Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/625248 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Hard Road to Glory, Volume 2 (1919-1945): A History of the African-American Athlete Author: Arthur Ashe Narrator: Landon Woodson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 31 minutes Release date: July 16, 2024 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: “The most comprehensive reference source on African-American athletes yet compiled.”—San Francisco Chronicle With a Foreword by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe Available once again for a new generation of readers, the second volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of this legendary sports star and global activist’s lifelong dream. When tennis great Arthur Ashe first published his A Hard Road to Glory trilogy, this ambitious project was the first of its kind, a milestone in the presentation of United States social history. A Hard Road to Glory Volume 2, carries on the little-known full story of Black athletes and their contributions to American sports and culture.  Volume 2 covers America’s “Golden Age” of sports from the end of World War One to the end of World War Two, from to 1919–1945. It was a time when the feats of legends such as Babe Ruth, Red Grange, and Jack Dempsey shone brightly—and segregation reigned supreme. Racial restrictions led to the formation of independent Black organizations, which saw its own share of extraordinary stars. Meanwhile, a number of great Black athletes, including Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, became sports heroes admired by millions worldwide. Today, Black athletes and Black women in particular are receiving more visibility than ever for their unparalleled, world record-breaking excellence, their activism, and their leadership and vision. Serena Williams, Simone Biles, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Naomi Osaka are consistently elevating athletics and are reshaping the way we think about sports, excellence, society, and history. Arthur Ashe paved the way for them all; A Hard Road to Glory is fundamental to our understanding of Black athletes and our nation’s past, present, and future. Now more than ever, this collection is one of this amazing icon’s greatest legacies—a treasure to be celebrated by readers today and those to come. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/609203 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hope Lies Ahead: Encouragement for Parents of Prodigals from a Family That's Been There Author: Geoffrey Banks, James Banks Narrator: Geoffrey Banks, James Banks Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 36 minutes Release date: January 3, 2024 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: No prodigal is beyond the reach of God.   Do you have a child who has walked away from Jesus? Or have you walked away from Him yourself? Hope Lies Ahead captures the candid journey of a prodigal son’s return, written from the unique perspective of both the father who prayed and the son who struggled. Told together, their story will encourage you through the honesty of their pain and their compelling experience of God’s redemption.    Amid the heartache of watching his teenage son self-destruct and the realization that all he could do was pray, pastor James Banks wrote the popular book Prayers for Prodigals. At a low point, Geoffrey Banks recognized that life could be better, and he sensed Jesus calling him back. Now, Hope Lies Ahead tells the powerful story of God’s faithfulness to answer prayer and of the healing found in Him.    No matter what you’re struggling with—whether it’s you or a child who has abandoned faith or faces addiction or prison—you are not alone. There is hope in Jesus, who makes all things new.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/626899 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America Author: Katherine Turk Narrator: Kimberly M. Wetherell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 56 minutes Release date: August 15, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: The history of NOW—its organization, trials, and revolutionary mission—told through the work of three members. In the summer of 1966, crammed into a DC hotel suite and passing paper cups of liquor, twenty-eight women hatched a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had quietly pulled away attendees from the State Womens’ Commissions annual conference. Frustrated with government inertia, they laid out a vision for an organization to unite and advocate for all women. Inspired, challenged, skeptical, they debated the idea late into the night and the next day. By the end of the conference, the National Organization of Women was born. In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and influence of this foundational group through three relatively unknown core members: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican-American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organizer and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican and former beauty queen. From its inception in 1966 through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organization that was radical in its time, and built it to last. This is the first time anyone has told their story. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/616336 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Author: Lena S. Andrews Narrator: Courtney Patterson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 4 minutes Release date: August 1, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: ''An ingenious look at WWII.