24 Best Russia & the Former Soviet Union Books
Russia & the Former Soviet Union is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Russia & the Former Soviet Union audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 24 Russia & the Former Soviet Union audiobooks below.
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Coming Out of the Ice
- By: Victor Herman
- Narrator: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 13 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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4.55(437 ratings)
4.55(437 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDIn 1931, a young American named Victor Herman accompanied his parents to the Soviet Union, where his father was to set up a Ford Motor Company plant. In 1938, he was inexplicably thrown into a Soviet prison. It was forty-five years before he wasIn 1931, a young American named Victor Herman accompanied his parents to the Soviet Union, where his father was to set up a Ford Motor Company plant. In 1938, he was inexplicably thrown into a Soviet prison. It was forty-five years before he was able to return to America.
His was a common nightmare during the Stalin years. Those who survived imprisonment and torture were either sent north to hard labor in the icy forests and mines or into exile. Victor Herman was one of the few who survived. During his life in and out of Russian prisons, he fell in love with a Russian gymnast, who followed him into exile. She lived with him and their child for a year in Siberia in a cave chopped out of ice. Theirs was a romance destined to thrive even under desperate conditions.
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Stalin, Volume II
- By: Stephen Kotkin
- Narrator: Stephen Kotkin
- Length: 49 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: December 15, 2017
- Language: English
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4.45(19 ratings)
4.45(19 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0039.99 USDPulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin continues his definitive biography of Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror through to the coming of the conflict with Hitler’s Germany that is the signal event of modern world history. WhenPulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin continues his definitive biography of Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror through to the coming of the conflict with Hitler’s Germany that is the signal event of modern world history. When we left Stalin at the end of Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, it was 1928, and he had finally climbed the mountaintop and achieved dictatorial power of the Soviet empire. The vastest peasant economy in the world would be transformed into socialist modernity, whatever it took. What it took, or what Stalin believed it took, was the most relentless campaign of shock industrialization the world has ever seen. This is the story of the five year plans, the new factory towns, and the integration of an entire system of penal labor into the larger economy. With the Great Depression throwing global capital into crisis, the Soviet Union’s New Man looked like nothing so much as the man of the future. As the shadows of the 30’s deepen, Stalin’s drive to militarize Soviet society takes on increasing urgency, and the ambition of Nazi Germany becomes the predominant geopolitical reality he faces when Hitler claims that communism is a global “Judeo-Bolshevik” conspiracy to bring the Slavic race to power. But just because they’re out to get you doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid. Stalin’s paranoia is increasingly one of the most horrible facts of life for his entire country. Stalin’s obsessions drive him to violently purge almost a million people, including military leadership, diplomatic corps and intelligence apparatus, to say nothing of a generation of artistic talent. And then came the pact that shocked the world, and demoralized leftists everywhere: Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939, the carve-up of Poland, and Stalin’s utter inability to see Hitler’s build-up to the invasion of the USSR. Yet for all that, in just 12 years of total power, Stalin has taken this country from a peasant economy to a formidable modern war machine that rivaled anything else in the world. When the invasion came, Stalin wasn’t ready, but his country would prove to be prepared. That is a dimension of the Stalin story that has never adequately been reckoned with before, and it looms large here. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler: 1929-1941 is, like its predecessor, nothing less than a history of the world from Stalin’s desk. It is also, like its predecessor, a landmark achievement in the annals of its field, and in the biographer’s art.
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Red Notice
- By: Bill Browder
- Narrator: Bill Browder
- Length: 14 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: February 03, 2015
- Language: English
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4.44(54984 ratings)
4.44(54984 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDNovember 2009. An emaciated young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, is led to a freezing isolation cell in a Moscow prison, handcuffed to a bed rail, and beaten to death by eight police officers. His crime? To testify against the Russian Interior MinistryNovember 2009. An emaciated young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, is led to a freezing isolation cell in a Moscow prison, handcuffed to a bed rail, and beaten to death by eight police officers. His crime? To testify against the Russian Interior Ministry officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes paid to the state by one of the world’s most successful hedge funds. Magnitsky’s brutal killing has remained uninvestigated and unpunished to this day. His farcical posthumous show-trial brought Putin’s regime to a new low in the eyes of the international community. Red Notice is a searing exposE of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky’s imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths. Bill Browder – the hedge fund manager who employed Magnitsky – takes us on his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through his battles with ruthless oligarchs in the turbulent landscape of post-Soviet Union Moscow, to his expulsion from Russia on Putin’s orders. Browder’s graphic portrait of the Russian government as a criminal enterprise wielding all the power of a sovereign state illuminates his personal transformation from financier to human rights activist, campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn,Red Notice is a shocking but true political roller-coaster that plays out in the highest echelons of Western power.
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The Oath
- By: Khassan Baiev
- Narrator: Khassan Baiev
- Length: 14 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: August 03, 2012
- Language: English
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4.39(115 ratings)
4.39(115 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDWhen Chechen rebels took Moscow theatergoers hostage in October 2002, it tragically highlighted the ongoing conflict between Russia and its breakaway republic, Chechnya-a war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 Chechen lives in the past decade.When Chechen rebels took Moscow theatergoers hostage in October 2002, it tragically highlighted the ongoing conflict between Russia and its breakaway republic, Chechnya-a war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 Chechen lives in the past decade. Yet the true nature of the debacle lies behind the headlines. In The Oath, a heroic Chechen doctor relates his harrowing experiences in the line of fire to bear witness to this international calamity, and illuminates his remarkable people and their culture. In 1994, when fighting threatened to break out in Chechnya, Baiev left his promising career in Russia to aid his countrymen. First, he worked in a Grozny hospital until it was destroyed by Russian shelling. Returning to his hometown of Alkhan Kala, he and his fellow villagers restored a clinic with his own funds, and he soon found himself the only doctor for 80,000 residents in six villages and 5,000 refugees. During the next six years, he worked without gas, electricity, or running water, with only local anesthetics, and at one point dressed wounds with sour cream or egg yolks when supplies ran out. He often donated his own blood for surgeries, and on one occasion performed sixty-seven amputations in forty-eight hours. Although he mainly treated civilians, Baiev also cared for Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters alike, never allowing politics to interfere with his commitment to the Hippocratic oath. He harbored Russian deserters and Chechen rebels at great personal risk and single-handedly rescued a Russian doctor who was scheduled to be executed. For this, Baiev was nearly killed by both the Russian special forces and Chechen extremists. Only when the Russian Army ordered him arrested for treating a wounded rebel warlord did Baiev finally flee Chechnya. Echoing through his memoir is the history of Chechnya, a Muslim nation the size of Connecticut with a population of one million. Baiev explains the roots of the Chechen- Russian conflict, dating back 400 years, and he brings to life his once-beautiful ancestral home of Makazhoi where his family clan goes back generations, steeped in ancient traditions that are an intriguing blend of mountain folklore-including blood vendettas, arranged marriages, the authority of village elders-and Muslim religious rituals. And he writes frankly about the challenges of assimilating into western culture and about the post-traumatic stress disorder that has debilitated him since the war began. The Oath is an important eyewitness account of the reality of the Chechen-Russian conflict, in which countless atrocities have been committed against average Chechens in stark contrast to the Kremlin’s portrayal of the conflict. It is also a searing, unforgettable memoir that is certain to become a classic in the literature of war.
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All the Kremlin’s Men
- By: Mikhail Zygar
- Narrator: Dan Woren
- Length: 16 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: November 07, 2017
- Language: English
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4.3(932 ratings)
4.3(932 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDAn extraordinary behind-the-scenes portrait of the court of Vladimir Putin, the oligarchs that surround it, and the many moods of modern Russia that reads like a “real House of Cards“(Lev Lurie). All the Kremlin’s Men is a grippingAn extraordinary behind-the-scenes portrait of the court of Vladimir Putin, the oligarchs that surround it, and the many moods of modern Russia that reads like a “real House of Cards“(Lev Lurie).
All the Kremlin’s Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved. In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted — if not controlled — by the men who at once advise and deceive him.
The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself. So are the gatekeepers-those officials who guard the pathways to power-on whom Putin depends as much as they rely on him. The tenuous edifice is filled with all of the intrigue and plotting of a Medici court, as enemies of the state are invented and wars begun to justify personal gains, internal rivalries, or one faction’s biased advantage.
A bestseller in Russia, All the Kremlin’s Men is a shocking revisionist portrait of the Putin era and a dazzling reconstruction of the machinations of courtiers running riot.
