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Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost Audiobook
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Award-winning author Michael Walsh celebrates the masculine attributes of heroism that forged American civilization and Western culture by exploring historical battles in which soldiers chose death over dishonor.
In our time, men are increasingly denied their heritage as warriors. A survival instinct that’s part of the human condition, the drive to wage war is natural. Without war, neither the United States nor any other country would exist. The technology that has eased manual labor, extended life spans, and become an integral part of our lives and culture has often evolved from wartime scientific advancements. War is necessary to defend the social and political principles that define the virtues and freedoms of America and other Western nations. We should not be ashamed of the heroes who sacrificed their lives to build a better world. We should honor them.
The son of a Korean War veteran of the Inchon landing and the battle of the Chosin Reservoir with the US Marine Corps, Michael Walsh knows all about heroism, valor, and the call of duty that requires men to fight for something greater than themselves to protect their families, countrymen, and most of all their fellow soldiers. In Last Stands, Walsh reveals the causes, outcomes, and lasting legacies of more than a dozen battles in which a small fighting force refused to surrender to a far larger force, often dying to the last man.
From the Spartans’ defiance at Thermopylae and Roland’s epic defense of Charlemagne’s rear guard at Roncevaux Pass, through Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo—defended by Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie—to the clash at the Little Big Horn between Crazy Horse’s Sioux Nation and George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, to the Soviets’ titanic struggle against the German Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, and more, Walsh reminds us of the debt we owe to heroes willing to risk their lives against overwhelming odds—and how these sacrifices and battles are not only a part of military history but also of our common civilizational heritage.
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“Michael Walsh’s provocative book explores the toxic masculinity—that mixture of bellicosity, patriarchal attitudes, and patriotism—that has fueled men at war dating back to 480 B.C. It’s also a book about fathers and sons and a tribute to his ninety-four-year-old father, a Marine Corps Korean War veteran awarded a Bronze Star for heroism. Michael and I often profoundly disagree on social and political issues, but he always argues with passion and finesse.”
— Meryl Gordon, author of Mrs. Astor Regrets
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“A philosophical and spiritual defense of…physical courage, and of masculinity and self-sacrifice in an age when those ancient virtues are too often caricatured and dismissed.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, New York Times bestselling author -
“Unrelenting and rousing, a book that hurls a gauntlet at the feet of a contemporary culture which, despite our living in a world that is still violently challenging, fails to find nobility in self-sacrifice. It engages in the very best sense: every reader will find something to agree with and something to argue against in these pages—but isn’t that the true meaning of ‘provocative?’ Last Stands is a promise to heroism fulfilled.”
— Caleb Carr, New York Times bestselling author -
“Michael Walsh examines ferocious truths—about war and human nature, about men in battle, about courage in the face of hopelessness, about honor, duty, sacrifice, and the profound respect that masculinity may command. Last Stands, a work of scholarship and fine storytelling, is a grimly riveting study of the realities of Horace’s Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
— Lance Morrow, author of Second Drafts of History -
“Bravery, courage, and determination to look death in the eye without flinching are some of the virtues Michael Walsh outlines in Last Stands—a gripping account of those bloody moments in history when desperate bands of men fought on beyond all hope.”
— Nick Lloyd, King’s College, London -
“There is no more astute chronicler of the relationship between culture and politics than Michael Walsh. Challenging a culture characterized all too often by ‘men without chests,’ Walsh reminds us once again that civilization needs heroes: men who go to their death willingly rather than suffer shame, disgrace, and dishonor.”
— Mackubin Thomas Owens, editor of Orbis
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About Michael Walsh
Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. The former classical music critic and foreign correspondent for Time magazine, he is now a regular contributor of political and cultural commentary to PJ Media and American Greatness, as well as a Sunday op-ed columnist for the New York Post. His awards include the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for distinguished music criticism in 1979, and the American Book Awards prize for fiction for his gangster novel, And All the Saints, in 2004.