
Divisions
A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $25.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
George Guidall
About this listen
America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that’s the story many Americans have long told themselves.
Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy. Freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements. But the costs of the military’s color lines were devastating. They impeded America’s war effort, undermined the nation’s rhetoric of the Four Freedoms, further naturalized the concept of race, deepened many whites’ investments in white supremacy, and further fractured the American people.
Offering a dramatic narrative of America’s World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion, Guglielmo fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the war and of mid-20th-century America.
©2021 Oxford University Press (P)2021 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Impending Crisis
- America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861
- By: David M. Potter, Don E. Fehrenbacher
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern secession.
-
-
A Slog for Sure
- By Brux on 04-13-17
By: David M. Potter, and others
-
To the End of the Earth
- The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” returns with this brilliant final volume.
-
-
Amazing history
- By sammy on 02-26-24
By: John C. McManus
-
Island Infernos
- The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 25 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After some two years at war, the Army in the Pacific held ground across nearly a third of the globe, from Alaska’s Aleutians to Burma and New Guinea. The challenges ahead were enormous: supplying a vast number of troops over thousands of miles of ocean; surviving in jungles ripe with dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases; fighting an enemy prone to ever-more desperate and dangerous assaults. Yet the Army had proven they could fight. Now, they had to prove they could win a war.
-
-
Wonderful book, but incomplete and poorly narrated.
- By Linda S. on 02-24-22
By: John C. McManus
-
Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
-
-
Narrator bungles pronunciations
- By ARV on 09-23-23
-
Empire of the Summer Moon
- Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
-
-
Difficult to endure narrator
- By fowler on 12-21-19
By: S. C. Gwynne
-
With the Old Breed
- At Peleliu and Okinawa
- By: E. B. Sledge
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Joe Mazzello, Tom Hanks (introduction)
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries.
-
-
This is the second audio book of Sledge's work
- By Richard on 10-21-13
By: E. B. Sledge
-
The Impending Crisis
- America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861
- By: David M. Potter, Don E. Fehrenbacher
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern secession.
-
-
A Slog for Sure
- By Brux on 04-13-17
By: David M. Potter, and others
-
To the End of the Earth
- The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” returns with this brilliant final volume.
-
-
Amazing history
- By sammy on 02-26-24
By: John C. McManus
-
Island Infernos
- The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 25 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After some two years at war, the Army in the Pacific held ground across nearly a third of the globe, from Alaska’s Aleutians to Burma and New Guinea. The challenges ahead were enormous: supplying a vast number of troops over thousands of miles of ocean; surviving in jungles ripe with dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases; fighting an enemy prone to ever-more desperate and dangerous assaults. Yet the Army had proven they could fight. Now, they had to prove they could win a war.
-
-
Wonderful book, but incomplete and poorly narrated.
- By Linda S. on 02-24-22
By: John C. McManus
-
Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
-
-
Narrator bungles pronunciations
- By ARV on 09-23-23
-
Empire of the Summer Moon
- Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
-
-
Difficult to endure narrator
- By fowler on 12-21-19
By: S. C. Gwynne
-
With the Old Breed
- At Peleliu and Okinawa
- By: E. B. Sledge
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Joe Mazzello, Tom Hanks (introduction)
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries.
-
-
This is the second audio book of Sledge's work
- By Richard on 10-21-13
By: E. B. Sledge
-
Tower of Skulls
- A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Vol. 1 (July 1937 - May 1942)
- By: Richard B. Frank
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 26 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This story casts penetrating light on how struggles in Europe and Asia merged into a tightly entwined global war. It features not just battles, but also the sweeping political, economic, and social effects of the war, and are graced with a rich tapestry of individual characters from top-tier political and military figures down to ordinary servicemen, as well as the accounts of civilians of all races and ages.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Patrick on 03-16-20
By: Richard B. Frank
-
Myth America
- Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Allan Aquino, Maleah Woodley, Todd Menesses, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperiling our democracy. In Myth America, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of fellow historians to push back against this misinformation.
-
-
Right Wing Bashing book!! Aka a History Book
- By amy on 02-08-23
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
-
Stanton
- Lincoln's War Secretary
- By: Walter Stahr
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for "war crimes" such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln's assassination.
-
-
A bad narrator can ruin a good book
- By cathy on 11-01-17
By: Walter Stahr
-
The Black History of the White House
- By: Clarence Lusane
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black first family, the Obamas.
-
-
From Quarries to the Oval Office - Unforgettable
- By Susie on 07-14-16
By: Clarence Lusane
-
Eisenhower in War and Peace
- By: Jean Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 28 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.
-
-
Good, although biased, biography
- By Mike From Mesa on 10-15-12
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
-
Waging a Good War
- A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.
-
-
I was born and raised in Alabama. Jim Crow Era.
- By Moses Pitts on 10-06-22
By: Thomas E. Ricks
-
Enduring Vietnam
- An American Generation and Its War
- By: James Wright
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement. Or both. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows. Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return.
-
-
Great
- By Rebecca Delgado on 03-20-23
By: James Wright
-
The Fiery Trial
- Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.
-
-
Great Book about a Monstrous Injustice
- By Cynthia on 07-29-13
By: Eric Foner
-
Why?
- Explaining the Holocaust
- By: Peter Hayes
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century still seems elusive even 70 years later. Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions - yet none of them are fully convincing.
-
-
Outstanding book! A must read
- By Pierre on 11-13-21
By: Peter Hayes
-
The Irish Soldiers of Mexico
- By: Michael Hogan
- Narrated by: Emil Nicholas Gallina
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Irish Soldiers of Mexico tells the story of the Irish immigrants who joined the Mexican Army in the War of 1846-48 and were later hanged by the U.S. Army. The University Press original sold out four editions in English and two editions in Spanish from 1997 to 2001. It was the basis for an MGM feature film and two documentaries; it has also been used in many history classes both in the United States and abroad.
-
-
Compelling overlooked chapter in American, Mexican, and Irish history.
- By Steve Adams on 04-22-17
By: Michael Hogan
-
Freedom Flyers
- The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II
- By: J. Todd Moye
- Narrated by: Brandon Massey
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question, transformed the armed forces - formerly the nation's most racially polarized institution - and jump-started the modern struggle for racial equality.
-
-
VERY disappointed,,
- By Max & Lucy on 06-11-16
By: J. Todd Moye