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) A groundbreaking new history of the role of American servicewomen in WWII, illuminating their forgotten yet essential contributions to the Allies’ victory. Valiant Women is the story of the 350,000 American women who served in uniform during World War II. These incredible women served in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time. They were pilots, codebreakers, ordnance experts, gunnery instructors, metalsmiths, chemists, translators, parachute riggers, truck drivers, radarmen, pigeon trainers, and much more. They were directly involved in some of the most important moments of the war, from the D-Day landings to the peace negotiations in Paris. These women—who hailed from every race, creed, and walk of life—died for their country and received the nation’s highest honors. Their work, both individually and in total, was at the heart of the Allied strategy that won World War II. Yet, until now, their stories have been relegated to the dusty shelves of military archives or a passing mention in the local paper. Often the women themselves kept their stories private, even from their own families. Now, military analyst Lena Andrews corrects the record with the definitive and comprehensive historical account of American servicewomen during World War II, based on new archival research, firsthand interviews with surviving veterans, and a deep professional understanding of military history and strategy. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622030 to listen full audiobooks. Title: This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City Author: Jesse Rifkin Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 16 hours 47 minutes Release date: July 11, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: A fascinating history that examines how real estate, gentrification, community and the highs and lows of New York City itself shaped the city’s music scenes from folk to house music. Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant clubs in American music history. But you won’t know it—almost all of these venues have been demolished or repurposed, leaving no record of what they were, how they shaped music scenes or their impact on the neighborhoods around them. Traditional music history tells us that famous scenes are created by brilliant, singular artists. But dig deeper and you’ll find that they’re actually created by cheap rent, empty space and other unglamorous factors that allow artistic communities to flourish. The 1960s folk scene would have never existed without access to Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park. If the city hadn’t gone bankrupt in 1975, there would have been no punk rock. Brooklyn indie rock of the 2000s was only able to come together because of the borough’s many empty warehouse spaces. But these scenes are more than just moments of artistic genius—they’re also part of the urban gentrification cycle, one that often displaces other communities and, eventually, the musicians themselves. Drawing from over a hundred exclusive interviews with a wide range of musicians, deejays and scenesters (including members of Peter, Paul and Mary; White Zombie; Moldy Peaches; Sonic Youth; Treacherous Three; Cro-Mags; Sun Ra Arkestra; and Suicide), writer, historian and tour guide Jesse Rifkin painstakingly reconstructs the physical history of numerous classic New York music scenes. This Must Be the Place examines how these scenes came together and fell apart—and shows how these communal artistic experiences are not just for rarefied geniuses but available to us all. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623548 to listen full audiobooks. Title: We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus Author: Sean A Mirski Narrator: Gary Tiedemann Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 32 minutes Release date: June 27, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? The answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one—the United States.   In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors’ soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower.   Today, as China makes its own run at regional hegemony and nations like Russia and Iran grow more menacing, Mirski’s fresh look at the rise of the American colossus offers indispensable lessons for how to meet the challenges of our own century.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622376 to listen full audiobooks. Title: In Other Words, Leadership: How a Young Mother's Weekly Letters to Her Governor Helped Both Women Brave the First Pandemic Year Author: Shannon A. Mullen Narrator: Shannon A. Mullen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 34 minutes Release date: June 20, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: “A remarkable story of work, worry, art, faith, community, life, and hope. An instant classic.”  — Heather Cox Richardson, author of the New York Times bestseller Democracy Awakening 'A heartfelt and moving story . . . Just as important, it’s also a well-timed lesson in civics.'  — Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls Two unforgettable women from opposite poles of power in Maine forge an uplifting bond through good, old-fashioned letter writing that helps them navigate the COVID crisis Both women bring civility, grace, wit, and wisdom to the challenge of protecting those who depend on them — in other words, leadership This trip to the “Vacationland” of Maine — where the state motto is I Lead — offers an inspiring tale of civility and purpose, of doing the right thing and not just surviving, but prevailing. The first woman to serve as governor of Maine, Janet Mills, had been in office a year when COVID-19 reached the United States. The recently-widowed 72-year-old wrote in her journal there is “no playbook for a pandemic” as she imposed unprecedented restrictions on her state. When early support for the governor’s response curdled to rampant opposition, a young mother named Ashirah Knapp sent a letter of support from a remote homestead in the woods of Maine. Ashirah’s handwritten dispatch detailed how the public health emergency was upending her family’s life and livelihood, and she promised to keep writing “every week until we are through this time” to remind the governor how many Mainers supported her despite the disruption. Ashirah’s letters, with their simple wisdom and striking penmanship, stood out in a flood of correspondence Governor Mills was receiving that ranged in tone from appreciative to furious. They helped keep her grounded as she made wrenching, often unpopular choices. Shannon A. Mullen weaves from these two women’s letters and the governor’s journal, which were never intended for publication, an intimate and compelling true story that is a celebration of civility and compassion in the face of rancor and of resolve in the face of adversity.