Showing results by narrator "Bill Hare" in All Categories

At one point or another, just about everyone has heard of the dodo bird, which is almost universally described as a cuddly, whimsical creature renowned for its alleged stupidity. This prehistoric avian had been known for hundreds of years, before it was made popular around the world in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Welcome to Mumbai, one of India’s most bustling, populated, action-packed, creative, and absolutely random cities. Located in Western India in the state of Maharashtra, Mumbai is a natural destination for travelers who are seeking to get a feel for Indian city life and its environs. Experience Mumbai takes listeners to Mumbai’s touristy district and beyond, exposing them to local architecture, art, nature, cuisine, dance, and more in a way that will make a trip to Mumbai an experience unforgettable.

In the summer of 1866, Colonel Henry B. Carrington set out from Fort Laramie to establish a series of forts along the Bozeman Trail with the goal of protecting migrants moving along the trail. The Bozeman Trail ran through the Powder River country, which included the traditional hunting grounds of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. Carrington had about 1,000 people in his column, of which about 700 were soldiers and 300 were civilians, likely soldiers' families and migrants.

The most iconic images of the First World War are of the war on land. But part of that same generation faced a very different war, one that was just as important in deciding the fate of Europe. This was the war at sea. Here, events took place that would draw America into the war, providing the Allies with a new pool of manpower and so ensuring that the scales of the conflict tipped in their favor. At sea just as much as on land, this was a war that would shape the future of the world.

The OSS and CIA: The History of America’s Intelligence Community during World War II and the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency looks at the agencies’ organizational characteristics, historical inception, early Cold War growth, and recent influence. You will learn about the OSS and CIA like never before.

The ancient Greeks used a number of forms of divination to determine the future and seek advice from the gods as to which actions they should take in any given situation. The most popular of these ways to consult the Gods was through a visit to an oracle - usually a person - at a fixed shrine. The oldest of these Greek sites was at Dodona in Epirus, and while it continued to be a major oracle for the Greek world through antiquity, it was quickly overtaken by the oracle at Delphi as the most consulted by kings, politicians, and ordinary Greeks alike.

Submarine warfare began tentatively during the American Civil War. Robert Whitehead's invention of the torpedo introduced the weapon later used most frequently by submarines. World War I proved the value of submarines, ensuring their widespread employment in the next conflict. Submarine Warfare in World War I: The History and Legacy of the German U-boats and Allied Efforts to Counter Them analyzes the underwater fighting. You will learn about submarine warfare in World War I like never before.

By the mid-15th century, the Byzantine Empire had collapsed and the various Crusades that had taken place in the region had largely disrupted the overland routes of the Silk Road and trade. Compounding the difficulties of trade was the rise of the Ottoman Empire in place of the Byzantines and the outbreak of the Black Death in Europe. This audiobook chronicles the early efforts by the Portuguese that helped initiate the Age of Exploration, and the ramifications the colonization had across the world.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.

The term robber baron has largely fallen into disuse in the 21st century but there was a time when it was a popular epithet that described the kind of man who, it was believed, built his fortune by taking things belonging to others. Of all the men labeled as robber barons during the Gilded Age, few were as influential as Henry Clay Frick, who rubbed shoulders with men like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie while overseeing some of the era’s biggest companies.

On September 25, 1877, on a rain-soaked, muddy field in Kagoshima, Japan, a small group of proud samurai warrior rebels prepared for one last stand. It was early morning, six a.m, and the remaining 40 samurai warriors still capable of fighting prepared themselves for the glory of death on the battlefield. They had been shelled by powerful artillery guns and naval cannons relentlessly through the night, and the rebels had no real shelter or protection. Instead, they cowered like rats in small, rain-filled mud holes, showered by a torrent of steel shells and shrapnel.

While actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant remain household names, and actresses like Greta Garbo are still widely remembered, few had careers that enjoyed the success of William Powell. In a career spanning several decades, Powell would receive three Oscar nominations for Best Actor for critically acclaimed movies, so it is somewhat ironic that he is mostly remembered today for his association with the more famous Myrna Loy. Together, they starred in 14 films, including the 1934 box office hit, The Thin Man.

Like lethal insects undergoing a series of metamorphoses into ever more mature and dangerous forms, military aircraft moved rapidly from stage to stage of their development as the 20th century progressed. The catalyst of war provided the swiftest impetus to this evolution. The new mechanized armies existing from the later period of World War I onward seized on the fresh technology and sought to squeeze every possible drop of advantage from it that the limits of science and the era's materials would allow.

The annals of world history are filled with intriguing, although often outlandish stories of lost cities and kingdoms, and in addition to Atlantis, there are also Hyperborea, Shambhala, and Aztlan, to name just a few. One of these lost cities is that known as Ubar, Wabar, or Iram. Ubar and its location continued to fascinate people around the world, and it seemed as though its secrets would remain hidden beneath the Arabian sands until the 1980s, when a photojournalist named Nicholas Clapp became interested in the city.

Pavlov's dogs are to Psychology 101 what Rome is to antiquity classes. This particular series of experiments and the concept of classical conditioning likely ring a bell for many readers and listeners because they have been referenced in countless texts, both scientific and otherwise, and they have seeped into various forms of pop culture throughout the years.

Wahhabism is the most common form of politicized fundamentalist Islam, now most associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and the official religion of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is widespread throughout the Islamic world, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan (where it was the official religion of the Taliban). Together, the Saudi and al-Wahhab families formed a potent alliance, with the Saudis gaining an ideological backing for their small state and the Wahhabis gaining a powerful and increasingly wealthy patron.

The center of political and commercial interaction in the Ancient Greek polis was the agora. The word essentially means a gathering place or an open space, and in all Greek city states, the agora was central to all aspects of daily life and commerce. As the agora developed as a civic space, particularly from the sixth century BCE onward in Athens, the architectural splendor of the buildings associated with it became an ever more obvious demonstration of the power and glory of Athenian democracy.

On October 21, 1600, two massive Japanese armies, totaling an estimated 200,000 soldiers armed to the teeth with swords, yari (spears), arrows, muskets, and cannons, faced off on a battlefield near the town of Sekigahara. A bitter fight to the death ensued, and the results would determine the course of Japanese history for the next 250 years. On the battlefield was the warlord Leyasu Tokugawa, a man desiring domain over the entire island of Japan, but standing in his way was Ishida Mitsunari, a warlord controlling vast swaths of western Japan.

The most famous battle of the 19th century was undoubtedly Waterloo, and the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars was Leipzig, but neither one of those legendary battles was the biggest of the century. That distinction instead belongs to the Battle of Königgrätz, a little known, but decisive conflict in a war between Prussia and Austria. Though it lasted only seven weeks and only had one truly decisive battle, the Austro-Prussian War nonetheless changed the political outlook in Europe forever.

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another. Its naval supremacy linked the Commonwealth of Canada with the colonies in South Africa and India, and through them trade flowed east and west. An integral but underutilized part of this vast trade network included China, a reclusive Asian kingdom closed off from the Western world that desired none of its goods.