Barrett Tillman attempts to bring the entire WWII Allied air war against Japan into a single, coherent whole, and boy does he succeed. The book is written like a historical novel—it traces the strategic decision-making that led to the Allied victory without neglecting the human aspects of the conflict. Narrator Mel Foster is up to the task. He inserts a level of tension into the text that both enhances and humanizes it. What was it like, for example, to sit in a cramped, bubble-like gun turret and spot the enemy above and below? Walking a fine line between passion and restraint, Foster delivers the words of those who did just that and more. It’s a complex performance. It works.
Pub Date: March 2, 2010
Duration: 11 hrs
Publisher: Tantor Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | MILITARY | HISTORY
A beautifully written and narrated work.
Brangan narrates her own history of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland with great empathy. The laundries were in operation all over Ireland from 1922 until 1996—and were in fact locked institutions run by the Catholic Church to ostensibly save “fallen” unwed pregnant women from ruin. In her lovely Irish brogue, Brangan follows several women throughout their experiences in the laundries. Her tone becomes subtly harsher when recounting the stories of those who looked the other way while the Church continued to imprison women and girls in plain sight. The story of the laundries has been told frequently in recent years, but never quite so thoroughly and compassionately.
A beautifully written and narrated work.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
Duration: 9 hrs, 14 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668121375
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
This highly informative history of prehistory tells a new story of how Homo sapiens settled down and started civilizing.
This is historian and popular podcaster Wyman’s second audiobook, after The Verge (2021), which spanned the years 1490-1530 during the European Renaissance. Here his focus is 10,000 years earlier, at the end of the Ice Age, and the spread of what could now be called humans. The story of how, all over the globe, they gave up the migratory life, settled, and started building is wonderfully, richly told in this outstanding history. Wyman doesn’t have the smoothest or most melodic of voices, but he easily wins over the ear and the imagination with his solid research and his adept storytelling.
This highly informative history of prehistory tells a new story of how Homo sapiens settled down and started civilizing.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
Duration: 14 hrs, 55 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063256514
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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