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Poland 1939
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrator: Roger Moorhouse
- Length: 12 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: July 14, 2020
- Language: English
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4.24(177 ratings)
4.24(177 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDA “chilling” and “expertly” written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London).For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but forA “chilling” and “expertly” written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London).For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler’s soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin’s Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.... Read more -
Democracy
- By: Condoleezza Rice
- Narrator: Condoleezza Rice
- Length: 12 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 09, 2017
- Language: English
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4.1(679 ratings)
4.1(679 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDFrom the former secretary of state and bestselling author — a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom. “This heartfelt and at times very moving book showsFrom the former secretary of state and bestselling author — a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom.... Read more“This heartfelt and at times very moving book shows why democracy proponents are so committed to their work…Both supporters and skeptics of democracy promotion will come away from this book wiser and better informed.” — The New York Times
From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans.
In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy. At a time when people around the world are wondering whether democracy is in decline, Rice shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen, in order to put democracy’s challenges into perspective.
When the United States was founded, it was the only attempt at self-government in the world. Today more than half of all countries qualify as democracies, and in the long run that number will continue to grow. Yet nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Using America’s long struggle as a template, Rice draws lessons for democracy around the world — from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, to Kenya, Colombia, and the Middle East. She finds that no transitions to democracy are the same because every country starts in a different place. Pathways diverge and sometimes circle backward. Time frames for success vary dramatically, and countries often suffer false starts before getting it right. But, Rice argues, that does not mean they should not try. While the ideal conditions for democracy are well known in academia, they never exist in the real world. The question is not how to create perfect circumstances but how to move forward under difficult ones.
These same insights apply in overcoming the challenges faced by governments today. The pursuit of democracy is a continuing struggle shared by people around the world, whether they are opposing authoritarian regimes, establishing new democratic institutions, or reforming mature democracies to better live up to their ideals. The work of securing it is never finished.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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Michael and Natasha
- By: Rosemary Crawford
- Narrator: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 18 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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4.06(485 ratings)
4.06(485 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.95 USDHe was Grand Duke Michael, handsome brother of Tsar Nicholas II. She was the beautiful twice-divorced daughter of a Moscow lawyer. Everything was wrong…yet for Michael, it was love at first sight—an obsession that would lead toHe was Grand Duke Michael, handsome brother of Tsar Nicholas II. She was the beautiful twice-divorced daughter of a Moscow lawyer. Everything was wrong…yet for Michael, it was love at first sight—an obsession that would lead to disgrace, humiliation, and exile. Their scandalous love affair and their runaway marriage to Vienna in 1912, trailed by the Tsar’s secret police, caused uproar in Russia and was the talk in all of Europe.
Based on hundreds of letters long hidden in the Russian state archive, as well as Michael’s private diaries held by the Forbes Collection, here is an extraordinary tale of enduring love and ultimate tragedy that, until now, has never been told. Michael and Natasha is both an astonishing love story and an illuminating look at the last glorious days of the Romanovs and the brutal revolution that ended their reign.
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In the Enemy’s House
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrator: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hours 12 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: February 20, 2018
- Language: English
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4.05(361 ratings)
4.05(361 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThe New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America’s history as he chronicles the incredible true story of aThe New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America’s history as he chronicles the incredible true story of a critical, recently declassified counterintelligence mission and two remarkable agents whose story has been called “the greatest secret of the Cold War.”
In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation’s military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage–the atomic bomb.
Opposites in nearly every way, Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly followed a trail of clues that helped them identify and take down these Soviet agents one by one, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But at the center of this spy ring, seemingly beyond the American agents’ grasp, was the mysterious master spy who pulled the strings of the KGB’s extensive campaign, dubbed Operation Enormoz by Russian Intelligence headquarters. Lamphere and Gardner began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: “We shall bury you!”
A breathtaking chapter of American history and a page-turning mystery that plays out against the tense, life-and-death gamesmanship of the Cold War, this twisting thriller begins at the end of World War II and leads all the way to the execution of the Rosenbergs–a result that haunted both Gardner and Lamphere to the end of their lives.
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The Lighthouse of Stalingrad
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrator: Kris Dyer
- Length: 13 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4(82 ratings)
4(82 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA thrilling, vivid, and “compelling” (Wall Street Journal) account of the epic siege during one of World War II’s most important battles, told by the brilliant British editor-turned-historian and author of Checkpoint Charlie.To theA thrilling, vivid, and “compelling” (Wall Street Journal) account of the epic siege during one of World War II’s most important battles, told by the brilliant British editor-turned-historian and author of Checkpoint Charlie.
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To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II were sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ hard-won victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the Volga River. To Russians, it is a pivotal landmark of their nation’s losses, with more than two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded, or captured during the bitter fighting from September 1942 to February 1943. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal, relentless house-to-house fighting.
Within this life-and-death struggle, Soviet war correspondents lauded the fight for a key strategic building in the heart of the city, “Pavlov’s House,” which was situated on the frontline and codenamed “The Lighthouse.” The legend grew of a small garrison of Russian soldiers from the 13th Guards Rifle Division holding out against the Germans of the Sixth Army, which had battled its way to the very center of Stalingrad. A report about the battle in a local Red Army newspaper would soon grow and be repeated on Moscow radio and in countless national newspapers. By the end of the war, the legend would gather further momentum and inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities.
This story has become a pillar of the Stalingrad legend and one that can now be told accurately. Written with “impressive skill and relish” (Sunday Times), The Lighthouse of Stalingrad sheds new light on this iconic battle through the prism of the two units who fought for the very heart of the city itself. Iain MacGregor traveled to both German and Russian archives to unearth previously unpublished testimonies by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. His “utterly riveting” (Alex Kershaw) narrative lays to rest the questions as to the identity of the real heroes of this epic battle for one of the city’s most famous buildings and provides authoritative answers as to how the battle finally ended and influenced the conclusion of the siege of Stalingrad. -
Stalin’s Daughter
- By: Rosemary Sullivan
- Narrator: Karen Cass
- Length: 19 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 02, 2015
- Language: English
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3.96(2776 ratings)
3.96(2776 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.99 USDWinner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography PEN Literary Award Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist New York Times Notable Book Washington Post Notable Book Boston Globe Best Book of the Year The award-winning author of VillaWinner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography
PEN Literary Award Finalist
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
New York Times Notable Book
Washington Post Notable Book
Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators–her father, Josef Stalin.
Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy–the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.
As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States–leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.
With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.
Illustrated with photographs.
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Young Stalin
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrator: James Adams
- Length: 16 hours 27 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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3.95(5532 ratings)
3.95(5532 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.95 USDYoung Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest, and finally embracing revolutionary idealism as his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar andYoung Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest, and finally embracing revolutionary idealism as his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar and terrorist, a mastermind of bank robberies, extortion, piracy, and murder, he was so impressive in his brutality that Lenin made him, along with Trotsky, his chief henchman.
Here is Stalin the supreme dictator in the making—his psychology, his loves and hatreds, his intellectual interests, his knowledge of the world—learning how to triumph in the Kremlin and create the USSR in his profoundly flawed image.
Based on exhaustive research and astonishing new evidence, Young Stalin is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR from the perspective of those who would bring it into being.
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The Moscow Rules
- By: Antonio J. Mendez
- Narrator: Wilson Bethel
- Length: 7 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 21, 2019
- Language: English
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3.94(1628 ratings)
3.94(1628 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDFrom the spymaster and inspiration for the movie Argo, discover the “real-life spy thriller” of the brilliant but under-supported CIA operatives who developed breakthrough spy tactics that helped turn the tide of the Cold War (Malcolm... Read moreFrom the spymaster and inspiration for the movie Argo, discover the “real-life spy thriller” of the brilliant but under-supported CIA operatives who developed breakthrough spy tactics that helped turn the tide of the Cold War (Malcolm Nance).Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, and tapped their phones. Intelligence work was effectively impossible. The Soviet threat loomed larger than ever.The Moscow Rules tells the story of the intelligence breakthroughs that turned the odds in America’s favor. As experts in disguise, Antonio and Jonna were instrumental in developing a series of tactics — Hollywood-inspired identity swaps, ingenious evasion techniques, and an armory of James Bond-style gadgets — that allowed CIA officers to outmaneuver the KGB.As Russia again rises in opposition to America, this remarkable story is a tribute to those who risked everything for their country, and to the ingenuity that allowed them to succeed. -
Stalin, Volume I
- By: Stephen Kotkin
- Narrator: Stephen Kotkin
- Length: 38 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: January 02, 2015
- Language: English
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3.92(3223 ratings)
3.92(3223 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.99 USDA magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: A poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian Empire, reinvents himself as aA magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: A poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian Empire, reinvents himself as a revolutionary and finds a leadership role within a small group of marginal zealots. When the old world is unexpectedly brought down in a total war, the band seizes control of the country, and the new regime it founds as the vanguard of a new world order is ruthlessly dominated from within by the former seminarian until he stands as the absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. We think we know the story well. Remarkably, Stephen Kotkin’s epic new biography shows us how much we still have to learn. Volume One of Stalin begins and ends in January 1928 as Stalin boards a train bound for Siberia, about to embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He is now the ruler of the largest country in the world, but a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. In Siberia, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. To stand up to the capitalists he will force into being an industrialized, militarized, collectivized great power is an act of will. Millions will die, and many more will suffer, but Stalin will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? The product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, Stalin contains a host of astonishing revelations. Kotkin gives an intimate first-ever view of the Bolshevik regime’s inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. He details Stalin’s invention of a fabricated trial and mass executions as early as 1918, the technique he would later impose across the whole country. The book places Stalin’s momentous decision for collectivization more deeply than ever in the tragic history of imperial Russia. Above all, Kotkin offers a convincing portrait and explanation of Stalin’s monstrous power and of Russian power in the world. Stalin restores a sense of surprise to the way we think about the Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
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Saving Stalin
- By: John Kelly
- Narrator: David de Vries
- Length: 14 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 06, 2020
- Language: English
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3.92(41 ratings)
3.92(41 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDDuring World War II, the Allied leaders banded together, forged a great victory–and created a new and dangerous post-war world.In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assessDuring World War II, the Allied leaders banded together, forged a great victory–and created a new and dangerous post-war world.In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assess whether the US should send aid to Russia as it had to Britain. Unofficially, he was there to determine whether Josef Stalin–the man who had killed over six million Ukrainians during the 1930s–was worth saving.In this riveting and sweeping narrative, author John Kelly chronicles the turbulent wartime relationship between the great leaders–Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin–and military commanders of America, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Faced with the greatest challenge of the century, the Allied leaders and their war managers struggled against a common enemy–and each other. The story behind how victory was forged is an epic story, rich in drama, passion and larger-than-life personalities. The Allies eventually triumphed, but at what cost?Using his trademark character-rich writing style and focusing on unique, unknown, and unexplored aspects of the story, Kelly offers a fresh perspective on the decision-making that changed the course of the war–and the course of history.Saving Stalin brings to vivid life the epic story of the century’s greatest human catastrophe. It is an unforgettable master work in historical narrative.... Read more -
The Spy Who Knew Too Much
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrator: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 10 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 07, 2022
- Language: English
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3.91(256 ratings)
3.91(256 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USD“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.”–New York Times A retired spy gets back into the game to solve a perplexing case–and reconcile with his daughter, a CIA officer who married into the very family that“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.”–New York Times
A retired spy gets back into the game to solve a perplexing case–and reconcile with his daughter, a CIA officer who married into the very family that derailed his own CIA career–in this compulsive true-life tale of vindication and redemption, filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Goodnight, It’s a real-life thriller whose stunning conclusion will make headline news.
On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley?
One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director. But the star that burned so brightly exploded when Bagley–who suspected a mole had burrowed deep into the agency’s core–was believed himself to be the mole. After a year-long investigation, Bagley was finally exonerated, but the accusations tarnished his reputation and tainted his career.
When Bagley’s daughter Christina, a CIA analyst, married another intelligence officer who was the son of the man who had played a key role in the investigation into Bagley, it caused a painful rift between the two. But then came Paisley’s strange death. A murder? Suicide? Or something else? Pete, now a retired spy, launches his own investigation that takes him deep into his own past and his own longtime hunt for a mole. What follows is a relentless pursuit to solve a spy story–and an inspiring tale of a man reclaiming his reputation and his family. It’s a very personal quest that leads to a shocking conclusion.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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The Lockhart Plot
- By: Jonathan Schneer
- Narrator: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
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3.9(13 ratings)
3.9(13 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDDuring the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane thirty-year-old Scot,During the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane thirty-year-old Scot, they conspired to overthrow Lenin’s newly established Bolshevik regime, and to install one that would continue the war against Germany on the Eastern Front. Lockhart’s confidante and chief support, with whom he engaged in a passionate love affair, was the mysterious, alluring Moura von Benkendorff, wife of a former aide-de-camp to the Tsar.
