The War

Producer and war documentarian Ken Burns reads it all, almost. He retains his famous "this happened to us" style of telling history by having three other voices, one of them Tom Hanks's, read a few sentences about every half-hour. The result has more cohesion and flow than a production in which multiple narrators share the task as equals. Burns's soft voice disappears into realistic images of flaming kamikaze planes diving into U.S. ships and the deaths on the Normandy beaches. His tempo may seem slow, but it yields perfect diction. The creators' historical compression of WWII into nine hours of compelling audio meets Burns's intention of educating younger minds in an engaging manner about the greatest war of the twentieth century. J.A.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, AudioFile Best Audiobook of 2007 (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine