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  Long Way Back to the River Kwai: A Harrowing True Story of Survival in World War II , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 398min

  The astounding memoir of a World War II veteran who spent three and a half years in the slave-labor camps made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai. Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman’s Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indies - now Indonesia - where he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave-labor camps, building a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border so the Japanese could invade India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died building this Death Railway. Velmans, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit sprung this stunning memoir. Long Way Back to the River Kwai is a simply told but searing memoir of World War II - a testimonial to one man’s indomitable will to live that will take its place beside the Diary of Ann Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai, and Edith’s Story. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Danny Campbell. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/008620/bk_adbl_008620_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Roosevelt the Explorer: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazing Adventures as a Naturalist, Conservationist, and Explorer , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 738min

  No American president has been more enthusiastic in appreciating the wilderness and in conserving our nation’s natural treasures than Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). And no other president wrote more about nature and his explorations of it than T. R., in scattered books, such as African Wilderness, and in his countless letters, including those collected in The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt). Roosevelt the Explorer, by historian and Roosevelt biographer H. Paul Jeffers, is the only book to offer a comprehensive, lifelong chronicle of the consummate adventurer’s exploits and expeditions, which compelled him to traverse some of our planet’s most difficult terrains. Within these lively pages, Roosevelt collects more than 100 bird specimens in Egypt at age 14; hunts grizzlies and other game in the wilds of the Dakota territory; founds the Boon and Crockett Club, the nation’s first conservation group; and inspires the first Teddy Bear. Jeffers describes T. R.’s efforts as president, against fierce opposition, to establish an unprecedented system of national parks and to ensure the safety of America’s vast federal forests and wetlands from rampant development. In the words of Roosevelt himself, the adventures unfold T. R.’s 1909-1910, 11-month, Smithsonian-inspired safari across Africa, from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Khartoum in Egypt, which followed his two terms as president; and his 1913-1914 danger-drenched expedition to map South America’s 950-mile River of Doubt (a previously unexplored tributary to the Amazon River later renamed Rio Roosevelt in his honor). During the trip, one man drowned, another was murdered, and the culprit went insane, fleeing into the jungle. Roosevelt was lucky to escape alive, nearly drowning and plagued by jungle fever, dysentery, an ulcerated leg, blood poisoning, and malaria. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Stephen Hoye. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/019343/bk_adbl_019343_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  The Wages of War: When America's Soldiers Came Home: From Valley Forge to Vietnam , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 1123min

  A disturbing chronicle of the US government’s mistreatment of American soldiers and veterans throughout history, with a new introduction by Charles Sheehan-Miles Time and time again, the sacrifices made by veterans and their families have been repaid with scorn, discrimination, lack of health services, scant financial compensation, and other indignities. This injustice dates back as far as the American Revolution, when troops came home penniless and without prospects for work, yet had to wait decades before the government paid them the wages they were owed. When soldiers returned from the Cuban campaign after the Spanish-American War, they were riddled with malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, and dysentery - but the government refused to acknowledge their illnesses, and finally dumped them in a makeshift tent city on Long Island, where they were left to starve and die. Perhaps the most infamous case of disgraceful behavior toward veterans happened after the Vietnam War, when soldiers were forced to battle bureaucrats and lawyers, and suffer media slander, because they asked the government and chemical industry to help them cope with the toxic aftereffects of Agent Orange. In The Wages of War, authors Richard Severo and Lewis Milford not only uncover new information about the controversial use of this defoliant in Vietnam and the subsequent class action suit brought against its manufacturers, but also present fresh information on every war in US history. The result is exhaustive proof that - save for the treatment of soldiers in the aftermath of World War II - the government’s behavior towards American servicemen has been more like that of “a slippery insurance company than a policy rooted in the idea of justice and fair reward.” ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Peter Berkrot. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/053556/bk_adbl_053556_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Sick from Freedom : African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 529min

  Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history - that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves - he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freed people, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Gabriel Bush. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/011589/bk_adbl_011589_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Marutas of Unit 731: Human Experimentation of the Forgotten Asian Auschwitz , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 105min