The plotters’ chief opponent was ‘Iron Felix’ Dzerzhinsky. He led the Cheka, ‘Sword and Shield’ of the Russian Revolution and forerunner of the KGB. Dzerzhinsky loved humanity–in the abstract. He believed socialism represented humanity’s best hope. To preserve and protect it he would unleash unbounded terror.
Revolutionary Russia provided the setting for the ensuing contest. In the back streets of Petrograd and Moscow, in rough gypsy cabarets, in glittering nightclubs, in cells beneath the Cheka’s Lubianka prison, the conspirators engaged in a deadly game of wits for the highest possible stakes–not merely life and death, but the outcome of a world war and the nature of Russia’s post-war regime.
Confident of success, the conspirators set the date for an uprising, September 8, 1918, but the Cheka had penetrated their organization and pounced just beforehand. The Lockhart Plot was a turning point in world history, except it failed to turn. At a time when Russian meddling in British and American politics now sounds warning bells, however, we may sense its reverberations and realize that it is still relevant.
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Rasputin
- By: Douglas Smith
- Narrator: PJ Ochlan
- Length: 33 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: November 22, 2016
- Language: English
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3.88(1208 ratings)
3.88(1208 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0049.99 USDOn the centenary of the death of Rasputin comes a definitive biography that will dramatically change our understanding of this fascinating figure A hundred years after his murder, Rasputin continues to excite the popular imagination as theOn the centenary of the death of Rasputin comes a definitive biography that will dramatically change our understanding of this fascinating figure
A hundred years after his murder, Rasputin continues to excite the popular imagination as the personification of evil. Numerous biographies, novels, and films recount his mysterious rise to power as Nicholas and Alexandra’s confidant and the guardian of the sickly heir to the Russian throne. His debauchery and sinister political influence are the stuff of legend, and the downfall of the Romanov dynasty was laid at his feet.
But as the prizewinning historian Douglas Smith shows, the true story of Rasputin’s life and death has remained shrouded in myth. A major new work that combines probing scholarship and powerful storytelling, Rasputin separates fact from fiction to reveal the real life of one of history’s most alluring figures. Drawing on a wealth of forgotten documents from archives in seven countries, Smith presents Rasputin in all his complexity–man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. Rasputin is not just a definitive biography of an extraordinary and legendary man but a fascinating portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.
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Roosevelt and Stalin
- By: Susan Butler
- Narrator: Susan Butler
- Length: 21 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: April 17, 2015
- Language: English
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3.86(107 ratings)
3.86(107 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.99 USDSusan Butler’s brilliantly readable book firmly places FDR where he belongs, as the American president engaged most directly in diplomacy and strategy, who not only had an ambitious plan for the postwar world, but had the strength, ambitionSusan Butler’s brilliantly readable book firmly places FDR where he belongs, as the American president engaged most directly in diplomacy and strategy, who not only had an ambitious plan for the postwar world, but had the strength, ambition and personal charm to overcome Churchill’s reluctance and Stalin’s suspicion to bring about what was, in effect, an American peace, and to avoid the disastrous consequences that followed the botched peace of Versailles in 1919. It is at once a long overdue tribute to FDR and his vision, and a serious work of history that reads like a novel. I would rank it next to Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, and casts new light on the character and war aims of Stalin, Churchill and FDR himself. Brava!
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All Hands Down
- By: Kenneth Sewell
- Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 7 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.76(270 ratings)
3.76(270 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDForty years ago, in May 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion sank under mysterious circumstances, with a loss of ninety-nine lives. The tragedy occurred during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and only weeksForty years ago, in May 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion sank under mysterious circumstances, with a loss of ninety-nine lives. The tragedy occurred during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and only weeks after the sinking of a Soviet sub near Hawaii. Now, drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, many with exclusive sources in the naval and intelligence communities, as well as recently declassified United States and Soviet intelligence files, Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler explain what really happened to Scorpion.
In January 1968, a US intelligence ship, USS Pueblo, was seized by North Korea. Among other items, the North Koreans confiscated a valuable cryptographic unit that was capable of deciphering the navy’s top-secret codes. Since a traitor named John Walker had begun supplying the navy’s codes to the KGB, the Russians were able to read highly classified naval communicationsonce the KGB acquired the crypto unit from the North Koreans.
