Showing results by narrator "Charlton Griffin" in All Categories

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century A.D. at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the Mediterranean. It is a thrilling and cautionary tale of splendor and ruin, of faith and hubris, and of civilization and barbarism. Follow along as Christianity overcomes paganism... before itself coming under intense pressure from Islam.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

Winner of the 2001 Audie Award for Classic Fiction, this is an unparalleled presentation of Maugham's stories, complete with sound effects and music.

The Meditations are a series of private reflections written in Greek by a Roman emperor immersed in the administration of an empire beset by wars on its frontiers and natural disasters in its interior. It is the work of a great man seeking philosophical and spiritual solace in the midst of human chaos and uncertainty. This beautiful piece of ancient literature has been the companion of many leaders over the centuries who turned to inner reflection in times of unrest. Its Stoic philosophy has been much admired and emulated.

Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.

By the middle of the second century BC, the city of Rome was spiraling toward bankruptcy and moral decay. The generation which had defeated Hannibal and brought the Mediterranean under Roman control had now passed away, even as gold poured in. Hardly a Roman name of any note appears for half a century. The noble Roman has disappeared. The once feared Roman army has become a mere shadow of its former self, and the public have come to accustom themselves to news of shattering defeats.

The greatest short story writers strive to achieve a single, dramatic effect, a feature which the early masters of this genre perfected. Although the short story came from Europe, it was reborn in America and reached a pinnacle of superb form on these shores by the turn of the 20th century. In so many of our best writers, we hear echoes of a pioneer ethos that sustains the heart of a great literature. Here are 12 of America's best.

Book three of Mommsen's history covers the 118 years from 264 to 146 BC, the period in which Rome became the undisputed master of the Mediterranean Basin. How did this happen, and why? Carthage was instrumental in this transformation. With the defeat and expulsion of Pyrrhus in 275 BC, Rome had moved to consolidate its hold over the Italian peninsula, a position it had acquired in a century of almost continuous warfare with Italian tribes.

Arthur Conan Doyle never wasted time in getting his stories moving. His plots are always direct and refreshingly lucid, and the narrative has a velocity that sweeps you along right to the end. This was no doubt a large part of his immense worldwide success. Not surprisingly, each time he tried to end the series, his fans would howl in protest. But, as he says in the preface to his last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, all good things must come to an end.

When Gone with the Wind appeared in 1936, it became on overnight sensation. Nothing like it in American literature had ever been seen. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most celebrated films of all time. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 27 languages. Gone with the Wind is both an historical novel and an examination of the bewildering changes that swept Georgia in the 1860s.

Cyril Robinson's magnificent history continues with volume two in this four-part series. We now follow the fortunes of two great royal dynasties: Tudor and Stuart. Great names from England's past tumble out one after the other. Henry VIII takes the English out of the Catholic fold. His daughter, Elizabeth, defeats the Spanish Armada of 1588. The arrogance of Charles I leads him to the scaffold. Civil War and Puritanism follow, led by the intrepid Oliver Cromwell.

There have been few masters of the short story as popular as W. S. Maugham. His dry wit, worldweary loftiness, pungent cynicism, and penetrating powers of observation have contributed to the creation of some of the greatest short stories ever written.

The Spoils of Time is a concise history of the world in nine chapters, tracing the prehistoric beginnings of early man’s halting steps towards civilization and ending sometime around 1500. The scope is vast, with Wedgwood’s scholarship spanning all the continents. As the author states, her purpose was to create a continuous narrative of human history for her own pleasure and to find out for herself what, if any, interlacing relations might hold us together.

Listening to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times? Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social commentary could easily have been written today about any number of metropolitan areas we are all familiar with.

Millions of people have thrilled to the adventure of young Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver since the publication of Treasure Island in 1883. It has been dramatized countless times since its appearance. Treasure maps marked with an X, schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and peglegged sailors with parrots on their shoulders: All these stereotypes of the buccaneer tale were the invention of R. L. Stevenson. But make no mistake about it...this novel is a masterpiece of plot development, character study, and sheer writing skill.

Herodotus was a Greek historian born in Halicarnassus, subject at the time of the great Persian Empire. He lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484 - c. 425 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. He is often referred to as "The Father of History", a title originally conferred by Cicero. Herodotus was the first historian known to have broken from Homeric tradition in order to treat historical subjects as a method of investigation, specifically by collecting his materials in a critical, systematic fashion and then arranging them into a chronological narrative.

A History of Rome is the story of a tiny market town on the Tiber, its rise to world domination, and then its slow, terrible plunge to utter ruin. It is the single greatest event in all human history.

The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.

The bitter conflict between England and France we call The Hundred Years War, and lasting 116 years between 1337 and 1453, was fought over claims by the English kings to the French throne. By the end of this titanic struggle, it can fairly be said that the Middle Ages had come to an end.