Pacific
Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $26.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Simon Winchester
-
By:
-
Simon Winchester
About this listen
Following his acclaimed Atlantic and The Men Who United the States, New York Times best-selling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature.
As the Mediterranean shaped the classical world and the Atlantic connected Europe to the New World, the Pacific Ocean defines our tomorrow. With China on the rise, so, too, are the American cities of the West Coast, including Seattle, San Francisco, and the long cluster of towns down the Silicon Valley.
Today the Pacific is ascendant. Its geological history has long transformed us - tremendous earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis - but its human history, from a Western perspective, is quite young, beginning with Magellan's 16th-century circumnavigation. It is a natural wonder whose most fascinating history is currently being made.
In telling the story of the Pacific, Simon Winchester takes us from the Bering Strait to Cape Horn, from the Yangtze River to the Panama Canal, and to the many small islands and archipelagos that lie in between. He observes the fall of a dictator in Manila, visits aboriginals in Northern Queensland, and is jailed in Tierra del Fuego, the land at the end of the world. His journey encompasses a trip down the Alaska Highway, a stop at the isolated Pitcairn Islands, a trek across South Korea, and a glimpse of its mysterious northern neighbor.
Winchester's personal experience is vast and his storytelling second to none. And his historical understanding of the region is formidable, making Pacific a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination that is transforming our lives.
©2015 Simon Winchester (P)2015 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
-
-
Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
-
-
Somewhat less than perfect
- By Anonymous User on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Map That Changed the World
- William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.
-
-
Who knew rocks could be so deceptive?
- By Anonymous User on 11-09-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
-
-
Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By Anonymous User on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
-
-
Sarcastic
- By Anonymous User on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
-
Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
-
-
Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By Anonymous User on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
-
Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
-
-
Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
-
-
Somewhat less than perfect
- By Anonymous User on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Map That Changed the World
- William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.
-
-
Who knew rocks could be so deceptive?
- By Anonymous User on 11-09-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
-
-
Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By Anonymous User on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
-
-
Sarcastic
- By Anonymous User on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
-
Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
-
-
Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By Anonymous User on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
-
A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
-
-
7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Anonymous User on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By Anonymous User on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
The End of the River
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 1 hr and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it comes to climate-change-inspired threats, it is rising sea levels we hear most about. But if the oceans are, as Herman Melville put it, “the tide-beating heart of the Earth”, rivers are its circulatory system. In the United States, there is no river more storied, symbolic, and vital than the Mississippi, and none, to use Mark Twain’s word, more lawless. The struggle to control it has been going on nearly as long as there has been human civilization on its banks, and the attendant drama and dangers have been memorialized by many writers.
-
-
Stunning Informative and Scarry as Hell
- By Anonymous User on 05-06-22
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Meaning of Everything
- The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.
-
-
A New Appreciation
- By Anonymous User on 11-01-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
-
-
turn your watch back 70 years
- By Anonymous User on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
-
-
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Anonymous User on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
-
Outposts
- Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1985, Outposts is Simon Winchester's journey to find the vanishing empire, "on which the sun never sets". In the course of a three-year, 100,000 mile journey - from the chill of the Antarctic to the blue seas of the Caribbean, from the South of Spain and the tip of China to the utterly remote specks in the middle of gale-swept oceans - he discovered such romance and depravity, opulence and despair that he was inspired to write what may be the last contemporary account of the British empire.
-
-
Nice Travelogue
- By Anonymous User on 01-28-06
By: Simon Winchester
-
Alice Behind Wonderland
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.
-
-
Not Long Enough
- By Anonymous User on 06-18-12
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Fracture Zone
- A Return to the Balkans
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.
-
-
Loved this-Great combo:Story and History Explained
- By Anonymous User on 07-10-14
By: Simon Winchester
-
Sea People
- The Puzzle of Polynesia
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.
-
-
Long Lost History
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-19
-
With the Old Breed
- At Peleliu and Okinawa
- By: E. B. Sledge
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Joe Mazzello, Tom Hanks (introduction)
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries.
-
-
This is the second audio book of Sledge's work
- By Anonymous User on 10-21-13
By: E. B. Sledge
-
In Search of a Kingdom
- Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire
- By: Laurence Bergreen
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history.
-
-
Better than the text
- By Anonymous User on 04-07-21
Related to this topic
-
Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
-
-
Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By Anonymous User on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Brilliant Beacons
- A History of the American Lighthouse
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines.
-
-
Great book about Lighthouses
- By Anonymous User on 04-25-21
By: Eric Jay Dolin
-
Last Train to Paradise
- Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: Del Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The paths of the great American robber barons were paved with riches, and though ordinary citizens paid for them, they also profited. Les Standiford, author of the John Deal thrillers, tells how the man who turned Florida's swamps into the playgrounds of the rich performed the almost superhuman feat of building a railroad from the mainland to Key West at the turn of the century.
-
-
A Pleasant Surprise
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-09
By: Les Standiford
-
Raising the Hunley
- The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine
- By: Brian Hicks, Schuyler Kropf
- Narrated by: Harry Chase
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Forget the Titanic; this sub wreck is hot," says the Wall Street Journal. Award-winning journalists Hicks and Kropf offer new insights into the dramatic history and mysterious disappearance of the Hunley, the first submersible to sink another ship. The Hunley represented one of the major technological breakthroughs of the Civil War, and it has fascinated many to the point of obsession ever since its disappearance.
-
-
Great Civil War history
- By Anonymous User on 11-10-03
By: Brian Hicks, and others
-
The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
-
-
Decolonize gulf history
- By Anonymous User on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
-
Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
-
-
Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By Anonymous User on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Brilliant Beacons
- A History of the American Lighthouse
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines.
