-
Uncle Sam’s Devil Island
- The History and Legacy of Alcatraz Island
- Narrated by: Jim D Johnston
- Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
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 $6.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Alcatraz Island has been home to a lighthouse, a military fort, a national park, and gatherings of Native American protesters, but say the name Alcatraz to any American and they will immediately associate it with prison. This is somewhat ironic since the island, just a mile and a half away from San Francisco in the Bay, was a federal prison for only three decades, but in that time, “The Rock” became notorious for being the most secure prison in the nation. In that time, three dozen prisoners tried to escape, which led to the “Battle of Alcatraz” and some of the most complex plots ever made to bust out, but nobody ever successfully escaped The Rock, and several died trying. As one commenter poignantly put it, “You break the rules, you go to prison. You break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz Prison.” Another writer echoed this sentiment, calling Alcatraz "the great garbage can of San Francisco Bay, into which every federal prison dumped its most rotten apples".
In a sense, it was fitting that Alcatraz became the most famous prison in American history, because hundreds of years before the penitentiary was located there, it was being used by Native Americans to banish members. Thanks to the strong currents near it and the cold, inhospitable terrain of the small island, Native Americans only used it sparingly, and unruly members were often sent there as punishment.
While local Native Americans referred to it as “Evil Island”, the island got its most famous name from Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala, who mapped the Bay in 1775 and named the island “La Isla de los Alcatraces" ("The Island of the Pelicans”). Although pelicans no longer call the island home, a French explorer in the early 19th century confirmed the island was “covered with a countless number of these birds. A gun fired over the feathered legions caused them to fly up in a great cloud and with a noise like a hurricane".
Like the Native Americans, the Spanish barely used the island, but given its location, the island would eventually have military value. The federal government eventually established a fort on the island, and it was soon used to hold Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. During the war, one Union supporter gloated over the news that one Confederate sympathizer “will be transported to the healthful but breezy atmosphere of Alcatraz Island, where he can ruminate ad nauseum and chew the bitter end of treason”.
For all of these reasons, Alcatraz has a unique legacy and remains a fixture of American pop culture. Indeed, it remains one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations.
Uncle Sam’s Devil Island: The History and Legacy of Alcatraz Island chronicles the history of the island before, during, and after it became America’s most notorious prison. You will learn about The Rock like never before.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By: J. Campbell Bruce
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.
-
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By john on 12-15-10
-
Uprising
- Understanding Attica, Revolution, and the Incarceration State
- By: Clarence B. Jones, Stuart Connelly
- Narrated by: Brad Sanders
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In September 1971, the bloodiest prison riot in American history took place in sleepy upstate New York town of Attica. Yet most of that blood was spilled not by the inmates who took over Attica Correctional Facility during four desperate days, but by the state's governor and future vice president Nelson Rockefeller. This is the personal story of what those days were like, what went wrong, and how the tragedy at Attica holds up a mirror to America's dark treatment of its prison population.
-
-
Wow
- By Thomas P. on 02-10-22
By: Clarence B. Jones, and others
-
Hell Before Their Very Eyes
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On April Fourth, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity.
-
-
loved it
- By A. Adams on 10-11-20
By: John C. McManus
-
American Prison
- A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
- By: Shane Bauer
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Shane Bauer
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for nine dollars an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough and wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War.
-
-
Disgusting
- By Frank on 09-23-18
By: Shane Bauer
-
Schindler's List
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden — Schindler’s Jews — to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
-
-
really well done
- By Neil H. Greenberg on 03-09-19
By: Thomas Keneally
-
The Rape of Nanking
- By: Iris Chang
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In December 1937, in the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity- one of the worst in world history- continues to be denied by the Japanese government.
-
-
Powerful
- By Douglas on 09-05-09
By: Iris Chang
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By: J. Campbell Bruce
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.
-
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By john on 12-15-10
-
Uprising
- Understanding Attica, Revolution, and the Incarceration State
- By: Clarence B. Jones, Stuart Connelly
- Narrated by: Brad Sanders
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In September 1971, the bloodiest prison riot in American history took place in sleepy upstate New York town of Attica. Yet most of that blood was spilled not by the inmates who took over Attica Correctional Facility during four desperate days, but by the state's governor and future vice president Nelson Rockefeller. This is the personal story of what those days were like, what went wrong, and how the tragedy at Attica holds up a mirror to America's dark treatment of its prison population.