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624487 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Detroit City is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis Author: Mark Binelli Narrator: Matt Godfrey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 42 minutes Release date: June 20, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence. Throughout the city’s “museum of neglect'―its swaths of abandoned buildings, its miles of urban prairie―he tracks both the blight and the signs of its repurposing, from the school for pregnant teenagers to a beleaguered UAW local; from metal scrappers and gun-toting vigilantes to artists reclaiming abandoned auto factories; from the organic farming on empty lots to GM’s risky wager on the Volt electric car; from firefighters forced by budget cuts to sleep in tents to the mayor’s realignment plan (the most ambitious on record) to move residents of half-empty neighborhoods into a viable, new urban center. Sharp and impassioned, Detroit City Is the Place to Be is alive with the sense of possibility that comes when a city hits rock bottom. Beyond the usual portrait of crime, poverty, and ruin, we glimpse a longshot future Detroit that is smaller, less segregated, greener, economically diverse, and better functioning―what could be the boldest reimagining of a post-industrial city in our new century.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622043 to listen full audiobooks. Title: First Family Author: Cassandra A. Good Narrator: Courtney Patterson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 35 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Award-winning historian Cassandra A. Good shows how the outspoken stepgrandchildren of George Washington played an overlooked but important role in the development of American society and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War. While it’s widely known in America that George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, few are aware that they raised numerous children together. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, as well as meet the children he helped raise and trace their complicated roles in American history. The children of Martha Washington’s son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye. Raised in the country’s first “first family,” they remained well-known as Washington’s family and keepers of his legacy throughout their lives. By turns petty and powerful, glamorous and cruel, the Custises used Washington as a means to enhance their own power and status. As enslavers committed to the American empire, the Custis family embodied the failures of the American experiment that finally exploded into civil war—all the while being celebrities in a soap opera of their own making. First Family brings new focus and attention to this surprisingly neglected aspect of George Washington’s life and legacy. As the country grapples with concerns about political dynasties and the public role of presidential families, the saga of Washington’s family offers a human story of historical precedent. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629601 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West Author: Will Grant Narrator: Kevin Stillwell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 34 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: "Spellbinding" (Douglas Preston) and "completely fascinating" (Elizabeth Letts), cowboy and journalist Will Grant takes us on an epic and authentic horseback journey into the modern West on an adventure of a lifetime.  The Last Ride of the Pony Express boldly illuminates both our mythic fascination with the Pony Express, and how its spirit continues to this day. ​      The Pony Express was a fast-horse frontier mail service that spanned the American West— the high, dry, and undeniably lonesome part of North America. While in operation during the 1860s, it carried letter mail on a blistering ten-day schedule between Missouri and San Francisco, running through a vast and mostly uninhabited wilderness. It covered a massive distance—akin to running horses between Madrid and Moscow— and to this day, the Pony Express is irrefutably the greatest display of American horsemanship to ever color the pages of a history book.   Though the Pony Express has enjoyed a lot of traction over the years, among the authors that have attempted to encapsulate it, none have ever ridden it themselves. While most scholars would look for answers inside a library, Will Grant looks for his between the ears of a horse. Inspired by the likes of Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom traveled throughout the developing West, Will Grant returned to his roots: he would ride the trail himself with his two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, from one end to the other.   Will Grant captures the spirit of the west in a way that few writers have.  Along with rich encounters with the ranchers, farmers, historians, and businessmen who populate the trail, his exploits on horseback offer an intimate portrait of how the West has evolved from the rough and tumble 19th century to the present, and it’s written with such intimacy that you’ll feel as though you’re riding right alongside of him. Along the way, he fights off wild mustangs wanting to steal his horses in Utah, camps with Peruvian sheepherders in the mountains, and even spends three days riding under the Top Gun aviator school in Nevada, which are just a handful of extraordinary tales Will Grant unveils as he makes his way across the treacherous and, at times, thrilling landscape of the known and unknown American West.   The Last Ride of the Pony Express is a uniquely tenacious tale of adventure by a native son of the West who defies most modern conveniences to compass some two thousand miles on horseback. The result is an unforgettable narrative that will forever change how you see the West, the Pony Express, and America as a whole.