Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Europe

This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath" - literature, epic traditions, private letters, and accounts - to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled.

In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: Coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.

Here is a gripping account of the major postwar trial of the Nazi hierarchy in World War II. The Nuremberg Trial brilliantly recreates the trial proceedings and offers a reasoned, often profound examination of the processes that created international law. From the whimpering of Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop on the stand to the icy coolness of Goering, each participant is vividly drawn.

Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet - in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport - these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.

In February 1944, in one of the most astonishing battles of World War II, a ragtag collection of British clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews, managed to defeat a much larger and sophisticated contingent of some of the finest infantry in the Japanese army on their march toward India.

Winston Churchill understood and wielded the power of words throughout his six decades in the public eye. His wartime writings and speeches revealed both his vision for the future and his own personal feelings, fascinating generation after generation with their powerful style and thoughtful reflection. In this book Churchill's official biographer, Martin Gilbert, has skilfully selected 200 extracts from his entire oeuvre of books, articles and speeches that reflect his life story, career and philosophy.

Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume - the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World - chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition. Impressively researched and brilliantly told, The History of the Renaissance World offers not just the names, dates, and facts but the memorable characters who illuminate the years between 1100 and 1453 - years that marked a sea change in mankind's perception of the world.

When she was suddenly given the opportunity of a new life in rural Jutland, journalist and archetypal Londoner Helen Russell discovered a startling statistic: the happiest place on earth isn't Disneyland but Denmark, a land often thought of by foreigners as consisting entirely of long, dark winters, cured herring, Lego and pastries. What is the secret to their success? Are happy Danes born or made?

The British wars began on the morning of 23 July 1637, heralding 200 years of battles. Most were driven by religious or political conviction, as Republicans and Royalists, Catholics and Protestants, Tories and Whigs, and colonialists and natives vied for supremacy. Of the battles not fought on home territory, many took place across Europe, America, India, and also at sea. Schama's examination of this turbulent period reveals how the British people eventually united in imperial enterprise, forming 'Britannia Incorporated'.

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by large segments of the population and firmly supported by the Nazi regime, Hitler is poised to subjugate Europe. Nine years later, his vaunted war machine destroyed, Allied forces sweeping across Germany, Hitler will end his life with a pistol shot to his head.

Following victory in Sicily, while the central command planned the spring 1944 invasion of France, Allied troops crossed into Southern Italy in September 1943, expecting to drive Axis forces north and liberate Rome by Christmas. Italy quickly surrendered but German divisions fiercely resisted, and the hoped-for quick victory descended into one of the most challenging and protracted battles of the entire war. James Holland’s The Savage Storm chronicles the dramatic opening months of the Italian Campaign in unflinching and insightful detail.

Eve Haas is the daughter of a German Jewish family that took refuge in London after Hitler came to power. Following a terrifying air raid in the blitz, her father revealed the family secret - that her great-great grandmother Emilie was married to a Prussian prince. He then showed her the treasured leather-bound notebook inscribed to Emilie by the prince.

One of the last cavalry units to ride horses into battle, the Sherwood Rangers were transformed into a “mechanized cavalry” of tanks in 1942. After winning acclaim in the North African campaign, they spearheaded one of the D-Day landings in Normandy and became the first British troops to cross into Germany. Their courage, skill, and tenacity contributed mightily to the surrender of Germany in 1945.

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist, or just about anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one.

Timothy West reads the third and concluding volume of award-winning historian Simon Schama's compelling chronicle of the British Isles. Here he illuminates the period from 1776 to 2000 through a variety of historical themes, including Victorian advances in technology and industry, women's increasing role in society, and the burgeoning British Empire which promised civilisation and material betterment for all.

They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Scores of books have tried and failed to penetrate the royal facade. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind palace walls to provide the first three-dimensional, comprehensive, and evenhanded portrait of the men and women who make up the British Royal family.

The Rangers’ mission was clear. They were to lead the assault on Omaha Beach and break out inland. Simultaneously, other Ranger units would scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to destroy the ostensibly huge gun battery there and thus protect the invasion fleet from being targeted. But was the Pointe du Hoc mission actually necessary? Why did the Allies plan and execute an attack on a gun battery that they knew in advance contained no field guns? And more importantly, why did they ignore the position at Maisy that did?

In Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, Victor Sebestyen vividly recreates not only the days of the uprising but the events, meetings and days that led up to it. He goes back to give us snapshots of seminal moments in history that would decide Hungary's fate, such as the October 9, 1944, meeting in the Kremlin with Churchill or October 15, 1949, a day that marked the execution of Laszlo Rajk, a fierce Stalinist and one of the chief architect's of Hungary's police state and the beginning of the Bolsheviks starting "to devour [their] own children".