-
-
Great book about Lighthouses
- By Anonymous User on 04-25-21
By: Eric Jay Dolin
-
Last Train to Paradise
- Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: Del Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The paths of the great American robber barons were paved with riches, and though ordinary citizens paid for them, they also profited. Les Standiford, author of the John Deal thrillers, tells how the man who turned Florida's swamps into the playgrounds of the rich performed the almost superhuman feat of building a railroad from the mainland to Key West at the turn of the century.
-
-
A Pleasant Surprise
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-09
By: Les Standiford
-
Raising the Hunley
- The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine
- By: Brian Hicks, Schuyler Kropf
- Narrated by: Harry Chase
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Forget the Titanic; this sub wreck is hot," says the Wall Street Journal. Award-winning journalists Hicks and Kropf offer new insights into the dramatic history and mysterious disappearance of the Hunley, the first submersible to sink another ship. The Hunley represented one of the major technological breakthroughs of the Civil War, and it has fascinated many to the point of obsession ever since its disappearance.
-
-
Great Civil War history
- By Anonymous User on 11-10-03
By: Brian Hicks, and others
-
The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
-
-
Decolonize gulf history
- By Anonymous User on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
-
Pan Am at War
- How the Airline Secretly Helped America Fight World War II
- By: Mark Cotta Vaz, John H. Hill
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pan Am at War chronicles the airline's historic role in advancing aviation and serving America's national interest before and during World War II. From its inception, Pan American Airways operated as the "wings of democracy", spanning six continents and placing the country at the leading edge of international aviation. At the same time, it was clandestinely helping to fight America's wars.
-
-
Disappointing Presentation
- By Anonymous User on 04-01-20
By: Mark Cotta Vaz, and others
-
Breaking Rockefeller
- The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire
- By: Peter B. Doran
- Narrated by: Peter B. Doran
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marcus Samuel, Jr., is an unorthodox Jewish merchant trader. Henri Deterding is a take-no-prisoners oilman. In 1889 John D. Rockefeller is at the peak of his power. Having annihilated all competition and possessing near-total domination of the market, even the US government is wary of challenging the great "anaconda" of Standard Oil. The Standard never loses - that is, until Samuel and Deterding team up to form Royal Dutch Shell.
-
-
Tale of business, cultures, dances as it teaches
- By Anonymous User on 05-25-16
By: Peter B. Doran
-
The Great Quake
- How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
- By: Henry Fountain
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history - the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega - and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how and why it took place.
-
-
Fascinating to hear the full story
- By Anonymous User on 08-18-17
By: Henry Fountain
-
Ninety Percent of Everything
- Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
- By: Rose George
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.
-
-
I was quite mislead by the title.....
- By Anonymous User on 10-20-17
By: Rose George
-
The Alchemy of Air
- A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the worlds scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives.
-
-
Great Book Thoroughly Researched
- By Anonymous User on 10-21-11
By: Thomas Hager
-
Blackett's War
- The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else.
-
-
First time science used to fight a war
- By Anonymous User on 08-20-14
-
Uranium
- War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uranium is a common element in the earth's crust and the only naturally occurring mineral with the power to end all life on the planet. After World War II, it reshaped the global order---whoever could master uranium could master the world. Marie Curie gave us hope that uranium would be a miracle panacea, but the Manhattan Project gave us reason to believe that civilization would end with apocalypse.
-
-
GREAT book, awful narration
- By Anonymous User on 03-30-09
By: Tom Zoellner
-
Windfall
- The Booming Business of Global Warming
- By: McKenzie Funk
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Global warming's physical impacts can be separated into three broad categories: melt, drought, and deluge. Funk travels to two dozen countries to profile entrepreneurial people who see a potential windfall in each of these forces. The melt is a boon for newly arable, mineral rich regions of the Arctic, such as Greenland - and for the man-made snow trade. Drought creates opportunities for private firefighters working for insurance companies as well as for fund managers backing south Sudanese warlords who control local farmland.
-
-
unintended windfalls mixed with obvious perils
- By Anonymous User on 02-09-14
By: McKenzie Funk
-
Scimitar SL-2
- By: Patrick Robinson
- Narrated by: David McCallum
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid the Canary Islands lies the massive crater of the volcano Cumbre Vieja. Scientists theorize that one day the volcano will erupt, triggering a series of events that would lead to a tsunami wave higher than any in recorded history. This mega-tsunami, with waves of more than 150 feet in height, would ravage Europe, Africa, and ultimately the East Coast of the United States, causing immeasurable loss of life and destruction.
-
-
Poorly abridged or Poorly written??
- By Anonymous User on 05-12-05
By: Patrick Robinson
-
Diamondhead
- By: Patrick Robinson
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Navy SEAL Mack Bedford's fellow officers are brutally killed by Iraqi insurgents using a cruel, new anti-tank Diamondhead missile, Mack avenges their murders by gunning down the then-unarmed attackers, ultimately getting himself court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy. To make matters worse, Mack then learns that the Diamondhead missiles were sold illegally by French industrialist and infamous politician Henri Foche.
-
-
A Disastrous Departure of Style and Genre
- By Anonymous User on 01-09-13
By: Patrick Robinson
-
Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
-
-
Errors
- By Anonymous User on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
-
Leviathan
- The History of Whaling in America
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: James Boles
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. This absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs.
-
-
NOT JUST BLUBBER
- By Anonymous User on 08-06-07
By: Eric Jay Dolin
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
-
-
Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance