religious movements the world had ever known, eventually giving his life to the cause when he was sentenced to death by crucifixion. Here, in this audiobook, we discover the life of Saint Peter from beginning to end.