Then, in March, the Soviet sub K-129 mysteriously sank near Hawaii, hundreds of miles from its normal station in the Pacific. Soviet naval leaders mistakenly believed that a US submarine was to blame for the loss, instigating a plot for revenge. A trap was set: several Soviet vessels gathered in the Atlantic, their behavior suspicious. It would only be a matter of time before a US sub was sent to investigate. That sub was the Scorpion. Using the top-secret codes and the deciphering machine, the Soviets were able to intercept and decode communication between the navy and Scorpion, the final element in carrying out the planned attack.
All Hands Down shows how the Soviet plan was executed and explains why the truth of the attack has been officially denied for forty years. Sewell and Preisler debunk various official explanations for the tragedy and bring to life the personal stories of some of the men who were lost when Scorpion went to the bottom. This engrossing true story is more exciting than any novel.
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When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain
- By: Giles Milton
- Narrator: Giles Milton
- Length: 4 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: August 02, 2016
- Language: English
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3.65(2075 ratings)
3.65(2075 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0010.99 USDObscure and addictive true tales from history told by one of our most entertaining historians, Giles Milton This program is read by the author, the host of the popular podcast, Unknown History with Giles Milton. The first installment in GilesObscure and addictive true tales from history told by one of our most entertaining historians, Giles Milton
This program is read by the author, the host of the popular podcast, Unknown History with Giles Milton.
The first installment in Giles Milton’s outrageously entertaining series, History’s Unknown Chapters: colorful and accessible, intelligent and illuminating, Milton shows his customary historical flair as he delves into the little-known stories from the past.
There’s the cook aboard the Titanic, who pickled himself with whiskey and survived in the icy seas where most everyone else died. There’s the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there’s many, many more.
Covering everything from adventure, war, murder and slavery to espionage, including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler’s final hours, Japan’s deadly balloon bomb and the emperor of the United States, these tales deserve to be told.
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The Liar
- By: Benjamin Cunningham
- Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hours 31 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 23, 2022
- Language: English
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3.54(43 ratings)
3.54(43 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDThe Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow. In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely–andThe Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow.
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In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely–and they were both convinced he was working for the enemy. They were both right. Traveling with his wife, Hana, Koecher posed as a Czechoslovak asylum seeker and arrived in the US as a Communist sleeper agent. After parlaying a doctorate from Columbia into a job at the CIA, Koecher proceeded to operate as a double agent at the height of the Cold War.
Shunning a low profile, the Koechers embraced Manhattan’s high life — with cocaine, swinging and parties emblematic of the times and their penchant for risk. Hana, who was no more than a shy teenager when she arrived, grew into a sophisticated international diamond dealer that relayed messages to Karel’s handlers. Riding a wave of euphoria, the Koechers felt unstoppable. But it was too good to last.
Using newly declassified documents, interrogation tapes and extraordinary first-hand accounts from the Koechers themselves, Cunningham reconstructs their double lives and the fading Cold War, where a strange moral fog made it hard to know what truth was being fought for, and to what end. -
The Zookeepers’ War
- By: J.W. Mohnhaupt
- Narrator: Jacques Roy
- Length: 6 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.44(372 ratings)
3.44(372 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDThe unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall. “The liveliness of Mohnhaupt’s storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter makeThe unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall.
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“The liveliness of Mohnhaupt’s storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter make this book well worth a read.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, East Berlin and its zoo were spacious and lush, socialist utopias where everything was perfectly planned… and then rarely completed.
Berlin’s two zoos in East and West quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race–rather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, they competed to have the most pandas and hippos. Soon, state funds were being diverted toward giving these new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates were talking about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And eventually politicians on both side of the Wall became convinced that if their zoo proved to be inferior, that would mean their country’s whole ideology was too.
A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies, and an animal-mad city in which zookeeping became a way of continuing politics by other means. -
Stalin’s Scribe
- By: Brian J. Boeck
- Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDA masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a young man,A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature
Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a young man, Sholokhov’s epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success.
Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death.
Stalin’s Scribe is remarkable biography that both reinforces and clashes with our understanding of the Soviet system. It reveals a Sholokhov who is bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic–and reconciles him with the vindictive and mean-spirited man described in so many accounts of late Soviet history.
Shockingly, at the height of the terror, which claimed over a million lives, Sholokhov became a member of the most minuscule subset of the Soviet Union’s population–the handful of individuals whom Stalin personally intervened to save.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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