After Chancellorsville - Judith A. Bailey and Robert I. Cotton - Audio Book

After Chancellorsville - Judith A. Bailey and Robert I. Cotton : "I reckon I sympathize with you deeply Dear Walt and I wish I could be with you, if it would help you any. I would. . .be the best nurse you ever had, I'll bet you. I would laugh and sing and read to you and if we both felt like it I could cry too, and not half try."

So wrote Emma Randolph, a young woman not yet twenty, to her distant cousin, Private Walter G. Dunn of the Eleventh New Jersey Infantry, as he lay in a crowded, filthy hospital ward. They corresponded when Walter went off to war, but their real story only began when he was carried from the smoke and carnage of Chancellorsville to a hospital in Baltimore.

There, barely recovered, bloodied and dazed with ether, he aided overworked surgeons when the Gettysburg wounded poured into the city and regularly took up his pen to relay everyday events that became history.

She replied in kindly. At home, men were torn by guilt, women lost in grief, and a presidential
election loomed. But there were also church picnics, strawberry festivals, ice cream socials, and trips to the ocean. In time they realized their love for one another and planned a life together after the war ended.

When I first listen to this audio book it was as if this story did not happened during the War of Secession or «Civil War», but during the French-German war which took place between July 1870 and May 1871, the first World War in 1914-18 (as my grand-father explained it to me),
the Second World War in 1939-1945 (as my father explained it to me) and all the one who came
after. Nothing changed and something remained: civil courage and love which manages to survive in the middle of all these horrors

Guests of the Ayatollah - Mark Bowden - Audio Book

Guests of the Ayatollah - Mark Bowden : On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U. S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage and kept nearly all of them captive 444 days.

The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America's first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage's families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.

In Guests of the Ayatollah, Bowden demonstrates an unparalleled skill in writing a narrative based on the day to day life of the hostages during those 444 days. He describes as well the hesitations of Jimmy Carter (US president at this time), all the failures which happened during rescue's attempts and all negotiations to try to free the hostages. A very interesting read.

102 Minutes - Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn - Audio Book

102 Minutes - Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn : The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted.

At 8: 46 AM on September 11, 2001, 14, 000 people were inside the twin towers - reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it - until now.

New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews; thousands of pages of oral histories; and phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women - the 12, 000 who escaped and the 2, 749 who perished - who made 102 minutes count as never before.

Its a frightening, heart-stopping and heartbreaking audio book. But there is some hope in it as well. To listen absolutly.