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On Distant Service
- The Life of the First U.S. Foreign Service Officer to Be Assassinated
- Narrated by: Bryan Carmody
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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On Distant Service
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Publisher's summary
On July 18, 1924, a mob in Tehran killed US foreign service officer Robert Whitney Imbrie. His violent death, the first political murder in the history of the service, outraged the American people. Though Imbrie’s loss briefly made him a cause célèbre, subsequent events quickly obscured his extraordinary life and career.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 251
Virginia Hall left her comfortable Baltimore roots in 1931 to follow a dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. After watching Hitler roll over Poland and France, she enlisted to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret espionage and sabotage organization. She was soon deployed to occupied France where, if captured, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Gestapo was all but assured.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The narrator is ruining the book for me
- By Penni Khandi on 06-19-14
By: Judith Pearson
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Che Guevara
- A Revolutionary Life
- By: Jon Lee Anderson
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 36 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,078
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 792
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 796
Che Guevara was a dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. Jon Lee Anderson traces Che's extraordinary life from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and his assassination in the Bolivian jungle.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Encompassing and Fair Look at an Historical Man
- By Matt on 08-10-11
By: Jon Lee Anderson
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The Start
- 1904-1930
- By: William L. Shirer
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
William L. Shirer was a CBS foreign correspondent and renowned author of New York Times best-selling nonfiction about World War II, and this is the first part of his three-part autobiography. A renowned journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer chronicles his own life story in a personal history that parallels the greater historical events for which he served as a witness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Clouds gathering on the horizon in Europe
- By Nancy on 08-12-20
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The Allies
- Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
- By: Winston Groom
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Best-selling author Winston Groom tells the complex story of how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - the three iconic and vastly different Allied leaders - aligned to win World War II and created a new world order.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great read
- By Kindle Customer on 05-26-19
By: Winston Groom
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War of Shadows
- Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East
- By: Gershom Gorenberg
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting history: mediocre narration.
- By William R. Todd-Mancillas (Name includes hyphen and capitalized M). on 06-12-22
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Trail of Hope
- The Anders Army, an Odyssey Across Three Continents
- By: Norman Davies
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In this remarkable work, renowned historian Professor Norman Davies draws from years of meticulous research to recount the compelling story of the Polish II Corps or "Anders Army", and their exceptional journey from the Gulag of Siberia through Iran, the Middle East, and North Africa to the battlefields of Italy to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Allied forces. Complete with firsthand accounts from the men and women who lived through it, this is a unique record of one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing story of Polish peoples and never giving up hope for free Poland.
- By Peter Chmiel on 09-24-19
By: Norman Davies
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Spain in Our Hearts
- Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 573
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 515
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 515
For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa's photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book very well written and narrated
- By James750 on 05-12-16
By: Adam Hochschild
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To End All Wars
- A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 463
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 381
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 375
World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A story of personalities
- By Tad Davis on 06-09-11
By: Adam Hochschild
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Americans in Paris
- Life and Death under Nazi Occupation
- By: Charles Glass
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative, but average engagement
- By Leann on 05-09-17
By: Charles Glass
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A Guest of the Reich
- The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre's Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany
- By: Peter Finn
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
Gertrude "Gertie" Legendre was a big-game hunter from a wealthy industrial family who lived a charmed life in Jazz Age America. Her adventurous spirit made her the inspiration for the Broadway play Holiday, which became a film starring Katharine Hepburn. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Legendre, by then married and a mother of two, joined the OSS, the wartime spy organization that preceded the CIA.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating woman in a horrible period in history
- By Marlette on 12-03-19
By: Peter Finn
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The Berlin Wall
- By: Frederick Taylor
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 150
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
The appearance of a hastily constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse.
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2 out of 5 stars
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TEAR. DOWN. THIS. WALL
- By Simone on 05-23-13
By: Frederick Taylor
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War on the Border
- Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion
- By: Jeff Guinn
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Jeff Guinn, chronicler of the Southwestern US and of American undesirables (Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones) tells the “riveting and supremely entertaining narrative” (S.C. Gwynne, New York Times best-selling author of Empire of the Summer Moon) of Pancho Villa’s bloody raid on a small US border town that sparked a violent conflict with the US.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Interesting research, but a biased narrative.
- By Jorge Molina on 07-18-21
By: Jeff Guinn
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The Correspondents
- Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II
- By: Judith Mackrell
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narration was nails on a chalkboard
- By aunt deb on 12-20-21
By: Judith Mackrell
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The Mexican Revolution
- A Captivating Guide to the Mexican Civil War and How Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata Impacted Mexico
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment of the 20th century. The Mexican fight for democracy, equality, and justice sent shockwaves around the world. No other episode in its history has left a deeper mark. It is a three-act drama full of politics, persecution, and war, not to mention earthquakes, signs in the sky, and even spiritualist sessions, while being populated by larger-than-life villains, international spies, and the universally known figures of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Don’t have readers who speak Spanish - It’s the LAW!
- By James C on 06-26-21
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Invasion
- The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival
- By: Luke Harding
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story5 out of 5 stars 53
In a damning, inspiring, and breathtaking narrative of what is likely to be a turning point for Europe—and the world—Guardian correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Luke Harding reports firsthand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When, just before dawn on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a series of brutal attacks, Harding was there, on the ground in Kyiv. But this senseless violence was met with astounding resilience—from, among others, the country’s embattled president—and the courage of a people prepared to risk everything to preserve their nation’s freedom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pray For Ukraine
- By Tyler 963 on 12-03-22
By: Luke Harding
What listeners say about On Distant Service
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Patrick Love
- 12-22-22
Robert Imbrie: On the front lines of history
I only listened to On Distant Service because I happened to meet the author while on a group trip in Iceland. I listened out of curiosity as this was her first book, which she researched and wrote after a long career as a teacher. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience, learned a lot, and can highly recommend this book. Yes, it is the story of Robert Whitney Imbrie who was killed in Tehren in 1924, but more than that, it is a story of the 10-year period (1914-1924) that dramatically reshaped eastern Europe and the world. It turns out that I knew virtually nothing about the Great War (WWI) and its aftermath. Through the experiences of Imbrie, Stein does a remarkable job of painting a dynamic picture of the global transformations occurring at that time. Imbrie was on the frontlines of many of these events. He was a volunteer ambulance driver in France during WWI, spent time in Russia during the Russian Revolution, found himself in Finland and Turkey tracking Bolshevik activity, and, finally, in Persia (today's Iran). Stein does a great job of writing a coherent story even though Imbrie's widow had all his personal writings and correspondence destroyed after his death.
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