-
-
Wow
- By Thomas P. on 02-10-22
By: Clarence B. Jones, and others
-
Hell Before Their Very Eyes
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On April Fourth, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity.
-
-
loved it
- By A. Adams on 10-11-20
By: John C. McManus
-
American Prison
- A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
- By: Shane Bauer
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Shane Bauer
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for nine dollars an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough and wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War.
-
-
Disgusting
- By Frank on 09-23-18
By: Shane Bauer
-
Schindler's List
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden — Schindler’s Jews — to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
-
-
really well done
- By Neil H. Greenberg on 03-09-19
By: Thomas Keneally
-
The Rape of Nanking
- By: Iris Chang
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In December 1937, in the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity- one of the worst in world history- continues to be denied by the Japanese government.
-
-
Powerful
- By Douglas on 09-05-09
By: Iris Chang
-
Gulag
- A History
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 27 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
-
-
Nice compliment to Solzhenitsyn
- By Thucydides on 08-03-17
By: Anne Applebaum
-
Old Sparky
- The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty
- By: Anthony Galvin
- Narrated by: Jack Reynolds
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the "current wars" between Edison and Westinghouse, which led to the development of the electric chair. It examines how the electric chair became the most popular method of execution in America before being superseded by lethal injection. Famous executions are explored alongside quirky last meals and poignant last words.
-
-
Information not a sermon.
- By Jakk on 10-24-16
By: Anthony Galvin
-
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
- Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII
- By: Jack El-Hai
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by 16 suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of $100,000,000 in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime....
-
-
I Don't Understand The Complaints...
- By Douglas on 01-03-14
By: Jack El-Hai
-
Four Perfect Pebbles
- A Holocaust Story
- By: Lila Perl, Marion Blumenthal Lazan
- Narrated by: Cheryl Stern, A. C. Fellner
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marion Blumenthal Lazan's unforgettable memoir recalls the devastating years that shaped her childhood. Following Hitler's rise to power, the Blumenthal family - father, mother, Marion, and her brother, Albert - were trapped in Nazi Germany. They managed eventually to get to Holland, but soon thereafter it was occupied by the Nazis. For the next six and a half years the Blumenthals were forced to live in refugee, transit, and prison camps that included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious Bergen-Belsen in Germany.
-
-
A Wonderful/Terrible Story
- By EmilyA on 10-20-11
By: Lila Perl, and others
-
Angela Davis
- An Autobiography
- By: Angela Davis
- Narrated by: Angela Davis
- Length: 19 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison-abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. Angela Davis: An Autobiography, first published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in these struggles. Read by Angela Davis herself, this autobiography, told with warmth, brilliance, humor, and conviction, is a classic account of a life in struggle, with echoes in our own time.
-
-
Good story of an interesting person
- By Antuane Brown on 03-17-22
By: Angela Davis
-
The Irishman
- Frank Sheeran’s True Crime Story
- By: Daniel Brand
- Narrated by: Michael Soma
- Length: 2 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As an old man suffering from cancer that would soon kill him, Frank Sheeran shared his story with his attorney. He told him of the things that were already known, but he shared much, much more. This audiobook explores Frank Sheeran’s confessions as a lifelong criminal with ties to some of the biggest crimes of the 20th century.
-
-
Abridged version of “I Hear You Paint Houses?”
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-20
By: Daniel Brand
-
Infamy
- The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II
- By: Richard Reeves
- Narrated by: James Yaegashi
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Less than three months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and inflamed the nation, President Roosevelt signed an executive order declaring parts of four western states to be a war zone operating under military rule. The US Army immediately began rounding up thousands of Japanese-Americans, sometimes giving them less than 24 hours to vacate their houses and farms. For the rest of the war, these victims of war hysteria were imprisoned in primitive camps.
-
-
Disjointed, disconnected narrative
- By Triple A on 05-22-15
By: Richard Reeves
-
The Railway Man
- By: Eric Lomax
- Narrated by: Bill Paterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences.
-
-
From hatred to forgiveness
- By 9S on 05-04-12
By: Eric Lomax
-
First into Nagasaki
- By: George Weller
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On September 6, 1945, less than a month after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, George Weller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, became the first free Westerner to enter the devastated city. Going into the hospitals and consulting the doctors of the bomb's victims, Weller was the first to document its unprecedented long-range medical effects. He also became the first to enter the nearby Allied POW camps, which rivaled those of the Nazis for cruelty and bested them for death count.
