Essays audiobooks

The Eternal Summer

By: Curt Sampson

Narrated by: Dennis McKee

Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Was there ever a year in golf like 1960? It was the year that the sport and its vivid personalities exploded on the consciousness of the nation, when the past, present, and future of the game collided. Television, still a new medium, provided a fresh window to the show and enabled this "rich man's sport" to win over millions of new fans.Here was... Read more

The Great Chase

By: Harvey Rosenfeld

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The Dodgers-Giants rivalry is the longest-standing rivalry in baseball history—a feud that began in the late nineteenth century when both clubs were based in New York City. Then, on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson's "shot heard around the world" ended their pennant race—one of the most dramatic ever. Interviews, contemporary newspaper articles,... Read more

The Worst Journey in the World

By: Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 20 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

This gripping story of courage and achievement is an account of Robert Falcon Scott's last fateful expedition to the Antarctic, as told by surviving expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Cherry-Garrard tells of the journey from England to South Africa and southward to the ice floes, where began the unforgettable polar journey across a... Read more

Philosophy: Who Needs It

By: Ayn Rand

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand’s answer: Everyone.This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy but which one to have: a rational,... Read more

Come On Seabiscuit!

By: Ralph Moody

Narrated by: Jim Weiss

Length: 4 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Who would have believed that a knobby-kneed little colt named Seabiscuit would become one of the most celebrated racehorses of all time? Although Seabiscuit was the grandson of the legendary Man O' War, he was neither handsome nor graceful. His head was too big, his legs were too short, and his gallop was awkward.During the depths of the Great... Read more

The Reluctant Metrosexual

By: Peter Hyman

Narrated by: Peter Hyman

Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the author, an essayist and stand-up comedian, this collection of hilarious essays is about a single guy attempting to live on the right side of hip.If Peter Hyman is a metrosexual, a straight man with gay tastes, then he is one reluctantly, being loath to hitch himself to an au courant cultural trend unless doing so would get him a... Read more

Tales of the Alhambra

By: Washington Irving

Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard

Length: 8 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Written in 1831, Washington Irving’s dreamlike description of the Alhambra, the beautiful Moorish castle that defined the height of Moorish civilization, and of the surrounding territory of Granada remains one of the most romantic and entertaining travelogues ever written of this region in Spain.Enhanced here with exquisite Spanish guitar music,... Read more

Kabloona

By: Gontran de Poncins

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 9 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

This extraordinary classic has been variously acclaimed as one of the great books of adventure, travel, anthropology, and spiritual awakening.In 1938 and 1939, a French nobleman spent fifteen months living among the Inuit people of the Arctic. He was at first appalled by their way of life: eating rotten raw fish, sleeping with each others'... Read more

God and Mr. Gomez

By: Jack Smith

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

When Jack and Denny Smith decided to build a vacation dream house in Baja, California, they had no idea they were entering a phase of their lives “that would capture the fancy of readers throughout the United States.” Through a series of strange and whimsical adventures, they would find that building a house takes God and Mr. Gomez.As their... Read more

The Dogs Who Found Me

By: Ken Foster

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 4 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Disaster-prone writer and reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster never intended to adopt an abandoned dog. But after bringing Brando home, he finds it hard not to notice how many homeless strays there are in the city. Suddenly, he finds them everywhere—from a beagle abandoned in a New York City dog run to a pit bull in a Mississippi truck stop—and... Read more

The Sweet Science

By: A. J. Liebling

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

This collection of A. J. Liebling's classic New Yorker pieces on the "sweet science of bruising" brings vividly to life the boxing world as it once was. It depicts the great events of boxing's American heyday, including Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback, Rocky Marciano's rise to prominence, and Joe Louis's unfortunate decline. Liebling... Read more

China Road

By: Rob Gifford

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

National Public Radio’s Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world’s most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford’s twenty years of observing firsthand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west,... Read more

Gullible’s Travels

By: Cash Peters

Narrated by: Cash Peters

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

For years, British journalist Cash Peters trekked around Europe and America visiting some of the tackiest attractions in the world for his hugely popular public radio series, The Bad Taste Tours. But a guy can only take so much. Now, as Peters prepares to leave his travel-reporting days behind forever, he takes us along on some of the more... Read more

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

By: J. Maarten Troost

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

At age twenty-six, Maarten Troost decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to a remote South Pacific island. The idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.This book tells the hilarious story of what happens when he discovers that the island is not the paradise he... Read more

Getting Stoned with Savages

By: J. Maarten Troost

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals Troost’s wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a hilarious account of life in the farthest reaches of the world.After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific—until he began to feel remarkably out of place in modern America—and he knew it was... Read more

The Sense of Wonder

By: Rachel L. Carson

Narrated by: Kaiulani Lee

Length: 33 minutes

Abridged: No

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in…If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each... Read more

The Anti-Chomsky Reader

By: Peter Collier & David Horowitz

Narrated by: Kirk Jordan

Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Noam Chomsky’s defense of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khymer Rouge, as well as his bizarre associations with Holocaust revisionists, may surprise those who think they know what he believes. Other Chomsky views, such as his claim that the United States has taken the place of Nazi Germany on the world stage, will be more familiar. With Chomskyism... Read more

Lost on Planet China

By: J. Maarten Troost

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Troost charmed listeners with his humorous tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific in The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned with Savages. When the travel bug bit again, he took on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation.As Troost relates his gonzo adventure—dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai, eating yak in... Read more

Black Wave

By: John Silverwood & Jean Silverwood

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie & Joe Barrett

Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

When John and Jean Silverwood, both experienced sailors, decided to give their four children a taste of life on the high seas, they hoped the trip would offer important learning experiences, not only about the natural world but about the beauty of human life stripped down to its essence, far from civilization. But the adventure that awaited them... Read more

Local Wonders

By: Ted Kooser

Narrated by: Ted Kooser

Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska, an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention, including memories of his grandmother’s cooking. Kooser also reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed... Read more

The Voice of Reason

By: Ayn Rand

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 15 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand’s life, they reflect a... Read more

Return of the Primitive

By: Ayn Rand & Peter Schwartz

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

In the 1960s and early ’70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.While the New Left achieved limited political success, it brought about vast cultural changes that remain with us to this day.... Read more

Practicing History

By: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into American's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. History should not just be a... Read more

The Possibility of Everything

By: Hope Edelman

Narrated by: Hope Edelman

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

From the bestselling author of Motherless Daughters, here is the real-life story of one woman’s search for a cure to her family’s escalating troubles and the leap of faith that took her on a journey to an exotic place and a new state of mind.In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her... Read more