Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in History

When Chief Joe Pfeifer led his firefighters to investigate an odor of gas in downtown Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, he had no idea that his life was about to change forever. A few moments later, he watched as the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Pfeifer, the closest FDNY chief to the scene, spearheaded rescue efforts on one of the darkest days in American history.

In this engrossing account, Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and West.

It’s harder than it seems – after all, it’s only human to thirst after the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that we typically collect over drinks with friends. No one knows this better than journalist Kelsey McKinney, whose Normal Gossip podcast has accrued a listenership of millions. In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.

While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. Then, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in Southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties and an Allied invasion in 1943 which ushered in a terrible new era for the country.

Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in freefall. This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence.

Over the course of five combat patrols during the Pacific War, Commander Fluckey reinvented submarine warfare, pioneering audacious strategies to hunt and sink Japanese warships and merchant vessels. At the helm of the USS Barb, he directed his boat to attack warship convoys - never mind the lop-sided odds - and to slip into heavily defended enemy harbors to launch torpedoes at unsuspecting targets.

Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia and the remote interior of China. From the Arab caliphate to the Mongol empire, from West Africa to the Philippines, Islam was a world-shaping force. In Worlds of Islam, historian James McDougall charts the epic global story of Islam's origins and transformations, as Muslims adapted to their changing times from late antiquity to the digital age, constantly remaking their own worlds as the wider world around them changed.

Brought to you by Penguin. An electrifying, thought-provoking exploration of how the digital era is reshaping our world, by bestselling, Women's Prize-winning writer Naomi Alderman From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Power What's the most useful thing you could know about your own life? In this era-defining book, developed from her ground-breaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns her boundless curiosity and incisive thinking to a question that affects us all – how do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we're living through?

Join historian Suzannah Lipscomb as she reveals the hidden secrets of palaces, castles, theatres and abbeys to uncover the stories of Tudor England. From the famous palace at Hampton Court where dangerous court intrigue was rife, to less well-known houses, such as Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle or Tutbury Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, follow in the footsteps of the Tudors in the places that they knew.

Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in The Big Short, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really? Boomerang is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius.

James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice.

Appeasing Hitler is a compelling new narrative history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that enabled Nazi domination of Europe. Beginning with the advent of Hitler in 1933, it sweeps from the early days of the Third Reich to the beaches of Dunkirk. Bouverie takes us into the backrooms of 10 Downing Street and Parliament, where a small group of rebellious MPs, including the indomitable Winston Churchill, were among the few to realise that the only choice was between ‘war now or war later’.

Beginning with the death of Edward I in 1307 and ending with the deposition of Richard II in 1399, Sceptred Isle follows the experiences of the last Plantagenets, uncovering lesser-known voices and untold stories along the way. Through the epic drama of regicide, war, the prolonged spectre of the Black Death, religious antagonism, revolt and the end of a royal dynasty, we encounter a fractured monarchy, the birth of the struggle between Europeanism and nationalism, social rebellion and a global pandemic.

In this exclusive audiobook edition, which includes eight hours of new content, Timothy Snyder combines the original On Tyranny (2017)—20 lessons on how history can instruct our response to the rise of tyranny around the world today—with 20 new lessons that answer the questions everyone is asking about Russia's war on Ukraine. With forays into history, he clarifies the causes of the Russian invasion and the meaning of Ukrainian resistance, and explains the war's connections to threats to democracy around the world.

This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the US Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world.

On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and on behalf of 68 million compatriots announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first colonised country to declare its independence after the Second World War.

Anima is an extraordinary portrayal of pastoral life, where humans and animals exist in profound interdependence. Kassabova conjures the spirit of this remarkable place with intimacy and empathy, and helps us imagine how we might all begin to heal our broken relationship with the natural world.

The lasting reputation of George V is for dullness. He was a crack shot and an outstanding stamp collector, but that's about it. The flamboyance and hedonism of his father, Edward VII, defined an era whose influence and magnetism is still felt today. The contrast between the two could hardly be greater.

This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of 30 years' work - examines the two tyrants during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. Yet despite the fact they were bitter opponents, Laurence Rees shows that Hitler and Stalin were, to a large extent, different sides of the same coin. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear, and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, read by Andrew Brooke. Two months before the outbreak of the Second World War, 18-year-old Geoffrey Wellum becomes a fighter pilot with the RAF. Desperate to get in the air, he makes it through basic training to become the youngest Spitfire pilot in the prestigious 92 Squadron. Thrust into combat almost immediately, Wellum finds himself flying several sorties a day, caught up in terrifying dogfights with German Me 109s.