Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Rothstein

By: David Pietrusza

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 13 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

The model for Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby and Guys and Dolls' Nathan Detroit, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, political fixer, and criminal mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of fifteen million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."David... Read more

Plato in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in philosophy. In 387 BC he founded the Academy, the world's first university, and taught his students that all we see is not reality but... Read more

Into the Rising Sun

By: Patrick K. O’Donnell

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Patrick O’Donnell has made a career of uncovering the hidden history of World War II by tracking down and interviewing its most elite troops: the Rangers, Airborne, Marines, and First Special Service Force, forerunners to America’s Special Forces. These veterans were often the first in and the last out of every conflict, from Guadalcanal and... Read more

Heidegger in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Abridged: No

One of two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and his fundamental question: "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question was beyond the reach of reason and was the primary "given" of every individual life. To... Read more

Confucius in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Confucius taught a moral wisdom that would become a predominant social force in China from the second century BCE until the mid-twentieth century. It would appear that his aim was to turn his pupils into good government officials, but his quaint humanistic platitudes, maxims, and quasi-enigmatic anecdotes made spiritual fodder for the next two... Read more

Hegel in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Hegel’s dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This sprung from Hegel’s aim to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascend toward Mind as the ultimate reality. His view of history as a process of humanity’s... Read more

Socrates in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was used to cut through the palaver of his adversaries... Read more

Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 21 minutes

Abridged: No

We see our age as the greatest in human history, filled with seemingly unending originality. Yet such dynamism is not a necessary characteristic of great eras. Among the most long-lasting and stable civilizations was that of medieval Europe. There stasis was achieved, and with it a stability that permitted the development of structured thought... Read more

Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Schopenhauer, the "philosopher of pessimism," makes it very plain that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. But if the world is indifferent to our fate, it doesn't thwart us on purpose. The world's fa├ºade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will—blind and without purpose. This Will brings on all our misery... Read more

Spinoza in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Spinoza’s brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic assumptions, with a series of geometric proofs he built a universe which was also God—one and the same thing, the classic example of pantheism. Although his system seems an oddity today, Spinoza’s conclusions are deeply in accord with... Read more

Defying Hitler

By: Sebastian Haffner

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

When the famous German author Sebastian Haffner died at age ninety-one in 1999, a manuscript was discovered among his unpublished papers that offers a compelling eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler and Nazism. He describes the country's inflation and the political climate that contributed to Hitler's rise to power and also examines the... Read more

Nietzsche in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ultimately went mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and... Read more

Positively 4th Street

By: David Hajdu

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 12 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the candid, mesmerizing, and often intimate account of how four young people—Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña—gave rise to a modern-day bohemia and created the enduring sound and style of the 1960s.Even before they became lovers in 1963, Dylan and Joan Baez were seen as the reigning king and queen of folk music.... Read more

Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it, he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished.Ludwig Wittgenstein was a superb logician who distrusted language and sought to solve the problems of philosophy by reducing them to logic. All else—metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, finally even philosophy itself—was... Read more

Stuffed

By: Patricia Volk

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat

Length: 7 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Patricia Volk's delicious, charming, and wildly funny memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, cheerful, infuriating, and wonderful family, where you're never just hungry—you're starving to death, and you're never just full—you're stuffed.Volk's family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced... Read more

Flying Colors

By: Tim Lefens

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

When Tim Lefens walked into the Matheny School in New Jersey to show slides of his paintings, his one-hour visit became a life-changing experience. The students he met had severe physical challenges: only one of them could talk, none could walk, and all lacked the use of their hands. As a painter facing his own gradual loss of eyesight, Tim had... Read more

Four against the Arctic

By: David Roberts

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1743, a Russian ship was blown off course and trapped in ice off the coast of Svalbard (Spitzbergen), a barren Arctic island. Four sailors went ashore with only two days' supplies, and only twenty pounds of flour for food. Upon return they found the ship had vanished, apparently crushed and sunk by the ice. Blessed with courage and ingenuity,... Read more

Aristotle in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided... Read more

Descartes in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

Abridged: No

René Descartes spent much of his life in solitude. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.” Convincing himself to doubt and disregard sensory knowledge, Descartes found he could prove his existence through his thoughts alone. This internal reality,... Read more

Facets of Ayn Rand

By: Mary Ann Sures & Charles Sures

Narrated by: Susan O’Malley

Length: 3 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Facets of Ayn Rand is based on forty-eight hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well.Here are many examples of not only Ayn Rand’s mind and intellectual generosity in action but also lesser-known aspects of this unique woman.... Read more

One Man’s War

By: Tommy LaMore & Dan Baker

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Escaping certain death—not once but several times—lies at the core of the riveting, real-life story of an American soldier during World War II. In One Man's War, B-17 pilot Tommy LaMore vividly details his experiences in war-ravaged Germany, from the horrific to the romantic and beyond.LaMore's saga began when his plane collided with another... Read more

The Unruly Life of Woody Allen

By: Marion Meade

Narrated by: Mary Woods

Length: 15 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

After forty years in the spotlight as comedian, author, director, and professional neurotic, Woody Allen is a living legend. To fans, his films have always represented a sort of ongoing autobiography. This is the first uncensored biography to investigate one of our era’s most celebrated, distinctive, and confounding filmmakers.For over three... Read more

Steve Martin

By: Morris Wayne Walker

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the story of the wild and crazy years that the author spent growing up with Steve Martin and their apprenticeship in comedy. No one could better chronicle Steve’s life than his best and oldest friend, Morris Walker.Steve and Morris were class clowns together, charming the girls and the teachers with their wit and later setting out on the... Read more

What One Man Said to Another

By: Peter Josyph

Narrated by: Peter Josyph & Raymond Todd

Length: 10 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

What One Man Said to Another is, on one level, a series of extended conversations between friends. On another, it is the spoken autobiography of Richard Selzer, respected surgeon and writer, as recorded by artist and writer Peter Josyph.In these pages, we learn firsthand of Selzer’s life as a surgeon in an isolated village in Korea in the early... Read more