Essays audiobooks

Car Talk Field Guide to the North American Wacko

By: Tom Magliozzi & Ray Magliozzi

Length: 3 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

A radio road trip across America featuring the wackiest calls from the nuttiest specimens ever to phone the show.

A high point of every Car Talk show is the call-in segment, when listeners phone in for advice and regale hosts Click and Clack with tales of their own automotive misadventures.

Like Dave from Bemidji, Minnesota, who drives his... Read more

NPR Funniest Driveway Moments

By: NPR

Length: 2 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Selected from the National Public Radio archives, these stories by some of NPR's favorite commentators will keep listeners laughing.



A "driveway moment" is when you're so captivated by a story on NPR that you stay in your car to hear it to the end—even if you're sitting in your own driveway. Some are serious, some are touching, and some, like the... Read more

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

By: Chelsea Handler

Narrated by: Chelsea Handler

Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Welcome to Chelsea Handler's world—a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense.

When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power—vodka. Seems reasonable, when considering that she discovered her boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo and she had to pretend... Read more

Cultural Amnesia - Abridged

By: Clive James

Narrated by: Clive James

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Abridged for audio. Read by the author, Clive James.

With fascinating essays on towering figures from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic.

'One stupendous starburst of wild brilliance' –... Read more

Armageddon in Retrospect

By: Kurt Vonnegut

Narrated by: Rip Torn

Length: 5 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace.

A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve previously unpublished writings. Imbued... Read more

Uncommon Carriers

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: John McPhee

Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

From Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee-author of The Founding Fish -comes the fascinating story of an often overlooked, yet vitally important part of America. This first-hand account of the transportation sector features evocative portraits of the men and women who deliver our consumer and industrial goods. McPhee begins his adventure riding... Read more

The Truth About Hillary

By: Edward Klein

Narrated by: Edward Klein

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times best-selling author Edward Klein is a former foreign editor for Newsweek and former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine. In this illuminating exploration of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Klein draws on insider sources to reveal the many secrets she has managed to keep hidden despite the publication of more than a dozen... Read more

Step Across This Line

By: Salman Rushdie

Narrated by: Firdous Bamji

Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Best-selling, Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer and the Rolling Stones. "Sometimes pensive, sometimes... Read more

Tell Me Where It Hurts

By: Nick Trout

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

It all begins at 2:47 a.m. Then over one twenty-four-hour period, Dr. Trout fights for the life of a ten-year-old German shepherd, battles disease in the operating room, unravels tricky diagnoses, reassures frantic pet parents, and reflects on the humor, heartache, and inspiration in his life as an animal surgeon. And he wants to take you along... Read more

The Sea and the Jungle

By: H.M. Tomlinson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 12 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

The classic tale of a proper English gentleman who bade a resounding adieu! to the status quo and hopped aboard a freighter bound for the Amazon in the winter of 1909. Read more

The Voyage of the Beagle

By: Charles Darwin

Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins

Length: 4 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

During the five-year voyage of the Beagle, the young naturalist Darwin collected some of the scientific evidence that led to his ideas on volution and natural selection. Read more

Swim against the Current - Abridged

By: Jim Hightower & Susan DeMarco

Narrated by: Jim Hightower & Susan DeMarco

Length: 5 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Don’t look around, but the corporate and political powers that be want you to put this book down, right now. It definitely is NOT on their approved list. Swim against the Current is one of those books that the power elites don’t like seeing in stores, much less in your hands - not merely because it challenges their established order, but... Read more

NPR Driveway Moments Baseball

By: NPR

Length: 1 hour 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Stories from the National Public Radio archives honor America's national pastime.<



Stories so compelling you'll stay in your car to hear them through—even if you're sitting in your own driveway. Peabody-winning Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan presents tales about the big leagues and the little, the fans in the stands, the players, the... Read more

Irons in the Fire

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 7 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Fabulously entertaining and filled with the intriguing trivia of life, Irons in the Fire is another impeccably crafted collection of seven essays by John McPhee. His peerless writing-punctuated with a sharp sense of humor and fascinating detail-has earned him legions of fans across the country. Whether he's riding with a cattle brand inspector... Read more

Goodbye to a River

By: John Graves

Narrated by: Henry Strozier

Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves... Read more

The Father of All Things

By: Tom Bissell

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 16 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

In his fourth book, journalist and fiction writer Bissell (Chasing the Sea) revisits the much-trodden territory of the Vietnam War to offer a fresh perspective: that of the adult children of the war's veterans. On assignment for GQ magazine, Bissell and his ex-Marine father, John, retrace the elder Bissell's tour of duty through a now mostly... Read more

Sailing Alone Around the World

By: Joshua Slocum

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 6 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

Joshua Slocum was the first man ever to sail around the world single-handedly. He completed his voyage in 1895, without radio and modern technology, when native pirates roamed the seas. It makes for an exciting tale-all 46,000 miles and three years of it. Read more

The Colossus of New York

By: Colson Whitehead

Narrated by: Colson Whitehead

Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, the award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead re-creates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York. Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in-or spent time-in the greatest of American cities. A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps,... Read more

Introduction by Nick Hornby - Abridged

By: Ben Karlin

Narrated by: Full Cast

Length: 1 hour 8 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The Emmy award-winning former executive producer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report has assembled a stellar lineup of men who have one thing in common: all have been dumped...and are willing to share their pain and the lessons learned.

Relationships end. And in almost all of them, even the most callow among us take something away. This... Read more

The Medusa and the Snail

By: Lewis Thomas

Narrated by: Stuart Langton

Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Lewis Thomas has been said to be a philosopher who uses the language of biology. His fascinating observations on the quirkiness of the world's infinite creations causes listeners to ponder the workings of the cosmos through the most microscopic of life forms.The medusa, a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in... Read more

The Geography of Bliss

By: Eric Weiner

Narrated by: Eric Weiner

Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Now a new series on Peacock with Rainn Wilson, THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS is part travel memoir, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide that takes the viewer across the globe to investigate not what happiness is, but WHERE it is.

Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar,... Read more

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

By: Cornelia Otis Skinner & Emily Kimbrough

Narrated by: Celeste Lawson

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

"To know Emily is to enhance one's days with gaiety, charm and occasional terror."—Cornelia Otis Skinner of her coauthor, Emily KimbroughActress Cornelia Otis Skinner and journalist Emily Kimbrough offer a lighthearted, hilarious memoir of their European tour in the 1920s, when they were fresh out of college from Bryn Mawr. Some of the more... Read more

Mainzer Sagen und Legenden

By: Katharina Hammann & Kristina Hammann

Narrated by: Heiner Giersberg

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Welche sagenhaften Geheimnisse birgt die Stadt Mainz am Rhein? Die Geschichte der größten Stadt des deutschen Bundeslandes Rheinland-Pfalz geht bis in die Zeit der Römer und Kelten zurück, von deren Gottheit Mogon (Mogontiacum: Land des Mogon) auch der heutige Name der Landeshauptstadt abgeleitet wurde. Hören Sie die schönsten Sagen und Legenden... Read more

Secret Ingredients

By: David Remnick

Narrated by: Various

Length: 24 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker–literally. As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M. F. K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik,... Read more