Essays audiobooks

Imaginary Homelands

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: John Curless

Length: 17 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Salman Rushdie's "Imaginary Homelands" is an important record of one writer's intellectual and personal oddyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects - the literature of the received masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of... Read more

Fast into the Night

By: Debbie Clarke Moderow

Narrated by: Emily Durante

Length: 7 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

At age forty-seven, a mother of two, Debbie Moderow was not your average musher in the Iditarod, but that's where she found herself when, less than 200 miles from the finish line, her dogs decided they didn't want to run anymore. After all her preparation, after all the careful management of her team, and after their running so well for over a... Read more

South and West

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr & Nathaniel Rich

Length: 2 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

From the best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks—writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of... Read more

Waking Up Slowly

By: Dave Burchett

Narrated by: Dave Burchett

Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

What if every day we are stubbing our toes on the sacred and not realizing it?

We are the most connected culture in history, but we are arguably the most disconnected from the awareness of God’s presence. Waking Up Slowly is author Dave Burchett’s personal challenge to live in the moment and find the everyday joys we miss when we live in... Read more

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World

By: John Baxter

Narrated by: Graham Halstead

Length: 5 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat writer provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years.



In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and long-time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter... Read more

A Small Place in Italy - Abridged

By: Eric Newby

Narrated by: Eric Newby

Length: 2 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: Yes

This book is a lush and beautiful memoir of a very special house and a superb recreation of a bygone era. In 1967, veteran travel writer Eric Newby and his heroic wife Wanda fulfiled their dream of a return to life in the Italian hills where they first met during World War II. But this fulfilment would not come easy. The... Read more

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - Abridged

By: Eric Newby

Narrated by: Richard E. Grant

Length: 2 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A classic of travel writing, ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth. It was 1956, and Eric Newby was earning an improbable living in the chaotic family business of London haute couture. Pining for adventure, Newby sent... Read more

Rescuing Penny Jane

By: Amy Sutherland

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawing on her work at a shelter, her experiences living with two rescue dogs of her own, and years of research, bestselling author and Boston Globe columnist Amy Sutherland takes us on an unforgettable journey into the special world of rescue and shelter dogs—and the growing number of dedicated people who are deeply invested in saving these... Read more

Animal Wisdom

By: Linda Bender

Narrated by: Ellen Jaffe

Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

How is it that pets are able to travel thousands of miles through unknown territory to reunite with their beloved humans? How can dogs detect cancer with up to a 98 percent accuracy rate, and foresee epileptic or diabetic seizures in their owners? How do animals seem to know an earthquake is coming long before the world's best seismologists?
In... Read more

Know This

By: John Brockman

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman & Dan John Miller

Length: 14 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

The latest volume in the bestselling series from Edge.org—dubbed “the world’s smartest website” by The Guardian—brings together 175 of the world’s most innovative and brilliant thinkers to discuss recent scientific breakthroughs that will shape the future.Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it’s... Read more

All the Lives I Want

By: Alana Massey

Narrated by: Alana Massey

Length: 5 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

"Alana Massey's prose is to brutal honesty what a mandolin is to a butter knife: she's sharper; she slices thinner; she shows the cross-section of a truth so deftly--so powerfully and cannily--it's hard to look away, and hard not to feel that something has shifted in you for having read her." -- Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author... Read more

Culinary Reactions

By: Simon Quellen Field

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 4 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a... Read more

Pure Heart

By: Troylyn Ball & Bret Witter

Narrated by: Rosemary Benson

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Troylyn Bell and her husband, Charlie, an engineer and real estate investor, had spent their entire lives in Texas. But after a near fatal trip to the emergency room with their mute, wheelchair-bound son Marshall, they admitted the dust and the heat were too dangerous. To save their boys, the Balls cashed out, sold their beloved farm, and moved... Read more

Get Well Soon

By: Jennifer Wright

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A witty, irreverent tour of history’s worst plagues―from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio―and a celebration of the heroes who fought themIn 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a... Read more

The Nature Fix

By: Florence Williams

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams sets out to uncover the... Read more

We Should All Be Feminists

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Length: 45 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The highly acclaimed, provocative essay on feminism and sexual politics—from the award-winning author of Americanah

"A call to action, for all people in the world, to undo the gender hierarchy." —Medium

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi... Read more

Insane Clown President

By: Matt Taibbi

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 9 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy’s uncertain future, by the country’s most perceptive and fearless political journalist.

In twenty-five pieces from Rolling Stone—plus two original essays—Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck,... Read more

The Meaning of Michelle

By: Veronica Chambers

Narrated by: January LaVoy & Prentice Onayemi

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

“Whenever I think about Michelle Obama, I think, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like her. I want to be that intelligent, confident, and comfortable in my own skin’.” ―Roxane Gay

“Even after eight years of watching them daily in the press, the fact that the most powerful man in the world is a Black man is still breathtaking to me. The fact... Read more

Vanity Fair: January 2017 Issue - Abridged

By: Vanity Fair

Narrated by: various narrators

Length: 4 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: Yes

J. Law! If there’s one person who can redeem 2016, it’s Jennifer Lawrence.Plus:Graydon Carter on Trump’s implausible victoryInside the Kardashian Paris hotel heistAirBnB’s second actHow Peter Thiel took down GawkerPlus: Keith Richards, Isabella Rossellini, and much more!Vanity Fair is a cultural filter, sparking the global conversation about the... Read more

Wer wir waren (ungekürzt)

By: Roger Willemsen

Narrated by: Christian Brückner

Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Im Sommer vor seinem Tod arbeitete Roger Willemsen an einem neuen Buch: "Wer wir waren" sollte es heißen. Er sah sich unsere Gegenwart an, als wäre er schon viele Jahre weiter in die Zukunft gereist: Was machen wir gerade mit dieser Welt und unserem Leben? Warum machen wir das? Und warum machen wir es nicht anders, obwohl wir wissen, dass wir so... Read more

The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told

By: Jeff Silverman

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain & Hillary Huber

Length: 14 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

At a 1931 barnstorming exhibition game in Tennessee, a seventeen-year-old pitcher for the Chattanooga Lookouts struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back to back. Her name was Jackie Mitchell—"organized baseball's first girl pitcher." On September 9, 1965, Sandy Koufax made baseball history by pitching his fourth perfect game. In July 1970, a... Read more

The Selfishness of Others

By: Kristin Dombek

Narrated by: Rachel Fulginiti

Length: 4 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

They’re among us, but they are not like us. They manipulate, lie, cheat, and steal. They are irresistibly charming and accomplished, appearing to live in a radiance beyond what we are capable of. But narcissists are empty. No one knows exactly what everyone else is full of—some kind of a soul, or personhood—but whatever it is, experts agree that... Read more

The Souls of Black Folk

By: W. E.B. DuBois

Narrated by: Rodney Gardiner

Length: 8 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

A cornerstone of African-American literary history, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work by W. E. B. Du Bois. Originally published in 1903, it contains many essays on race and equality, but is also a piece of seminal history as laying the groundwork for the field of sociology. Some of the essays in the novel were even previously published... Read more

The Art of War

By: Sun Tzu

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Dating back to the 5th century B.C.,The Art of War is an ancient Chinese text on military strategy whose teachings have become very influential and popular in the west. Though authorship is attributed to Sun Tzu (Master Sun), many scholars believe the bulk of the text was written by his descendant Sun Bin, who lived some hundred years later. Its... Read more