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624941 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Lone Stars Rising: The Fifty People Who Turned Texas Into the Fastest-Growing, Most Exciting, and, Sometimes, Most Exasperating State in the Country Author: Editors Of Texas Monthly Narrator: Roxanne Hernandez Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 3 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Texas Monthly, a collection of original essays and portraits of fifty groundbreaking Texans who have shaped the Lone Star State—and the nation—over the past half century. With a population of twenty-nine million, Texas has birthed some of America’s most innovative, culture-altering politicians, entertainers, athletes, and activists of the last five decades. In Lone Stars Rising, the editors of Texas Monthly select fifty of the most trailblazing Texans who have shaped the Lone Star State and America today. Organized by decade and featuring essays from the magazine’s legendary roster of contributors, accompanied by drawings and fifty photographs throughout, this collection includes incisive commentary on the stars whose rise from Texas to the world stage has been meteoric, as well as the lesser-known individuals who have been toiling on the sidelines, quietly and intentionally shaping the way we think and talk about the Texas that exists today. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Texas Monthly, Lone Stars Rising is the quintessential ode to the Lone Star State in all its complexity. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629610 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods Author: Greg King Narrator: Galen Osier Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 28 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down. Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California’s famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the world’s tallest trees understand how unlikely it is that these last isolated groves of giant trees still stand at all. In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s—as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands.  The land grab began in 1849, when a “green gold rush” of migrants came to exploit the legendary redwoods that grew along the Russian River. Several generations later, in 1987, Greg King discovered and named Headwaters Forest—at 3,000 acres the largest ancient redwood habitat remaining outside of parks—and he led the movement to save this grove. After a decade of one of the longest, most dramatic, and violent environmental campaigns in US history, in 1999 the state and federal governments protected Headwaters Forest.  The Ghost Forest explores a central question, an overhanging mystery: What was it like, this botanical Elysium that grew only along the Northern California coast, a forest so spectacular—but also uniquely valuable as a cornerstone of American economic growth—that in the end it would inspire life-and-death struggles? Few but loggers and surveyors ever saw such magnificent trees, ancient sentinels that, like ghosts, have informed King’s understanding of the world. On a lifelong journey, King finds himself through the generations, and through the trees.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629622 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery Author: Herb Frazier, Joseph Mcgill Narrator: Joseph Mcgill, Herb Frazier Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 27 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 2 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep in former slave dwellings—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America. Since founding the  Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings—throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories.  Together, McGill and coauthor Herb Frazier give readers an important emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history. Contains a new afterword and reading group guide.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623815 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend Author: Graham Russell Gao Hodges Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 41 minutes Release date: May 30, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Anna May Wong remains one of Hollywood’s best-known Chinese American actors. Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong starred in over fifty movies, sharing billing with stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ramon Novarro, and Warner Oland. Her life, though, is the prototypical story of an immigrant’s difficult path through the prejudices of American culture. Born in Los Angeles in 1905, she was the second daughter of seven children born to a laundryman and his wife. Childhood experience fueled her fascination with Hollywood. By 1919 she secured a small part in her first film, The Red Lantern, and she continued to act up until her death. Her most famous film roles were in The Toll of the Sea, Peter Pan, The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express. But discrimination against Asiana, in both in the film industry and society, was commonplace, and when it came time to make a film version of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, she was passed over for the Chinese female lead role, which was ultimately given to the white actor Luise Rainer. In a narrative that recalls the pathos of life in Los Angeles’s Chinese neighborhoods and the glamour of Hollywood’s pleasure palaces, Graham Russell Gao Hodges recovers the life of a Hollywood legend.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/625423 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Summer of 1876: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season That Defined the American West Author: Chris Wimmer Narrator: Chris Wimmer, Johnny Heller Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 0 minutes Release date: May 30, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: This program features a preface and acknowledgments read by the author. 