-
-
First Into Nagasaki
- By Harold on 02-15-07
By: George Weller
-
Soldiers and Slaves
- American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble
- By: Roger Cohen
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier at the Battle of the Bulge or elsewhere in Europe were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews or were thought to resemble Jews. They were transported in cattle cars to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany, and put to work as slave laborers, mining tunnels for a planned underground synthetic-fuel factory. This was the only incident of its kind during World War II.
-
-
Soldiers and Slaves
- By Hilda on 01-29-09
By: Roger Cohen
-
The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
-
-
great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
-
The Saboteur
- The Aristocrat Who Became France's Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando
- By: Paul Kix
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Agent Zigzag comes this breathtaking biography, as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the very best spy thrillers, which illuminates an unsung hero of the French Resistance during World War II - Robert de La Rochefoucald, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur - and his daring exploits as a résistant trained by Britain's Special Operations Executive.
-
-
Brave outstanding young man
- By paula wright on 06-02-20
By: Paul Kix
Related to this topic
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By: J. Campbell Bruce
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.
-
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By john on 12-15-10
-
Prisoners of the Castle
- An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape.
-
-
Another chapter of history brought to life by a master
- By Steve on 09-28-22
By: Ben Macintyre
-
Inside Alcatraz
- My Time on the Rock
- By: Jim Quillen
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Each day we saw the outside world in all its splendour, and each day that view served as a reminder that we had wasted and ruined our lives. Jim Quillen, AZ586 - a runaway, problem child and petty thief - was jailed several times before his twentieth birthday. In August 1942, after escaping from San Quentin, he was arrested on the run and sentenced to forty-five years in prison, and later transferred to Alcatraz.
-
-
A Cautionary Tale of a Life Misspent
- By Rob S. on 03-16-17
By: Jim Quillen
-
Gulag
- A History
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 27 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
-
-
Nice compliment to Solzhenitsyn
- By Thucydides on 08-03-17
By: Anne Applebaum
-
Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
-
-
I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
-
One Long Night
- A Global History of Concentration Camps
- By: Andrea Pitzer
- Narrated by: Andrea Pitzer
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the 21st century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again".
-
-
Important subject. Horrible narration.
- By wmorrison on 07-04-19
By: Andrea Pitzer
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By: J. Campbell Bruce
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.
-
-
Escape from Alcatraz
- By john on 12-15-10
-
Prisoners of the Castle
- An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape.
-
-
Another chapter of history brought to life by a master
- By Steve on 09-28-22
By: Ben Macintyre
-
Inside Alcatraz
- My Time on the Rock
- By: Jim Quillen
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Each day we saw the outside world in all its splendour, and each day that view served as a reminder that we had wasted and ruined our lives. Jim Quillen, AZ586 - a runaway, problem child and petty thief - was jailed several times before his twentieth birthday. In August 1942, after escaping from San Quentin, he was arrested on the run and sentenced to forty-five years in prison, and later transferred to Alcatraz.
-
-
A Cautionary Tale of a Life Misspent
- By Rob S. on 03-16-17
By: Jim Quillen
-
Gulag
- A History
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 27 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
-
-
Nice compliment to Solzhenitsyn
- By Thucydides on 08-03-17
By: Anne Applebaum
-
Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
-
-
I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
-
One Long Night
- A Global History of Concentration Camps
- By: Andrea Pitzer
- Narrated by: Andrea Pitzer
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the 21st century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again".
-
-
Important subject. Horrible narration.
- By wmorrison on 07-04-19
By: Andrea Pitzer
-
Newjack
- Guarding Sing Sing
- By: Ted Conover
- Narrated by: Ted Conover
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As he struggles to be a good officer, Ted Conover angers inmates, dodges blows, works to balance decency with toughness, and participates in prison rituals - strip frisks, cell searches, cell "extractions" - that exact a toll on inmates and officers alike. The tale begins with the corrections academy and ends with the flames and smoke of New Year's Eve on Conover's floor of the notorious B-Block. Along the way, Conover also recounts the history of Sing Sing.
-
-
THE BEST BOOK ON PRISON LIFE I HAVE EVER READ!!!
- By Steve on 06-27-09
By: Ted Conover
-
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
- By: Nikolaus Wachsmann
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 31 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.
-
-
Narrator warning!
