Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Before the Wind - Abridged

By: Charles Tyng

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 4 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In seafaring literature, no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Before the Wind is the memoir of early nineteenth-century sea captain Charles Tyng— from his childhood and love affair with the sea to his rise through the ranks to captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade. Before the Wind takes... Read more

Nixon in Winter

By: Monica Crowley

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 18 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Monica Crowley served as a personal assistant to former president Richard M. Nixon from July 1990 until his death in April 1994. This remarkable story of his final public and private years is based on full reconstructions of the conversations she had with him at the time. Nixon in Winter puts the reader behind the scenes with the former... Read more

Deadlines and Datelines

By: Dan Rather

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Compelling essays from Peabody and Emmy-award winning newsman Dan RatherWith his distinctive blend of frontline determination and a journalist's knack for a good story, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather looks at the awesome struggles and everyday accomplishments he's witnessed at home and around the globe. Ranging from the Iraq conflict to a... Read more

Braces - Abridged

By: Donald Davis

Narrated by: Donald Davis

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Braces hurt. Braces are embarrassing. Braces are inconvenient. Many get fitted with them at the very time of their life when their self-confidence is lowest and their self-consciousness is highest. This coming-of-age story, created and performed by Donald Davis, employs the author's trademark characterizations and humor to explore the state of... Read more

A Sportsman's Life - Abridged

By: Leigh Perkins & Geoffrey Norman

Narrated by: Doug Ordunio

Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Insights from a businessman who achieved the ultimate accomplishment— transforming his personal enthusiasm into a wildly successful company.Imagine if you could live a life in which there were no boundaries between work and play, if you could blend the job you love— running a company that is committed to excellence— ... Read more

Rodin

By: Frederic V. Grunfeld

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 27 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Auguste Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor—known for such works as The Thinker, The Kiss, The Hand of God, and dozens of others—but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. He was an artist who outraged contemporaries with his disturbingly unfinished monuments, a sensualist who shocked France with his scandalous... Read more

Christian Dior

By: Marie-France Pochna

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 12 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Christian Dior's career, a veritable fairy tale, is set in a rich tapestry of Paris cultural life before, during, and after the war. Much of Dior's daily inspiration emanated from the world of the intellectual and artistic elite, in which he moved with such people as Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Henry Sauguet, Jean Cocteau, and Raoul Dufy.Born... Read more

The Life of Samuel Johnson

By: James Boswell

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 54 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

James Boswell forever changed the genre of biography when he painstakingly transformed a scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson.James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities and is the source of much of what we know about one of the... Read more

Eva Perón

By: Nicholas Fraser & Marysa Navarro

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is fifteen. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Per├Án being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire... Read more

Rocket Boys - Abridged

By: Homer Hickam

Narrated by: Beau Bridges

Length: 4 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives....And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a... Read more

The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe - Abridged

By: Donald Wolfe

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan & William Atherton

Length: 3 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe enchanted and captivated the world. Sixty years after her death, devotion to the pop culture icon is as strong as ever, and the truth about her mysterious death continues to fascinate fans and experts alike. With explosive revelations concerning the "National... Read more

The Starr Report

By: Kenneth Starr & Tracy Brooks Swope

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: 8 hours

Abridged: No

Following an unprecedented, relentless four-year investigation, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr delivered 36 boxes of evidence against then-President Bill Clinton to the House of Representatives on September 9, 1998. Dubbed “The Starr Report,” the documents alleged—in lurid detail—that Clinton lied under oath in a sworn deposition about his... Read more

Forgotten Heroes

By: Susan Ware

Narrated by: Susan Ware

Length: 5 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

For Forgotten Heroes, thirty-five prominent historians chose their favorite stories of unsung American figures. From Johnny Appleseed and John Quincy Adams to abolitionist Sojourner Truth and Margaret Anderson, the publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, these profiles remind us that history depends upon the great deeds of women and men, whether... Read more

I Am Jackie Chan - Abridged

By: Jackie Chan & Jeff Yang

Narrated by: Daxing Zhang

Length: 3 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

As one of the biggest stars in the world, Jackie Chan has wowed audiences with death-defying stunts for decades. But who really is this boyishly handsome, lightning-fast Charlie Chaplin of martial arts moviemaking? Jackie Chan has never told his own story in his own words. In I Am Jackie Chan, he tells the fascinating, harrowing, ultimately... Read more

Our Lady of the Freedoms - Abridged

By: Corwin Morman

Narrated by: Charles Kuralt

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A great American voice narrates a poignant tribute to our most outstanding monument. One of Charles Kuralt's last projects, Our Lady of the Freedoms is a full-scale production of writer-director Norman Corwin's account of how the Statue of Liberty came to New York harbor.
Charles Kuralt's brilliant narration accompanies dramatizations of the... Read more

Warped Factors - Abridged

By: Walter Koenig

Narrated by: Walter Koenig

Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

This is actor Walter Koenig's story— from growing up as the neurotic child of Russian immigrants in 1940s Manhattan through his rise to fame on Star Trek as Pavel Chekov, Russian navigator of the U.S.S. Enterprise. With wry wit, striking candor, and a true gift for storytelling, Koenig takes us on a sometimes bumpy but often... Read more

About This Life - Abridged

By: Barry Lopez

Narrated by: Barry Lopez

Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

National Book Award winner Barry Lopez captivated the world with his bestselling books Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men. Now, in this memoir, Lopez takes the listener on a literal and figurative journey through essays that provide great wisdom and insights into our times. Lopez leads listeners from Japan's beautiful Hokkaido Island to the... Read more

The Cowboy Detective - Abridged

By: Charles Siringo

Narrated by: Michael Martin Murphey

Length: 2 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A fascinating, true-life memoir of an undercover agent in the wild, wild west of the late 1800s!After years of cowboying, Charles A. Siringo settled down in Caldwell, Kansas to run a store— until an acquaintance told him that he was "cut out" for detective work. Thereupon, Siringo joined the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, where... Read more

Angela's Ashes - Abridged

By: Frank McCourt

Narrated by: Frank McCourt

Length: 4 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland.

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is... Read more

Douglas Wilson: Honor's Voice

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Douglas Wilson, author of Honor's Voice, talks about the life of President Abraham Lincoln. On "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." Read more

I Think I'm Outta Here - Abridged

By: Carroll O'connor

Narrated by: Caroll O'Connor

Length: 3 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: Yes

It is the genius of actor Carroll O'Connor that millions of fans will forever confuse him with his most unforgettable creation, Archie Bunker. But O'Connor has lived the kind of rich, momentous life that Archie would never have imagined. Now, O'Connor speaks eloquently and intimately about his great triumphs and terrible tragedies -- and a... Read more

Parting the Waters - Abridged

By: Taylor Branch

Narrated by: CCH Pounder & Joe Morton

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a “compelling…masterfully told” (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness.

Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement,... Read more

Pillar of Fire - Abridged

By: Taylor Branch

Narrated by: CCH Pounder & Joe Morton

Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch... Read more

The Power of Character - Abridged

By: Michael Josephson, Wes Hanson, Warren Bennis, S...

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: 14 minutes

Abridged: Yes

There is no higher praise we can give people than to say they have good character. But what does this mean, really? What makes this quality so essential to achieving personal success and fulfillment? More importantly, how can we build our own character and live more satisfying lives? Reflecting society's diversity, the contributors to this... Read more