The American Century; Volume III [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Harold Evans (Author), Gail Buckland (Contributor), Kevin Baker (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1998 | Series: American Century (Book 3)

Franklin D. Roosevelt's World War II dream of one world living in peace and prosperity, its quarrels settled in a United Nations, did not long survive. Almost as soon as the shooting stopped, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the world into two armed camps and began the Cold War -- a war that would last nearly fifty years.

This program traces the progress of the Cold War, the much hotter war in Korea, and the CIA-planned coups in Guatemala and Iran. On the home front, we follow the growth and collapse of the specter of McCarthyism.

In another arena the images are in black versus white, as the civil rights movement gathers momentum and sit-ins shake the South. The launch of Sputnik,I sends a chill through the nation and catapults us into the space race. And, as the presidency of Truman gives way to that of Dwight Eisenhower and then to the hairbreadth victory of John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon, new words and phrases enter our national vocabulary. Camelot. The Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Dealey Plaza.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

First published as a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book, The American Century is a sweeping survey of the second 100 years of U.S. history as a republic18891989. It is an ambitious work that explores the most important forces driving modern U.S. history, which it constantly examines in the context of the world as a whole. This dual perspective emerges because author and journalist Evans is an immigrant from Britain who has been captivated by the energy and spirit of individual freedom he found in America. His book is clearly a labor of love. The four separate packages that comprise this production are labeled abridgments, but their combined 24 hours must constitute a large part of the original bookespecially since reader Ira Claffey speaks at an unusually fast pace. He is a smooth and spirited reader, but if this program has a fault it is that Claffey reads with too much energy, making it difficult to savor Evanss powerful prose. Recommended for all libraries with patrons hungry for good historical works on tape.R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Harold Evans is Editorial Director and Vice Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. He was President and Publisher of the Random House Trade Group from 1990 to 1997. from 1967 to 1981 he was the prize-winning editor of The Sunday Times of London, and from 1981-1982, editor of The Times of London. He lives in New York City with his wife, Tina Brown, and their two children.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio; Abridged edition (November 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155927526X
• ISBN-13: 978-1559275262
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,579,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Harold Evans is the author of two critically acclaimed landmark histories of America: the New York Times bestseller "The American Century" and "They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators," selected by Fortune magazine on its own 75th anniversary as one of the best books of the previous 75 years. WGBH television made four documentaries based on Evans's work.
Evans first came to America in 1956 as a Harkness Fellow at the University of Chicago and Stanford University; he traveled through 40 states and reported for The Manchester Guardian his first-hand experiences of the civil rights battles in the Deep South. On his return, he became assistant editor of the sister paper, the Manchester Evening News, then editor of the leading provincial daily, The Northern Echo, where he succeeded in getting a resistant government to establish a life-saving program for the detection of cervical cancer, and won a royal pardon for a man wrongly executed for murder.
Appointed editor of the influential London Sunday Times in 1967 and then of The Times in 1981, Evans was voted by British journalists the greatest all-time editor and also awarded the European gold award for the investigations and campaigns he led: his Insight team exposed the spy Kim Philby, tracked the cause of the crash of a DC-10 airliner near Paris (then the world's most deadly crash), and won justice for the children affected by thalidomide.
Settling in America in 1982, after a famous battle with Rupert Murdoch, he was editorial director of US News & World Report, founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, and president of Random House from 1990 to 1997. He remains a contributing editor of US News, is editor at large at The Week magazine, and is a frequent broadcaster on American affairs for the BBC.
In 2004 he was knighted for his service to journalism. He is now an American citizen who lives in New York with his wife, Tina Brown, and their son and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good pictures, Terrible text!, December 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The American Century; Volume III (Audio Cassette)

If you're a good Democrat and despise the Republican Party, then this book will re-enforce most of your prejudies. Through-out his book, Evens makes snide remarks about Nixion and Regean. If your looking for an objective book on the 20th Century, maybe you should look someplace else.