'The audiobook is a fun and easy listening experience.'- AudioFile From the creator of the 'Legends of the Old West' podcast, an audiobook exploring the overlapping narratives of the biggest legends in frontier mythology. The summer of 1876 was a key time period in the development of the mythology of the Old West. Many individuals who are considered legends by modern listeners were involved in events that began their notoriety or turned out to be the most famous — or infamous — moments of their lives. Those individuals were Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, and Jesse James. The Summer of 1876 weaves together the timelines of the events that made these men legends to demonstrate the overlapping context of their stories and to illustrate the historical importance of that summer, all layered with highlights of significant milestones in 1876: the inaugural baseball season of the National League; the final year of President Ulysses S. Grant’s embattled administration; the debut of an invention called the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell; the release of Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer;” and many more. Contextualizing these events against the backdrop of the massive 100th anniversary party thrown to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, The Summer of 1876 is the ultimate exploration and celebration of the summer that defined the West. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624938 to listen full audiobooks. Title: An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created Author: Santi Elijah Holley Narrator: Adam Lazarre-White Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 47 minutes Release date: May 23, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK An NPR Best Book of the Year • Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence ''Magnificent…. A uniquely intimate history of Black liberation.'' – Los Angeles Times The long overdue story of the Shakurs, persistent fighters in the U.S. struggle for racial justice, and one of the most prominent, influential and fiercely creative families in recent history For over fifty years, the Shakurs have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. Many people are only familiar with Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or the late rapper Tupac. But the branches of the Shakur family tree extend widely, and the roots reach into the most furtive and hidden depths of the underground. Whether founding one of the most notorious Black Panther chapters in the country, spearheading community-based healthcare, or engaging in armed struggle with systemic oppression, the Shakurs were at the forefront. They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family—one of the most famous names in contemporary Black American history—has never been told. An Amerikan Family is a history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced and shaped by the Shakurs. It is a story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. Drawing from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, historical archives, court records, transcripts, and other rare documents, An Amerikan Family tells the complete and often devastating story of Black America’s long struggle for racial justice and the nation’s covert and repressive tactics to defeat that struggle. It is the story of a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often perilous measures in the quest for freedom. In short, the story of the Shakurs is the story of America.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622436 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Who's Your Founding Father?: One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence Author: David Fleming Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 44 minutes Release date: May 16, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: A centuries-old secret document might unravel the origin story of America and reveal the intellectual crime of the millennia in this epic dive into our country’s history to discover the first, true Declaration of Independence. In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register that he breathlessly described to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.” The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars and a fanatical frontier preacher in a remote corner of North Carolina had become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent” from England. Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. A year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is exactly why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated” and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.” Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams left off, leaving no archive, no cemetery, no bizarre clue or wild character (and definitely no Dunkin’ Donuts) unexplored while traveling the globe to bring to life one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register. He breathlessly described it to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.” The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars, and a fanatical frontier preacher had joined forces in a remote corner of North Carolina to become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent” from England. Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration, aka the MecDec, was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. About a year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration, and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated” and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.” Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams’ investigation left off. Fleming leaves no archive, cemetery, bizarre clue, conspiracy theory, or wild character unexplored as he travels the globe and shines new light on one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/620373 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Lost at Sea: Eddie Rickenbacker's Twenty-Four Days Adrift on the Pacific--A World War II Tale of Courage and Faith Author: John Wukovits Narrator: Nathan Agin Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 55 minutes Release date: May 16, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: The forgotten story of American war hero Eddie Rickenbacker's crash landing in the Pacific during World War II, and his incredible twenty-three-day crusade to keep his crew alive In the darkest days of World War II, an unlikely civilian was sent to deliver a letter from Washington to General MacArthur in New Guinea. Eddie Rickenbacker was a genuine icon, a pioneer of aviation, the greatest fighter pilot of the First World War, recipient of the Medal of Honor, who’d retired to become a renowned race car driver. Now in his fifties, one of the most admired men in America, Rickenbacker was again serving his nation, riding high above the Pacific as a passenger aboard a B-17.   But soon the plane was forced to crash-land on the ocean surface, leaving its eight occupants adrift in tiny rubber life rafts, hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of land. Lacking fresh water and with precious little food, the men faced days of unrelenting sun, followed by nights shivering in the cold, fighting pangs of hunger, exhaustion, and thirst, all the while circled by sharks. Each prayed to see a friendly vessel on the horizon, and dreaded the arrival of a Japanese warship. Meanwhile, as the US Navy scoured the South Pacific, American radio and newspapers back home parsed every detail of Rickenbacker's disappearance, and an adoring public awaited news of his fate. Using survivors’ accounts and contemporary records, award-winning author John Wukovits brings to life a gripping story of survival, leadership, and faith in a time of crisis.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/620417 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation Author: Joshua Zeitz Narrator: Dan Woren Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 5 minutes Release date: May 16, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Lincoln’s spiritual journey from spiritual skeptic to America's first evangelical Christian presidentbeliever—a conversion that changed both the Civil War and the practice of religion itself. Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm’s length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But as he came to appreciate the growing political and military importance of the Christian community, and when death touched the Lincoln household in an awful, intimate way, the erstwhile skeptic effectively evolved into a believer and harnessed the power of evangelical Protestantism to rally the nation to arms. The war, he told Americans, was divine retribution for the sin of slavery.   This is the story of that transformation and the ways in which religion helped millions of Northerners interpret the carnage and political upheaval of the 1850s and 1860s. Rather than focus on battles and personalities, Joshua Zeitz probes ways in which war and spiritual convictions became intertwined. Characters include the famous—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Henry Ward Beecher—as well as ordinary soldiers and their families whose evolving understanding of mortality, heaven, and mission motivated them to fight. Long underestimated in accounts of the Civil War, religion—specifically evangelical Christianity—played an instrumental role on the battlefield and home front, and in the corridors of government.   More than any president before him—or any president after, until George W. Bush—Lincoln harnessed popular religious enthusiasm to build broad-based support for a political party and a cause. A master politician who was sincere about his religion, Lincoln held beliefs that were  unconventional—and widely misunderstood then, as now. After his death and the end of an unforgiving war, Americans needed to memorialize Lincoln as a Christian martyr. The truth was, of course, considerably more complicated, as this original book explores.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622446 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Edison's Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses Author: Katie Spalding Narrator: Susie Riddell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 53 minutes Release date: May 16, 2023 Genres: The Americas Publisher's Summary: Overturn everything you knew about history’s greatest minds in this raucous and hilarious book, where it turns out there's a finer line between "genius" and "idiot" than we've previously known. “As Albert Einstein almost certainly never said, everyone is a genius – but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” So begins Katie Spalding’s spunky takedown of the Western canon, and how genius may not be as irrefutably great as we commonly understand. While most of us may never become Einstein, it may surprise you to learn that there’s probably a bunch of stuff you can do that Einstein couldn’t. And, as Spalding shows, the famous prodigies she explores here were quite odd by any definition. For example:   - Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb, believed that he could communicate with the undead and built the world’s very first hotline to heaven: the Spirit Phone. - Marie and Pierre Curie, famous for discovering radioactivity, slept next to a lump of radioactive material for years and strapped it to their arms to watch it burn them in real-time. - Lord Byron, acclaimed British poet, literally took a bear with him to university. - Isaac Newton discovered the laws of gravity and motion, but he also looked up at the sun without eye protection. The result? Three days of blindness. - Tesla, whose scientific work led to the invention of the AC unit, fell in love with a pigeon. Edison's Ghosts is filled with examples of the so-called best of humanity doing, to put it bluntly, some really dumb shit.  You’ll discover stories that deserve to be told but never are: the hilarious, regrettable, and downright bafflingly lesser-known achievements that never made it into our history books, until now.