Browse audiobooks narrated by Peter Larson, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
3 audiobooks in our catalogue, every one with its narrator named.
The Shadow War Between the States: The History of Union and Confederate Intelligence Operations during the Civil War
"In September 1862, the Union had no intelligence service worthy of the name. It had detectives, scouts, scattered networks of informants, balloons, signal flags, and a great deal of luck, but the federal government did not have a coordinated system, to the extent that military commanders did not know enemy troop strength. By the end of the war, the Union would be running the most sophisticated intelligence operations in American history to that point. The government eventually forged an integrated, all-source, professional service that fed the commanding generals daily reports on enemy strength, disposition, morale, and intent. The Union also successfully maintained a network of spies inside the Confederate capital that intercepted enemy signal traffic; read Southern newspapers, and used escaped slaves as sources of intelligence. It was not until 1988, when two career intelligence officers named William A. Tidwell and David Winfred Gaddy and a Lincoln assassination scholar named James O. Hall published Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln, that the full scope of Confederate covert operations began to come into focus. The picture that emerged from surviving documents, financial records, pension files, and the kind of careful inference that professional intelligence analysts bring to fragmentary evidence, was startling in its ambition and in its implications. The Confederate Secret Service, it turned out, had been playing a longer and more sophisticated game than anyone had previously understood. In fact, Confederate intelligence operations had begun during the first weeks of the war, and in the autumn of 1864, they were on the verge of planning an operation that, had it succeeded, might have changed the outcome of the conflict entirely."
Charles River Editors (Author), Peter Larson (Narrator)
Audiobook · 3 hrs 35 mins
Union Intelligence in the Civil War: The History of the North’s Spy Networks and Covert Operations against the Confederates
"Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers. Since the war's start over 150 years ago, the battles have been subjected to endless debate among historians and the generals themselves. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would take four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it did, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the biggest battles ever since. In September 1862, the Union had no intelligence service worthy of the name. It had detectives, scouts, scattered networks of informants, balloons, signal flags, and a great deal of luck, but the federal government did not have a coordinated system, to the extent that military commanders did not know enemy troop strength. In fact, General George McClellan spent most of his time in command of the Army of the Potomac dramatically overestimating the size of Robert E. Lee's Confederate army in front of him, and it would inform how he fought at Antietam on September 17, 1862. At that battle, McClellan believed Lee outnumbered him because his intelligence chief, Allan Pinkerton, had told him so. By the end of the war, the Union would be running the most sophisticated intelligence operations in American history to that point. The government eventually forged an integrated, all-source, professional service that fed the commanding generals daily reports on enemy strength, disposition, morale, and intent. The Union also successfully maintained a network of spies inside the Confederate capital that intercepted enemy signal traffic; read Southern newspapers for what the editors had let slip, and used escaped slaves as sources of intelligence and treated their testimony as it deserved to be treated."
Audiobook · 1 hr 35 mins
The Confederacy’s Most Famous Spies: The Lives and Careers of the South’s Secret Agents during the Civil War
"Given the necessity of spies to hide in plain sight, on some level it is perfectly sensible that women played a larger and more decisive role in espionage operations, because during the Civil War, women were not taken seriously as threats. They openly moved through areas that men in uniform could not easily penetrate, and they were able to publicly receive callers, visit prisoners, manage households, carry on the ordinary commerce of social life, and cross lines that military authorities maintained without bringing any attention upon themselves. A woman bringing food and medicine to prisoners seemed to be a humanitarian, not a security concern, and a woman maintaining the social routines of an established household was a hostess, not an intelligence coordinator. Ironically, both sides used several women as spies precisely because they drew less suspicion. At the start of the war, the most formidable spy on either side of the conflict was a Washington widow named Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She was perfectly situated for espionage as a politically connected woman of extraordinary intelligence who had social reach and the desire to use every connection she had. In the first year of the war alone, she helped win a battle, ran a spy ring from inside her own house while under house arrest, and charmed her jailers in ways that allowed her to continue to pass intelligence from prison. Of course, the most notorious Confederate spy is arguably the most controversial individual of the entire war. John Wilkes Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, and he was a well-known actor throughout much of the country by the 1860s. But Booth was also a Confederate sympathizer who dabbled in espionage, and he was increasingly outraged at the Lincoln administration. His early plans to kidnap and ransom President Lincoln, which may have had official Confederate sanction, ultimately gave way to a wide-ranging conspiracy to kill Lincoln."
Audiobook · 4 hrs 39 mins
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