Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Mississippi Sissy - Abridged

By: Kevin Sessums

Narrated by: Kevin Sessums

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

Mississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South.

As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its... Read more

Essential Anais Nin - Abridged

By: Anais Nin

Narrated by: Anais Nin

Length: 44 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From her famous diaries, that she began in 1914 at the age of eleven, Anais Nin reads passages which reflect the recurring themes of her work. In a slow, clear, heavily accented, hypnotic voice, Nin draws the listener into her spell–binding stories of a highly personal world as she paints a vivid picture of a woman as artist and self. This is an... Read more

Augustus

By: Anthony Everitt

Narrated by: John Curless

Length: 15 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

He found Rome made of clay and left it made of marble. As Rome's first emperor, Augustus transformed the unruly Republic into the greatest empire the world had ever seen. His consolidation and expansion of Roman power two thousand years ago laid the foundations, for all of Western history to follow. Yet, despite Augustus's accomplishments, very... Read more

The Supreme Court

By: Jeffrey Rosen

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Length: 8 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives.



The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and... Read more

Born Free Trilogy - Abridged

By: Joy Adamson

Narrated by: Joanna David

Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Joy Adamson is world-famous as the woman who walked with lions. These are the books that brought the story of her work to a public whose imagination was captured by the discovery of this remarkable interaction between man and beast.



Born Free was first published in 1960, and tells the story of her relationship with Elsa, raising her from a young... Read more

The Lady in the Palazzo

By: Marlena de Blasi

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 9 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

From village feasts and rustic tavernas to ancient piazzas and moonlit balconies, the smells and tastes and sounds and soul of Umbria come alive in bestselling author Marlena de Blasi's evocative memoir.



By turns romantic and sensual, joyous and celebratory, touching and humorous, Marlena de Blasi's account of moving with her husband, Fernando,... Read more

The Measure of a Man

By: Sidney Poitier

Narrated by: Sidney Poitier

Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and... Read more

Because They Hate

By: Brigitte Gabriel

Narrated by: Brigitte Gabriel

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Brigitte Gabriel lost her childhood to militant Islam. In 1975 she was ten years old and living in Southern Lebanon when militant Muslims from throughout the Middle East poured into her country and declared jihad against the Lebanese Christians, which became the first front in a worldwide jihad of fundamentalist Islam against non-Muslim peoples.... Read more

Grant and Sherman - Abridged

By: Charles Bracelen Flood

Narrated by: Charles Bracelen Flood

Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

""We were as brothers,"" William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible.Heeding the call to save the Union, each... Read more

American Bloomsbury

By: Susan Cheever

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

A brilliant, controversial, and fascinating biography of those who were, in the mid-nineteenth century, the center of American thought and literature.



Concord, Massachusetts, 1849. At various times, three houses on the same road were home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry and John Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, Nathanial... Read more

Thomas Hardy

By: Claire Tomalin

Narrated by: Josephine Bailey

Length: 14 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Whitbread Award winner Claire Tomalin's seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.



Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with Far from the Madding Crowd, and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he... Read more

Born on a Blue Day

By: Daniel Tammet

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 6 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the world's fifty living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story—and explain how his incredible mind works.



Worldwide, there are fewer than fifty living savants, those autistic individuals who can perform miraculous mental calculations or artistic feats (think Dustin Hoffman's character in... Read more

Stolen Lives - Abridged

By: Malika Oufkir

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

Read more

Death in the Afternoon

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: Boyd Gaines

Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Ernest Hemingway's classic exploration of the history and pageantry of bullfighting, and the deeper themes of cowardice, bravery, sport and tragedy that it inspires.

Still considered one of the best books ever written about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon reflects Hemingway's belief that bullfighting was more than mere sport. Here he... Read more

Things the Grandchildren Should Know

By: Mark Oliver Everett

Narrated by: The Chet

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

How does one young man survive the deaths of his entire family and manage to make something worthwhile of his life? In this poignant and original coming-of-age story, indie rock musician Mark Oliver Everett tells the story of his “ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always unsteady” upbringing and how it fed into his creativity. The insecure son... Read more

Walter Johnson

By: Henry W. Thomas

Narrated by: Ian Esmo

Length: 17 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

To many, Walter Johnson is the greatest pitcher of all time. He was a star second to none throughout the golden age of sports, which spanned the era of such greats as Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Lou Gehrig, and Al Simmons. But it wasn't Walter Johnson's blazing fastball alone that placed him on a pedestal. It was Johnson, above all... Read more

Pershing

By: Jim Lacey

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 5 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

In this persuasive biography, Jim Lacey sheds light on General Pershing’s legacy as the nation’s first modern combat commander, setting the standard for today’s four-star officers. When the US entered into World War I in 1917, they did so with inadequate forces. In just over a year, Pershing built and hurled a one-million-man army against forty... Read more

Andrew Jackson

By: Robert V. Remini

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 5 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

It was Andrew Jackson’s military heroism that helped to usher him into the presidency. From the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 to the Indian Wars and his unorthodox presence in the White House, Jackson is one of the most fascinating figures in American history. Here is his life as told by the foremost Jackson historian of our time. Read more

Sherman

By: Steven E. Woodworth

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy, as well as criticism for the harshness of the “scorched earth” policies that he implemented in conducting total war... Read more

Bradley

By: Alan Axelrod

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 6 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Known by his troops in World War II as “The GI General” because of his close identification with the men under his command, Omar Bradley commanded the Twelfth US Army Group in Europe. By the spring of 1945, this group contained four field armies, twelve corps, forty-eight divisions, and more than 1.3 million men, the largest exclusively American... Read more

The Case of Abraham Lincoln

By: Julie M. Fenster

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1856, Abraham Lincoln was at a difficult point, personally. Depressed, edgy, and often despondent, he had grown bored with his work as a lawyer. He saw himself as a former congressman with little future in politics. Then in May of 1856, he became drawn to the case of the gruesome murder of a blacksmith named George Anderson. Lincoln was asked... Read more

Stonewall Jackson

By: Donald A. Davis

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 6 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Deemed “irreplaceable” by Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson assumed his nickname during the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War. It is said that the Army of Northern Virginia never fully recovered from the loss of Jackson’s leadership when he was accidentally shot by one of his own men and died in 1863. Davis highlights Stonewall Jackson as a... Read more

MacArthur

By: Richard B. Frank

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 6 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Douglas MacArthur is best remembered for his adaptability that hoisted him to his greatest accomplishments. Adaptability now reigns as the most indispensable trait for high military leadership in an era of technological leaps that guarantee the nature of war will radically change during the span of an ordinary career. No American figure better... Read more

Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls

By: Edward E. Leslie

Narrated by: John Lescault

Length: 21 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

From Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson to Alive! and Adrift, tales of survival have always captivated readers. This powerful collection chronicles the remarkable true stories of real-life maroons, castaways, and other survivors as they struggle to endure against insurmountable odds. From the 1500s to the present, in the most isolated... Read more