- By S R L COTTERILL on 04-24-15
-
The Auschwitz Volunteer
- Beyond Bravery
- By: Witold Pilecki, Jarek Garlinski - translator
- Narrated by: Marek Probosz, Jarek Garlinski, Ken Kliban, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and report from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report....
-
-
The bar of manhood
- By Rhea on 09-22-13
By: Witold Pilecki, and others
-
The Boys Who Challenged Hitler
- Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club
- By: Phillip Hoose
- Narrated by: Phillip Hoose, Michael Braun
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation's leaders, 15-year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not. Naming their secret club after the fiery British leader, the young patriots in the Churchill Club committed countless acts of sabotage, infuriating the Germans, who eventually had the boys tracked down and arrested. But their efforts were not in vain.
-
-
What courage and determination...
- By Lorraine on 04-02-16
By: Phillip Hoose
-
Berlin at War
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Berlin at War, acclaimed historian Roger Moorhouse provides a magnificent and detailed portrait of everyday life at the epicenter of the Third Reich. Berlin was the stage upon which the rise and fall of the Third Reich was most visibly played out. It was the backdrop for the most lavish Nazi ceremonies, the site of Albert Speer's grandiose plans for a new "world metropolis", and the scene of the final climactic battle to defeat Nazism.
-
-
A unique study of part of World War II
- By Mike From Mesa on 08-25-17
By: Roger Moorhouse
-
Never Remember
- Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gulag was a monstrous network of labor camps that held and killed millions of prisoners from the 1930s to the 1950s. More than half a century after the end of Stalinist terror, the geography of the Gulag has been barely sketched and the number of its victims remains unknown. Has the Gulag been forgotten? Writer Masha Gessen and photographer Misha Friedman set out across Russia in search of the memory of the Gulag.
-
-
a wonderful reminder never to forget
- By Privet on 05-25-19
By: Masha Gessen
-
Witness to Nuremberg
- The Many Lives of the Man Who Translated at the Nazi War Trials
- By: W. Richard Sonnenfeldt
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders.
-
-
So much more than expected
- By Kathy on 03-23-12
-
The President and the Assassin
- McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
- By: Scott Miller
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century.
-
-
An Ideal History Book for the Audio Format
- By Nelson Alexander on 09-30-11
By: Scott Miller
-
The Assassination of Heydrich
- Hitler's Hangman and the Czech Resistance
- By: Jan G. Wiener
- Narrated by: Mark Kamish
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you only listen to one book about what it felt like to be present during the worst time in modern human history, a time when your life could be snuffed out for having the mere thought of opposition against the Nazi regime, this should be the book. It is told by survivors and by one of the greatest survivors of them all, Jan Wiener.
-
-
Hard to listen to
- By Amazon Customer on 01-26-23
By: Jan G. Wiener
-
The Scourge of the Swastika
- A History of Nazi War Crimes During World War II
- By: Lord Russell of Liverpool
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When discussing the German war crimes of the Second World War, modern histories have focused on the Holocaust. While the Final Solution was a unique and unparalleled horror, German atrocities did not end there. The Nazis terrorized their own citizens, tortured and murdered POWs, and carried out countless executions throughout occupied Europe. Lord Russell of Liverpool was part of the legal team that brought Nazi war criminals to justice, and from this first-hand position, he published the best-selling The Scourge of the Swastika in 1954. Liverpool shows that the actions of the Third Reich, were illegal, not merely immoral.
-
-
Lord Russell's Warning From History
- By Kindle Customer on 05-24-16
-
Dark Tide
- The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
- By: Stephen Puleo
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like, "a roaring surf," one of them said later. Like, "a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence," said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window - "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour.
-
-
INTERESTING STORY - ABOUT 2x TOO LONG
- By The Louligan on 09-07-14
By: Stephen Puleo
-
Defiant
- The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned
- By: Alvin Townley
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of the indomitable American POWs who endured "Alcatraz," the Hanoi prison camp where North Vietnam locked up its most dangerous and subversive prisoners, and the wives who fought to bring them home. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW/MIA movement. When the survivors finally returned, one would receive the Medal of Honor, another became a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in Congress.
-
-
Wow! All I can say is Wow!
- By Rick on 02-22-14
By: Alvin Townley
What listeners say about Uncle Sam’s Devil Island
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- MolllyT
- 01-16-19
Excellent read previsit!
The publisher's blurb does a pretty good job, and even mentions the Photos, online and print resources the reader can use. As a historical thesis, I hope she got and A!
The audio is narrated by Jim D. Johnston who does very well.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!