Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Champlain's Dream - Abridged

By: David Hackett Fischer

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Winner of the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain—soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France.

Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain... Read more

Here's the Story - Abridged

By: Maureen McCormick

Narrated by: Maureen McCormick

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The New York Times bestseller Here’s the Story is the poignant memoir of Maureen McCormick, who starred as the beloved Marcia Brady on the hit series The Brady Bunch. Maureen tells her shocking and inspirational true story, taking readers behind the scenes of one of America’s favorite television families, and to the dark side, where she was... Read more

American Prince - Abridged

By: Tony Curtis & Peter Golenbock

Narrated by: Mitchell Greenberg

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“All my life I had one dream and that was to be in the movies.”

He was the Golden Boy of the Golden Age. A prince of the silver screen. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. His good looks, smooth charm, and natural talent earned him fame, women, and adulation—Elvis copied his look and... Read more

The Reagan I Knew

By: William F. Buckley

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 6 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

No two people were more important to American conservatism in the postwar era than William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan. Buckley's writings provided the intellectual underpinnings, while Reagan brought the conservative movement out of the wilderness and into the White House.The pair met in 1961 when Reagan introduced a speech by Buckley.... Read more

From Baghdad to America

By: Jay Kopelman

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 3 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman won the hearts of readers with his moving story of adopting an abandoned puppy named Lava in a hellish corner of Iraq. For this Marine and his comrades, the puppy served as an important emotional touchstone in a grim and seemingly endless war.



Kopelman now writes about what it's like to be home. He credits his... Read more

Annie Oakley

By: Courtney Ryley Cooper

Narrated by: Jonathan Reese

Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Annie Oakley was without a doubt the greatest markswoman who ever lived. Born in 1860 in Darke County, Ohio, she built herself from obscure and impoverished beginnings into the best known woman of her time.



Courtney Ryley Cooper's classic biography traces Oakley's extraordinary journey and separates the facts from the many legends that have... Read more

Born Again

By: Charles Colson

Narrated by: Jon Gauger

Length: 13 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1974 Charles W. Colson pleaded guilty to Watergate-related offenses and, after a tumultuous investigation, served seven months in prison. In his search for meaning and purpose in the face of the Watergate scandal, Colson penned Born Again. This unforgettable memoir shows a man who, seeking fulfillment in success and power, found it,... Read more

Clips From A Life - Abridged

By: Denis Norden

Narrated by: Denis Norden & Stephen Thorne

Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Classic stills from the life of one of Britain's most cherished entertainers. This is the extraordinary life story of comic legend Denis Norden, told in momentary snapshots by the master British comedian himself. Containing reminiscences of a career stretching back to the golden age of the radio, through the heyday of cinema... Read more

Tried by War

By: James M. McPherson

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

"James M. McPherson’s Tried by War is a perfect primer . . . for anyone who wishes to under­stand the evolution of the president’s role as commander in chief. Few histo­rians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity." —The New York Times Book Review

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author reveals how Lincoln... Read more

Called Out of Darkness

By: Anne Rice

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 7 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith.

And now, in her powerful memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in her literary goals. She begins with her girlhood in... Read more

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

By: Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Narrated by: Rebecca Burns

Length: 4 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Letters of a Woman Homesteader presents an outstanding first-person account of life on the American frontier. Elinore Pruitt Stewart took up homesteading in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, in 1909, to prove that a woman could ranch. Her captivating letters, sent to a former employer in Denver, reveal the isolation, the beauty, and the joy of working the... Read more

Journeys of the Great Explorers

By: Glyndwr Williams

Narrated by: Glyndwr Williams

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the most dramatic periods in world history is the age of Europe's discovery of the world from Columbus and da Gama in the late fifteenth century to the voyages of James Cook in the eighteenth century. The extent of the changes can be seen by comparing the pre-Columbian maps, which showed no knowledge of either the Americas or the Pacific,... Read more

Darwin, Darwinism, and the Modern World

By: Chandak Sengoopta

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The history of Western civilization can be divided neatly into pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian periods. Darwin's 1859 treatise, On the Origin of Species, was not the first work to propose that organisms had descended from other, earlier organisms, and the mechanism of evolution it proposed remained controversial for years. Nevertheless, no... Read more

House Rules

By: Rachel Sontag

Narrated by: Nicole Poole

Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Author Rachel Sontag recounts her dysfunctional childhood in this shocking memoir. On the surface, Rachel's physician father seemed perfect. He was well liked and equally respected in suburban Chicago. But home life was far different. An obsessive and manipulative man, he exercised complete control over everything, including the length of... Read more

The Nightingale’s Song

By: Robert Timberg

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 22 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Robert Timberg weaves together the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. Casting all five men as metaphors for a legion of well-meaning if ill-starred warriors, Timberg probes the fault line between those who fought the... Read more

Giants of Russian Literature: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov

By: Liza Knapp

Narrated by: Jean-Marc Berne

Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Russian literature of the 19th century is among the richest, most profound, and most human traditions in the world. This course explores this tradition by focusing on four giants: Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. Their works had an enormous impact on Russian understanding of the human condition. And, just as... Read more

The American Presidency

By: Robert Dallek

Narrated by: Robert Dallek

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The 20th-century American Presidency is something of a mystery. Some Presidents performed exceptionally well in office, displaying strong leadership and winning the respect of the American people as well as the rest of the world. Others fell short of expectations and are remembered at best as marginal chief executives. What was it that allowed... Read more

Bard of the Middle Ages

By: Michael Drout

Narrated by: Michael Drout

Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Chaucer's works are today widely studied and serve as models for current literature around the world. Chaucer holds a place of esteem as the earliest and one of the foremost writers in the English language. Read more

Daniel Boone

By: John Mack Faragher

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 12 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than fifty years, award-winning historian Faragher brilliantly portrays America’s famous frontier hero, while illuminating the American hero-making process itself. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone’s own hand, and a treasure trove... Read more

Nathan Hale

By: M. William Phelps

Narrated by: Phil Gigante

Length: 8 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Few Americans know much more about Nathan Hale than his famous last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” But who was the real Nathan Hale? M. William Phelps charts the life of this famed patriot and Connecticut’s state hero, following Hale’s rural childhood, his education at Yale, and his work as a... Read more

Look Who It Is! - Abridged

By: Alan Carr

Narrated by: Alan Carr

Length: 4 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Famed for his gentle innocence and brilliant observational wit, comedian Alan Carr describes his childhood growing up in a football-mad family in Northampton and his rise to become one of Britain’s best-loved comedians. ‘Puberty had been unkind. Whereas it had come in the night and left the other boys with chiselled, stubbly... Read more

Promises to Keep

By: Joe Biden

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 15 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • President Joe Biden, the author of Promise Me, Dad, tells the story of his extraordinary life and career prior to his emergence as Barack Obama’s beloved, influential vice president.
 
“I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. In fact, I believe that my chosen profession is a noble... Read more

Amarcord

By: Marcella Hazan

Narrated by: Concetta Tomei

Length: 8 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Marcella Hazan is known as America's godmother of Italian cooking. The owner of her own cooking schools, and author of bestselling and award-winning cookbooks, she has collected invitations to cook at top restaurants around the world.Her story begins in Alexandria, Egypt, where an early childhood accident would alter the course of her life and... Read more

The Legs Are the Last to Go

By: Diahann Carroll

Narrated by: Diahann Carroll

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

The actress who broke through television’s color bar, entertainment legend Diahann Carroll tells all in her candid memoir The Legs Are the Last to Go. The first black woman to star in her own TV series—NBC’s Julia—Carroll displays all the grace, wit, style, and honesty that carried her to the top as she reveals intimate details about her career,... Read more