Tag: American

Free Download Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century by Michael Hiltzik, Norman Dietz, Tantor Audio
English | 2010 | ISBN: N/A | ASIN: B003OXTOTS | MP3@96 kbps | 18 hrs 5 mins | 782 Mb
As breathtaking today as when it was completed, Hoover Dam ranks among America’s greatest achievements. The story of its conception, design, and construction is the story of the United States at a unique moment in history: when facing both a global economic crisis and the implacable elements of nature, we prevailed.
The United States after Hoover Dam was a different country from the one that began to build it, going from the glorification of individual effort to the value of shared enterprise and communal support. The dam became the physical embodiment of this change. A remote regional construction project was transformed from a Republican afterthought into a New Deal symbol of national pride. Hoover Dam went on to shape not only the American West but the American century.

Sept. 12, 2023 | English | ASIN: B0B29KKRGT | 8 hrs 53 mins | M4B & MP3@126 kbps
Narrator: Ian Russell
AMERICAN BREAKDOWN dissects how, in the space of a generation, the pillars that sustained the once-dominant superpower have been dangerously eroded. From government to business, from media to medicine-the strength and security of the American experiment have been weakened by a widening gap between the elites who control these institutions and the public.
At the root of this breakdown is a precipitous fall in Americans’ trust in their political, business and cultural leaders. As Baker writes, "This pathology of distrust across American society is eating the country away from the inside." Millions of Americans say they have little faith in their country’s future, and no longer seem to have trust in their leaders, in their important social and civil institutions, even in their common values and ideals, or ultimately in each other.
America in fact hasn’t failed. Americans have been failed-misled by inept and deceitful political leaders, deserted by predatory and cynical corporate chiefs, and, above all, betrayed by a cultural elite that has exploited the very freedom this country provided in order to destroy it.
AMERICAN BREAKDOWN is a deep analysis and thought-provoking account that explores the ways in which Americans have been let down and offers solutions for how we rebuild trust and reclaim purpose for a better future.

Free Download A New History of the American South (Audiobook)
English | ASIN:B0CGJVDRMF | 2023 | 25 hours and 40 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 721 MB
Author: W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Laura F. Edwards, Jon F. Sensbach
Narrator: Terrence Kidd
For at least two centuries, the South’s economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways, and more have figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new narrative of southern history from its ancient past to the present. This groundbreaking work draws on both well-established and new currents in scholarship, among them global and Atlantic world history, histories of African diaspora, and environmental history. The volume also considers the experiences of all people of the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, and elite. Together, the essays compose a seamless, cogent, and engaging work that can be read cover to cover or sampled at leisure.

Free Download Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0BWSL77RL | 2023 | 8 hours and 49 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 254 MB
Author: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
Narrator: Fred Sanders
A call to reform our antiquated political institutions before it’s too late-from the New York Times bestselling authors. America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it? With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples-from 1930s France to present-day Thailand-to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy.

Free Download The United States of English: The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CGMKYG6Z | 2023 | 11 hours and 9 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 321 MB
Author: Rosemarie Ostler
Narrator: Christa Lewis
The story of how English became American-and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between. By the time of the Revolution, the English that Americans spoke was recognizably different from the British variety. Americans added dozens of new words to the language, either borrowed from Native Americans (raccoon, persimmon, caucus) or created from repurposed English (backwoods, cane brake, salt lick). Americans had their own pronunciations (bath rhymed with hat, not hot) and their own spelling (honor, not honour), not to mention a host of new expressions that grew out of the American landscape and culture (blaze a trail, back track, pull up stakes). Americans even invented their own slang, like stiff as a ringbolt to mean drunk. American English has continued to grow and change ever since. The United States of English tells the engrossing tale of how the American language evolved over four hundred years, explaining both how and why it changed and which parts of the "mother tongue" it preserved (I guess was heard in the British countryside long before it became a typical Americanism). Plentiful examples of the American vernacular, past and present, bring the language to life and make for an engaging as well as enlightening listen.

Free Download Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0009RFWPW | 2005 | 11 hours and 20 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 618 MB
Author: Roger Cohen
Narrator: Michael Prichard
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. Starved and brutalized, the GIs were denied their rights as prisoners of war, their ordeal culminating in a death march that was halted by liberation near the Czech border. Twenty percent of these soldiers, more than 70 of them, perished.

Free Download American Legacy: Epic Dramas of US Politics: Four BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramas (Audiobook)
English | June 15, 2023 | ASIN: B0BSXLDT45 | MP3@128 kbps | 9h 7m | 499.28 MB
Author: Mike Walker
Narrator: William Hootkins, Nathan Osgood, Alex Lanipekun, Colin Stinton, Bob Sherman, full cast, Lorelei King
Four gripping historical dramas centred around key figures who shaped America in the 20th century

Free Download American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CBW45969 | 2023 | 6 hours and 47 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 348 MB
Author: Andrew L. Whitehead
Narrator: Andrew L. Whitehead
Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity. Andrew Whitehead is a leading scholar on Christian nationalism in America and speaks widely on its effects within Christian communities. In this book, he shares his journey and reveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church. Whitehead shows how Christians harm their neighbors when they embrace the idols of power, fear, and violence. He uses two key examples-racism and xenophobia-to demonstrate that these idols violate core Christian beliefs. Through stories, he illuminates expressions of Christianity that confront Christian nationalism and offer a faithful path forward. American Idolatry encourages further conversation about what Christian nationalism threatens, how to face it, and why it is vitally important to do so. It will help identify Christian nationalism and build a framework that makes sense of the relationship between faith and the current political and cultural context.

Free Download We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0BQ8HXKFC | 2023 | 7 hours and 20 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 210 MB
Author: Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein
Narrator: Susan Bennett
From a MacArthur Genius ​MIT economist and pre-eminent Stanford economist comes a lively and provocative proposal for American health insurance reform. Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point. As the Stanford health economist Liran Einav and the MIT economist and MacArthur Genius Amy Finkelstein argue, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant. The result is a sprawling yet arbitrary and inadequate mess. It has left 30 million Americans without formal insurance.

Free Download Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0B8SYVYVS | 2023 | 9 hours and 4 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 259 MB
Author: Lena S. Andrews
Narrator: Courtney Patterson
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.