  Euphemistically labeled as the "Water Supply and Prophylaxis Administration" and "HippoEpizootic Administration" of the Imperial Japanese Army, Unit 731 and Unit 100, as well as their subsidiary branches, performed human experimentation on the innocents under the leadership of Dr. Ishii Shiro. The Kempeitai, aka the military police, captured any patriots for Unit 731's prison. The prisoners included Chinese patriots, civilians, Russians, and allied POWs. Although the exact number of victims is unclear since the Japanese destroyed most of the evidence at the end of the war, but it ranged from 3,000-250,000 innocent men, women, and children. The cruel experiments and medical procedures were carried out by the brightest medical students and staff that Imperial Japan had to offer. For the scientists to treat the prisoners less like humans, they called them "Marutas" or logs. The experimentations included their reaction to bubonic plague, typhoid, paratyphoid A and B, typhus, anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, infectious jaundice, gas gangrene, tetanus, cholera, dysentery, glanders, scarlet fever, undulant fever, tick encephalitis, "songo" or epidemic hemorrhagic fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, pneumonia, erysipelas, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, venereal diseases, tuberculosis, salmonella, frostbites, and many other viruses and bacteria. To observe the real-time effects of these deadly diseases and bacteria, these prisoners were often subject to vivisections without the use of anesthesia. Then there was the ANTA testing ground where the human test subjects were exposed to bacterial weapons under field conditions. For example, to test weapons developed with gas gangrene, 10 Chinese prisoners were tied to stakes from 10-20 meters apart, and a bomb was set off by electricity. All 10 prisoners were injured by shrapnel contaminated with gas gangrene. Within a week, they all died in severe torment. The study of the pathogens was also conduc ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Michelle Morgan. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/228429/bk_acx0_228429_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  The Greatest Revolutionary War Battles: The New York-New Jersey Campaign , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 83min

  After the siege of Boston forced the British to evacuate that city in March 1776, Continental Army commander George Washington suspected that the British would move by sea to New York City, the next logical target in an attempt to end a colonial insurrection. He thus rushed his army south to defend the city. Washington guessed correctly, but it would be to no avail. Unlike Boston, New York City's terrain featured few defensible positions. The city lacked a high point from which to launch a siege, as the peninsula of Boston was fortunate to have. Moreover, Washington wasn't sure defending the city was necessary, hoping that an expedition launched toward Quebec, like the one Benedict Arnold had led in late 1775, would keep the British away from New York anyway. However, Congress thought otherwise, and demanded that Washington defend New York. Washington thus did what he was told, and it nearly resulted in the army's demise. In the summer of 1776, the British conducted the largest amphibious expedition in North America's history at the time, landing over 20,000 troops on Long Island. British General William Howe, who had led the British at Bunker Hill and would later become commander-in-chief of the armies in North America, easily captured Staten Island, which Washington was incapable of defending without a proper navy. Washington's army attempted to fight, but Washington was badly outmaneuvered, and his army was nearly cut off from escape. The withdrawal across New York City was enormously disorderly, with many of Washington's troops so scared that they deserted. Others were sick as a result of the dysentery and smallpox plaguing the Continental Army in New York. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Michael Gilboe. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/037898/bk_acx0_037898_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Plague Among the Magnolias: The 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 427min

  Deanne Stephens Nuwer explores the social, political, racial, and economic consequences of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Mississippi. A mild winter, a long spring, and a torrid summer produced conditions favoring the Aedes aegypti and spread of fever. In late July New Orleans newspapers reported the epidemic and upriver officials established checkpoints, but efforts at quarantine came too late. Yellow fever was developing by late July, and in August deaths were reported. The fever raged until mid-October, killing many. Thought to be immune to the disease, blacks also contracted the fever in large numbers, although only 7 percent died. It is possible that exposure to yellow fever in Africa provided blacks with inherited resistance. Those fleeing the plague encountered quarantines throughout the South. Some were successful in keeping the disease from spreading, but most efforts failed. Yellow fever’s impact, however, was not all negative. Many communities began sanitation reforms, and yellow fever did not again strike in epidemic proportions. Sewer systems and better water supply did wonders for public health in preventing cholera, dysentery, and other water-borne diseases. Mississippi also undertook an infrastructure leading to acceptance of national health care efforts: not an easy step for a militantly states' rights and racially reactionary society.The book is published by The University of Alabama Press. The audiobook will be published by University Press Audiobooks."I highly recommend this very well documented and highly readable work." (Mississippi Library Association Book Reviews)"A detailed, thick description of events… Few books have depicted this disruption and panic as clearly as Nuwer’s account." (Bulletin of the History of Medicine)“Provides important insight into the interrelatedness of political history and public health care." (Journal of Mississippi History) ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Cynthia Hemminger. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/131281/bk_acx0_131281_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  The Expendable: The True Story of Patrol Wing 10, Pt Squadron 3, and a Navy Corpsman who Refused to Surrender when the Philippine Islands Fell to Japan , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 1024min

  As smoke billows skyward from Pearl Harbor, Japan throws its full military might against the outnumbered and under-equipped Filipino forces. Admiral Hart sends his US Asiatic Fleet south, to the safety of Allied waters. When remnants of PBY Patrol Wing 10 depart with the fleet, Charles Beckner, corpsman for Squadron 102, is left behind with no apparent avenue for escape. Under relentless pressure from Japanese forces, American and Filipino troops retreat down the Bataan Peninsula. Sick with malaria and dysentery and out of food and ammunition, surrender is imminent for those who survive. Charles joins Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 as machine gunner and corpsman on PT-34. After two months of fighting along the Bataan coast, Squadron 3 is tasked with a critical, covert mission that once more leaves Charles stranded, this time on the southern Philippine island of Cebu. As the Japanese noose tightens, Charles makes his way to the island of Mindanao and joins other sailors and soldiers preparing for guerrilla resistance. His plans are interrupted by new orders that will unexpectedly reunite him with crewmen of his old seaplane squadron. With advancing Japanese troops only minutes away, there is one possibility for escape. It is risky, and failure will be fatal. "Highly readable narrative of personal courage from PBYs to PT boats John Floyd has done an admirable job of preserving the stories of his father-in-law in a fast-paced and highly readable narrative. Originally assigned as a Navy corpsman to a PBY patrol wing, Charles Beckner was not only on Corregidor with MacArthur, but also in the chaos of the start of the war in the Pacific he ended up in the PT-boat squadron that evacuated the general from the Philippines. Highly recommended as the story of one family’s sacrifices well told in the context of the broader war." (Walter Borneman, author of The Admirals and MacArthur at War)Winner, Arizona Authors Association 2020 L ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Phil Thron. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/221222/bk_acx0_221222_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  And the Wind Blew Cold: The Story of an American Pow in North Korea , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 206min

  A first-person account of the day-to-day struggles of an American held captive in North Korea.... October 6, 1951. Richard Bassett remembers the day vividly. That was the day his platoon ran into an ambush near Kumwha. During the firefight, many were wounded, four were killed, and Bassett, along with three others, was captured. During a month-long march to the POW camp, the Americans frequently came under friendly fire. Surviving the march paled in comparison to what the captured soldiers had to endure at Camp 5 Pyokdong. Frostbite, dysentery, jaundice, and mental breakdowns dwindled their numbers. Starvation and squalid conditions took their toll on Bassett during his 21-month incarceration. Yet he pledged to himself that if anyone were to walk out of this camp alive, it would be him. When Richard Bassett returned from Korea on convalescent leave in 1953, he set down his experiences in training, combat, and captivity. Then he put the memoir away and tried to forget. More than 20 years later, hospitalized for acute Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, he once again faced his personal demons. Expanding the memoir to include his postwar struggles with the US government and his own wounded psyche, the resulting comprehensive account is published here for the first time. Bassett captures in plain language and vivid detail those days of his captivity. He describes the shock of capture and ensuing the long march to Pyokdong, North Korea, Camp 5 on the Yellow River, where many prisoners died of untreated wounds, disease, hunger, paralyzing cold, and brutal mistreatment in the bitter winter of 1950-51. He recounts Chinese attempts to mentally break down prisoners in order to exploit them for propaganda. Bassett takes the listener through typical days in a prisoner's life, discussing food, clothing, shelter, and work; the struggle against unremitting boredom; religious, social, and recreational diversions; and even those moments of terror when all seeme ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Marlin May. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/050096/bk_acx0_050096_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Yellowstone: Fallout: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller : The Yellowstone Series, Book 3 , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 424min

  Yellowstone was not an ordinary volcano. It was a cannon of immense size, equal in destructive capability to all of mankind's nuclear weapons - combined. It was quite frankly, Earth's greatest killer.The Yellowstone Series, a new disaster thriller from international best-selling author Bobby Akart, takes the listener on a thrill ride as a cataclysmic event of extinction level proportions ticks away like a time bomb, awaiting its moment. Millions of people visit the Yellowstone National Park every year blissfully unaware they are on top of the greatest killer man has ever known - the Yellowstone Supervolcano. Modern man had studied the eruption and aftermath of volcanos on our planet for two centuries, but in the past 100 years, scientific equipment allowed them to predict the environmental impact. When assessing the fallout of the fourth major eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the prediction models were wrong. No part of our planet will be left untouched by the fallout. Those who weren't incinerated by the eruption will be poisoned by the gas or succumb to the ash mixing with the fluids within their bodies. For those lucky enough to survive the direct effects of the eruption, they were subject to starvation and dysentery as the ash fallout created a volcanic winter.And then, there was the threat of their fellow man. Know this. The eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano will be more than a spectacle to grab our attention. It will be the end of the world as we know it. About the Yellowstone series: Volcanoes are the Earth's way of letting off steam. While most people look at volcanic eruptions as natural disasters, the fact of the matter is, without them, the Earth would explode. Deep beneath the surface of the planet, excess heat builds up, finding a way to vent. Like an overcrowded bus on a hot summer day, the overheated magma stews in its own madness, allowing pent-up frustrations to boil over, un ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Chris Abernathy. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/131268/bk_acx0_131268_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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