100 Turning Points in American History
About this audiobook
Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the one hundred points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today.
Columbus arrives in the New World
The first slaves arrive in America
Independence is declared
Female suffragists meet in Seneca Falls
Fort Sumter falls
A transcontinental railroad is completed
Edison lights his first electric lamp
FDR offers a “New Deal”
The B-29 Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
President Nixon creates the EPA
9/11, Obama, Sandy Hook, Russian election “meddling,” and the Age of Trump
These and many more are the crucial “plot points” in our grand national story, and bestselling historian Alan Axelrod presents them here.
About the author
Alan Axelrod, PhD, is the author of many books on history, leadership, and military history, including How America Won World War I, Miracle at Belleau Wood: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps, The Gilded Age, Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London, and Generals South, Generals North: The Commanders of the Civil War Reconsidered. He has taught at University of Iowa, Lake Forest College, and Furman University. He was most recently a creative consultant for The Great War in the PBS American Experience television series.
Read by Richard Ferrone, Stephen Bel Davies, Prentice Onayemi, Scott Aiello, Michael David Axtell, Jessica B. Harris, and Amanda Leigh Cobb
