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The Longest Afternoon by Brendan Simms
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The Longest Afternoon

The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo

$10.49

Narrator Michael Page

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Length 3 hours 8 minutes
Language English
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In 1815, the deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe—Napoleon's forces on one side, and the Duke of Wellington on the other.

With so much at stake, neither commander could have predicted that the battle would be decided by the Second Light Battalion, King's German Legion, which was given the deceptively simple task of defending the Haye Sainte farmhouse, a crucial crossroads on the way to Brussels. In The Longest Afternoon, Brendan Simms recounts how these four-hundred-odd riflemen beat back wave after wave of French infantry until they were finally forced to withdraw, but only after holding up Napoleon for so long that he lost the overall contest. Their actions alone decided the most influential battle in European history.

Brendan Simms is a professor of the history of international relations and a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He is the author of Unfinest Hour, Three Victories and a Defeat, and Europe, which was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. Brendan lives in Cambridge, England.

Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since the mid-1980s and now has nearly 500 titles to his credit. He has won two Audie Awards and several AudioFile Earphones Awards. A PhD and a professional actor, Michael is also a retired professor of theater.

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Reviews

"Simms takes advantage of abundant letters and memoirs to deliver an engrossing, often gruesome nuts-and-bolts description of that afternoon." ---Kirkus Expand reviews
Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale