Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Iacocca - Abridged

By: Lee Iacocca & William Novak

Narrated by: Lee Iacocca

Length: 55 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“Vintage Iacocca . . . He is fast-talking, blunt, boastful, and unabashedly patriotic. Lee Iacocca is also a genuine folk hero. . . . His career is breathtaking.”—Business Week

He’s an American legend, a straight-shooting businessman who brought Chrysler back from the brink and in the process became a media celebrity, newsmaker, and a man many... Read more

On the Shoulders of Giants

By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Raymond Obstfeld

Narrated by: Richard Allen

Length: 10 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

From 1920 to 1940, the Harlem Renaissance produced a bright beacon of light that paved the way for African Americans all over the country. The unapologetic writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, the fervent fiction and poetry of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, the groundbreaking art of Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson, and... Read more

Amazing Grace

By: Eric Metaxas

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

Length: 10 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament.



At the center of this heroic life was a passionate twenty-year fight to abolish the British... Read more

Somehow Form a Family

By: Tony Earley

Narrated by: Tony Earley

Length: 4 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

In Somehow Form a Family, Earley writes about finding a place in a world without losing sight of where you came from. Read more

On Whale Island

By: Daniel Hays

Narrated by: Bruce Altman

Length: 5 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

As chronicled in the bestselling book My Old Man and the Sea, the thirst for living an unconventional life led Daniel Hays to sail around Cape Horn with his father in a boat they built themselves. Read more

The Next Better Place

By: Michael C. Keith

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

The Next Better Place explores the thin line between wanderlust and compulsion, between running away and arriving, and leaves us with the understanding that the journey is often more powerful than the destination. Read more

Einstein

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann

Length: 21 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2008 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir

The definitive, internationally bestselling biography of Albert Einstein. Now the basis of Genius, the ten-part National Geographic series on the life of Albert Einstein, starring the Oscar, Emmy, and Tony Award–winning actor Geoffrey Rush as Einstein.

How did his mind work? What made him a... Read more

Einstein - Abridged

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Winner of the 2008 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir

The definitive, internationally bestselling biography of Albert Einstein. Now the basis of Genius, the ten-part National Geographic series on the life of Albert Einstein, starring the Oscar, Emmy, and Tony Award­–winning actor Geoffrey Rush as Einstein.

How did his mind work? What made him a... Read more

Edith Wharton - Abridged

By: Hermione Lee

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 8 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The definitive biography of one of America’s greatest writers, from the author of the acclaimed masterpiece Virginia Woolf.
Born in 1862, Edith Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. After tentative beginnings, she developed a forceful literary... Read more

The Mistress's Daughter

By: A.M. Homes

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

The "fierce and eloquent" (New York Times) memoir from A.M Homes, award-winning author of May We Be Forgiven and the forthcoming novel The Unfolding

The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man... Read more

Paula Deen - Abridged

By: Paula Deen

Narrated by: Paula Deen

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

• Fans love Paula Deen: Paula Deen: It Ain’t About the Cookin’ spent over 3 months on the New York Times bestseller list: there are over 500,000 hardcovers in print..

• A superstar author: Paula Deen is an American icon. She is one of the most popular hosts on the Food Network and with more than 6 million books in print, an expanding restaurant... Read more

Leap of Faith

By: Noor al-Hussein

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 16 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Leap of Faith is the dramatic and inspiring story of an American woman’s remarkable journey into the heart of a man and his nation.Born into a distinguished Arab-American family and raised amid privilege, Lisa Halaby joined the first freshman class at Princeton to accept women, graduating in 1974 with a degree in architecture and urban planning.... Read more

Natalie Wood

By: Gavin Lambert

Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld

Length: 13 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

From her starring roles as a skeptical child in the perennial classic Miracle on 34th Street and a troubled adolescent in Rebel without a Cause to mature roles in Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, actress Natalie Wood transfixed the world with her hypnotic brown eyes. Yet behind the beautiful façade lurked a fragile, sparkling,... Read more

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

By: David Quammen

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 7 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that natural selection among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific basis of that time constitute a... Read more

Darwin's Origin of Species

By: Janet Browne

Narrated by: Josephine Bailey

Length: 4 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, award-winning biographer Janet Browne delves into... Read more

Brother One Cell

By: Cullen Thomas

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Cullen Thomas had a typical suburban upbringing. He was raised on Long Island, and after graduating from college he was looking for meaning and excitement. Possessed of a youthful, romantic view of the world, he left New York at age twenty-three and set off for a job teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. As foreigners on the fringe of Korean... Read more

Grace (Eventually)

By: Anne Lamott

Narrated by: Anne Lamott

Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dusk, Night, Dawn, Bird by Bird, Hallelujah Anyway, and Almost Everything

"Lamott has chronicled her wacky and (sometimes) wild adventures in faith in...the wonderful Grace (Eventually)." (Chicago Sun-Times)

In Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, the author of the bestsellers Traveling Mercies and... Read more

A Long Way Gone

By: Ishmael Beah

Narrated by: Ishmael Beah

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is how wars are... Read more

Triumph

By: Jeremy Schaap

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a... Read more

My Father's Secret War

By: Lucinda Franks

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

In this moving and compelling memoir about parent and child, father and daughter, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lucinda Franks discovers that the remote, nearly impassive man she grew up with had in fact been a daring spy behind enemy lines in World War II. Sworn to secrecy, he began revealing details of his wartime activities only in the last... Read more

On Call in Hell

By: Thomas Hayden & Richard Jadick

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting memoir from the Navy doctor praised as "Hero, M.D." on the cover of Newsweek.



Cdr. Richard Jadick's story is one of the most extraordinary to come out of the war in Iraq. At thirty-eight, the last place the Navy doctor was expected to be was on the front lines. He was too old to be called up, but not too old to volunteer. In November... Read more

Joan

By: Donald Spoto

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Since her death at the age of nineteen in 1431, Joan of Arc has maintained a remarkable hold on our collective imagination. During the tumultuous Hundred Years War between England and France, a young peasant girl nicknamed "The Maid" (La Pucelle) followed her heart and came to the aid of her nation. Facing unimaginable odds, Joan's belief in her... Read more

No Retreat, No Surrender - Abridged

By: Tom DeLay & Stephen Mansfield

Narrated by: Tom DeLay

Length: 4 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A candid memoir of one of the most effective, controversial figures in modern politics. Read more

Dog Years

By: Mark Doty

Narrated by: Mark Doty

Length: 6 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become... Read more