Tragic History

Christopher Marlow's play based on the Faust story of a man selling his soul to the devil, has fascinated and divided critics throughout the ages since its first performance in Elizabethan England. The central character's thirst for knowledge and power throws up essential questions of morality, life and death. Compulsive listening as this exceptionally brilliant play of verse and prose is finely executed by Frank Silvera and cast.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

The Bible is a piercing drama, a tale of prophets and wandering spirits, heroic mothers and flashing swords, cosmic mountains, and a dry, shadowy Sheol. It is a true story that defines the nature and purpose of reality, and its claims are astonishing. But few modern listeners experience the Bible that way. In this groundbreaking audiobook, celebrated storyteller Blaine Eldredge draws upon years of research to illuminate the story of the Bible through the lives of six kingly characters.

For most of the 20th century, the “Mr. America” image epitomized muscular manhood. From humble beginnings in 1939 at a small gym in Schenectady, New York, the Mr. America Contest became the world’s premier bodybuilding event over the next 30 years. Interviewing nearly one hundred major figures in the physical culture movement (including 25 Mr. Americas) and incorporating copious printed and manuscript sources, John D. Fair has created the definitive study of this iconic phenomenon.

The Real Custer takes a good hard look at the life and storied military career of George Armstrong Custer - from cutting his teeth at Bull Run in the Civil War, to his famous and untimely death at Little Bighorn in the Indian Wars. Author James Robbins demonstrates that Custer, having graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to prove himself again and again as an extremely skilled cavalry leader.

Rudy Giuliani was hailed after 9/11 as “America’s Mayor,” a national hero who, at the time, was more widely admired than the pope. He was brilliant, accomplished—and complicated. He conflated politics with morality, made reckless personal choices, and engaged in self-destructive behavior. A series of disastrous decisions and cynical compromises, coupled with his need for power, money, and attention gradually ruined his reputation, cost him political support, and ultimately damaged the country.

A Brief History of the Titanic brings to life the captivating narrative of the world's most famous ship. This book isn't just about a tragedy; it's about the people, the dreams, and the innovations that defined an era. You'll be transported back in time to experience the grandeur and the sorrow of the Titanic.

Nearly everything people know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than twenty years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world's largest, most expensive, and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her.

This Deadly Expeditions tale transports listeners back in time to follow the Donner Party’s disastrous trek west and their struggle to survive.

In July 1881, Lt. A. W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge - vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures, and months of total darkness - as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. In May 1882, they broke the 300-year-old record, and returned to camp to eagerly await the resupply ship. Only nothing came.

The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in remote New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world, and even Michael's powerful, influential family, guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.

Told at a cracking pace and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century. With a cast of remarkable characters, it weaves together the extraordinary lives of our bushrangers and the desperation of a young nation eager to remove the stains of its convict past. But most of all, Moonlite is a tragic love story.

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy was the incandescent life force of the fabled Kennedy family, her father's acknowledged "favorite of all the children" and her brother Jack's "psychological twin". She was the Kennedy of Kennedys, sure of her privilege, magnetically charming, and somehow not quite like anyone else on whatever stage she happened to grace.

For centuries, human history has been shaped by politics, power and war - but what about love? Mark Antony's love for Cleopatra led to war between Rome and Egypt; Emperor Xuanzang of Tang relinquished the Mandate of Heaven for Yang Guifei; and the English Reformation was borne out of Henry VIII's passion for Anne Boleyn. Over the centuries since, these great loves - and many others - have been celebrated, recorded and memorialized to stand alongside the annals of war, peace and politics that have moulded today's world.

The M16 rifle is one of the world’s most famous firearms, iconic as the American weapon of the Vietnam War and, indeed, as the US military’s standard service rifle until only a few years ago. But the story of the M16 in Vietnam is anything but a success story. In the early years of the war, the US military had a problem: Its primary infantry rifle, the M14, couldn’t stand up to the enemy’s AK-47s. The search was on for a replacement that was lighter in weight, more durable, and more lethal than the M14.

In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality - to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England - had been one of the founding values of Acadia. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.

On the 8th June 1940, the Nazi battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau opened their guns on the aircraft-carrier HMS Glorious. Within minutes, the Glorious was taking on water, and the order was given to abandon ship. Only 40 men survived this ordeal, one of which was Royal Marine Ronald "Tubby" Healiss, who served as a member of a 4.7 gun crew on the Glorious. His award-winning account is a true and terrible record of suffering, which uncovers one of the greatest undocumented naval stories of the Second World War.

The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la is a breathtaking account of the ill-fated October 1998 expedition of an American whitewater kayaking team who traveled deep into the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet to run the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the "Everest of rivers." For Wick Walker and Tom McEwan, extreme whitewater pioneers, best friends, and trip leaders, the Tsangpo adventure was the culmination of a twenty-five-year quest for glory. Yet the team's magnificent dreams crumbled when their ace paddler was swept over a thunderous eight-foot waterfall, never to be seen again.

M. William Phelps reveals an unfathomable pattern surrounding repeating arms inventor Samuel Colt - from the death of all his children, including Sam's sea captain son's mysterious demise aboard his yacht, to the eccentric life of his widow.

While people still romanticize the Wild West, many Americans are still all too familiar with the fate of the Donner Party, a group of 87-90 people that met with disaster in the Sierra Nevada mountain range during the winter of 1846-1847. The party knew the journey would take months, but early snowfalls in the mountains left dozens of people trapped in snow drifts that measured several feet, stranding them in a manner that made it virtually impossible for them to go any further for several weeks.