Try free for 30 days
-
The Field of Blood
- Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
- Narrated by: Joanne B. Freeman
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Our Own Worst Enemy
- The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy
- By: Tom Nichols
- Narrated by: Tom Nichols
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble - but who is really to blame? In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and antidemocratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves.
-
-
Nice People Often Make Bad Citizens
- By Anonymous User on 17-05-2023
-
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Narrated by: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them.
-
Attack from Within
- How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
- By: Barbara McQuade
- Narrated by: Barbara McQuade
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country's hard-won democracy.
-
Find Me the Votes
- A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election
- By: Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Find Me the Votes, two years of immersive reporting by Isikoff and Klaidman has produced the most authoritative and dramatic account yet of a defeated president’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and how a local Georgia prosecutor—a daughter of the civil rights movement—decided to indict him and his allies for his desperate attempt to hold on to power. From the beginning, Fani Willis saw Donald Trump’s crimes as a voting rights case, and an attempt by the former president to deprive the citizens of Georgia of the franchise, a right for which her forebears had bled.
-
On Great Fields
- The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
- By: Ronald C. White
- Narrated by: Ronald C. White
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers.
-
Longstreet
- The Confederate General Who Defied the South
- By: Elizabeth Varon
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle. After the war Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course.
-
Our Own Worst Enemy
- The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy
- By: Tom Nichols
- Narrated by: Tom Nichols
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble - but who is really to blame? In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and antidemocratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves.
-
-
Nice People Often Make Bad Citizens
- By Anonymous User on 17-05-2023
-
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Narrated by: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them.
-
Attack from Within
- How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
- By: Barbara McQuade
- Narrated by: Barbara McQuade
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country's hard-won democracy.
-
Find Me the Votes
- A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election
- By: Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Find Me the Votes, two years of immersive reporting by Isikoff and Klaidman has produced the most authoritative and dramatic account yet of a defeated president’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and how a local Georgia prosecutor—a daughter of the civil rights movement—decided to indict him and his allies for his desperate attempt to hold on to power. From the beginning, Fani Willis saw Donald Trump’s crimes as a voting rights case, and an attempt by the former president to deprive the citizens of Georgia of the franchise, a right for which her forebears had bled.
-
On Great Fields
- The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
- By: Ronald C. White
- Narrated by: Ronald C. White
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers.
-
Longstreet
- The Confederate General Who Defied the South
- By: Elizabeth Varon
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle. After the war Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course.
-
Enough
- By: Cassidy Hutchinson
- Narrated by: Cassidy Hutchinson
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House.
-
-
Very Interesting tale of courage, though a little long
- By Marc E Battino on 13-01-2024
-
The Big Cheat
- How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family
- By: David Cay Johnston
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While the world watched Donald Trump’s presidency in horror or delight, few noticed that his lifelong grifting quietly continued. Less than 40 minutes after taking the oath of office, Trump began turning the White House into a money machine for himself, his family, and his courtiers. The Big Cheat offers a guided tour of how money flowed in and out of Trump’s hundreds of enterprises, showing in simple terms how a corrupt president used our government for his benefit, even putting national security at risk.
-
-
Detailed account by an experienced writer
- By Kirsty Stewart on 06-12-2022
-
Kingdom of Rage
- The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace
- By: Elizabeth Neumann
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elizabeth Neumann began her anti-terrorism career as part of President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Counsel in the wake of the September 11 attacks, she expected to spend her life protecting her country from the threat of global terrorism. But as her career evolved, she began to perceive that the greatest threat to American security came not from religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan or Iraq but from white nationalists and radicalized religious fundamentalists within the very institution that was closest to her heart—the American evangelical church.
-
Lincoln
- By: David Herbert Donald
- Narrated by: Dick Estell
- Length: 30 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.
-
-
Informative and captures the moment
- By Andrew J Ford on 19-03-2023
-
Life After Power
- Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House
- By: Jared Cohen
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Former presidents have an unusual place in American life. King George III believed that George Washington’s departure after two terms made him “the greatest character of the age.” But Alexander Hamilton worried former presidents might “[wander] among the people like ghosts.” They were both right. Life After Power tells the stories of seven former presidents, from the Founding to today. Each changed history. Each offered lessons about how to decide what to do in the next chapter of life.
-
American Psychosis
- A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
- By: David Corn
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 17 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fast-paced, rollicking account of how the GOP since the 1950s has constantly encouraged and exploited extremism and paranoia to gain power, AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS offers listeners a brisk can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces of America—which culminated in Donald Trump’s triumph. It tells the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fueled fear, anger, and resentment to win elections.
-
-
A powerful history of how the extreme right has taken over the GOP
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-2023
-
How Fascism Works
- The Politics of Us and Them
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century.
-
-
A good, basic introduction to fascist politics
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-2019
-
American Crusade
- By: Andrew L Seidel
- Narrated by: Andrew L Seidel, Lee Osario
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney and author of the critically acclaimed book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court's role in that “crusade.”
-
Why We Did It
- A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
- By: Tim Miller
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the strategists behind the famous 2012 RNC “autopsy,” Miller conducts his own forensic study on the pungent carcass of the party he used to love, cutting into all the hubris, ambition, idiocy, desperation, and self-deception for everyone to see. In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class's Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.
-
-
Fascinating insights
- By Katie Parrott on 19-04-2023
-
Dying of Whiteness
- How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
- By: Jonathan M. Metzl
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A physician reveals how right-wing backlash policies have mortal consequences - even for the white voters they promise to help.
-
Reconstruction (Updated Edition)
- America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
- By: Eric Foner
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed.
-
The Name of War
- King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war - colonists against Indians - that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war". Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.
Publisher's Summary
This program is read by the author.
The previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War
In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.
These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities - the feel, sense, and sound of it - as well as its nation-shaping import.
Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
What listeners say about The Field of Blood
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sweing
- 18-05-2023
Fantastic history on political violence
This is a history of violence in congress in the pre civil war years. Driven by southerners, the contagion of violence spread to northern Republican congressmen and then an entire nation. I’ve read a lot on the pre civil war years and most books quickly gloss over this subject. Fascinating stories of key moments in history. Highly recommended.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!