Books with author Frederick Davidson

The three fearless friends introduced in Three Men in a Boat decide to take a cycling trip through the Black Forest and end up in a series of misadventures even more hilarious than their previous. ''A Bummel, '' I explained, ''I should describe as a journey, long or short, without end.'' However wonderful this may sound, it is often necessary to arrive back at the starting point. And, for the three fearless friends this poses a troublesome problem. George, Harris, and J. decide to take a cycling trip through the Black Forest, and this is to be accomplished on a tandem plus one. Whether it is Harris's harrowing experience with a Hanoverian road-waterer or George's valiant attempt to buy a cushion for his aunt, their experiences are hilarious--and they may even offer some important lessons to all who may be contemplating a cycling trip in the U.S.

[Read by Frederick Davidson] Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once a historical war epic, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Noted for its mastery of realistic detail and psychological analysis, it follows the metamorphosis of five aristocratic families against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Individual stories interweave as each of Tolstoy's memorable characters seek fulfillment, fall in love, make mistakes, and become scarred by war in different ways. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual's place in the historical process. -- Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers: ''To be played upon by the animal keenness of this eye, the sheer power of this creative attack, the entirely clear and true greatness . . . of this epic, is to find one's way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.''

[Read by Frederick Davidson] Frederick Forsyth's spellbinding novels may be the natural outgrowth of an adventuresome career in international investigative journalism. Written in Austria and Germany during the fall of 1971, The Odessa File is based on its author's life experiences as a Reuters man reporting from London, Paris, and East Berlin in the early 1960s. The ''Odessa'' of this title is an acronym for the secret organization which has protected the identities and advanced the destinies of former members of Hitler's dreaded SS since shortly before the end of World War II. One of its rare major defeats came in the spring of 1964, when a packet of dossiers arrived anonymously at the Ministry of Justice in Bonn. How and why a once carefree young German freelance journalist came to send the packet is told in this brilliant new extrapolation from reality into terror.

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format.][Read by Frederick Davidson] Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the P.O.U.M. militia to fight against the Fascists. In this now justly famous account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed. As important as the story of the war itself - is Orwell's analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers' revolution and branded the P.O.U.M. as Trotskyist, which provides an essential key to understanding the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international Communism. It was during this period in Spain that Orwell learned for himself the nature of totalitarianism in practice, an education that laid the groundwork for his great books Animal Farm and 1984.

Follow along on this fantastic voyage as Professor Arronax, Ned, and Beth set out to capture a terrifying sea monster-before it captures them."The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten...For some time past, vessels had been met by 'an enormous thing,' a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale." —from the bookWhen Professor Aronnax agrees to investigate a series of attacks by a mysterious sea monster, he begins an incredible underwater journey that leads him from Atlantis to the South Pole. Through unforeseen dangers, surprise encounters, and exotic settings, this epic adventure is a tour de force of imagination and narrative grandeur.Jules Verne was remarkably successful in foretelling the wonders science held for the future. This, his most famous novel, earned him the title of "Father of Science Fiction."

[MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] [Read by Frederick Davidson] Frederick Forsyth's spellbinding novels may be the natural outgrowth of an adventuresome career in international investigative journalism. Written in Austria and Germany during the fall of 1971, The Odessa File is based on its author's life experiences as a Reuters man reporting from London, Paris, and East Berlin in the early 1960s. The ''Odessa'' of this title is an acronym for the secret organization which has protected the identities and advanced the destinies of former members of Hitler's dreaded SS since shortly before the end of World War II. One of its rare major defeats came in the spring of 1964, when a packet of dossiers arrived anonymously at the Ministry of Justice in Bonn. How and why a once carefree young German freelance journalist came to send the packet is told in this brilliant new extrapolation from reality into terror.

Swept off course by a raging storm, a Swiss pastor, his wife, and their four young sons are shipwrecked on a strange, uncharted tropical island. This timeless, classic story of survival and adventure has fired the imaginations of readers since it first appeared in 1812, and it reads just as fresh as if it were written today. The natural wonders of the lush, exotic land make for an unforgettable setting, and the family itself will find a place in the listeners' heart. As they struggle to survive in the wilderness, the Robinsons discover their own amazing ingenuity and courage, each of the sons utilizing his own unique nature as their adventures lead to difficult challenges and fantastic discoveries. Although they have lost almost everything in the shipwreck, they are so resourceful that, when rescue finally comes, they decline to leave the happy life they have constructed for themselves in their exotic haven.

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] One of Time Magazine's Best Books of the Decade A New York Times Bestseller [Read by Frederick Davidson] From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change. Schama's approach, weaving in and out of private and public lives in the fashion of a novel, brings us closer than we have ever been to the harrowing and seductive French Revolution.

This is the MP3CD audiobook format. Beginning with the premise that all civilizations owe their origins to war-making, Keegan probes the meanings, motivations, and methods underlying war in different societies over the course of more than two thousand years. Following the progress of human aggression in its full historical sweep from the strangely ritualistic combat of Stone Age peoples to the warfare of mass destruction in the present age his illuminating and lively narrative gives us all the world's great warrior cultures, including the Zulus, the samurai, and the horse peoples of the steppe, as well as the famed war-makers of the West. He shows why honor has always been accorded to the soldierly virtues, whatever the cultural context, and how war has maintained its singular hold on the imagination, reaching into the most secret places of the human heart, where self dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king.

This is a novel about a man's lifelong efforts to atone for an act of instinctive cowardice. Young Jim, chief mate of the Patna, dreams of being a hero. When the Patna threatens to sink and the cowardly officers decide to save their own skins and escape in the few lifeboats, Jim despises them. But at the last moment, dazed by horror and confusion, he joins them, deserting the 800 Muslim passengers to apparent death. Tormented by this act of cowardice and desertion, Jim flees to the West. Living among the natives in Patusan, a remote trading post in the jungle, he is able to cease sacrificing himself on the altar of conscience. When he defends Patusan against the evil ''Gentleman Brown,'' his efforts create order and well-being, thereby winning the respect and affection of the people for whom he becomes Tuan, or Lord Jim.