Essays audiobooks

Run Forever

By: Amby Burfoot

Narrated by: Chris Ciulla

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In Run Forever, Boston Marathon winner and former Runner's World editor-in-chief Amby Burfoot shares practical advice and wisdom on how to run with greater joy and health for an entire lifetime.

Everyone learns how to run at an early age. It's naturally wired into your body. Yet in recent years, running has become complicated by trendy gadgets... Read more

Magic Hours

By: Tom Bissell

Narrated by: Tom Bissell

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox's work was relaunched... Read more

How to American

By: Jimmy O. Yang

Narrated by: Jimmy O. Yang & Mike Judge

Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Standup comic, actor and fan favorite from HBO's Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians shares his memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California and making it in Hollywood.

"I turned down a job in finance to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. My dad thought I was crazy. But I figured it was better to disappoint my parents for... Read more

The Measure of My Powers

By: Jackie Kai Ellis

Narrated by: Jackie Kai Ellis

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 TASTE CANADA AWARDS AND THE RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE. For fans of Eat Pray Love, Wild, and H is for Hawk, The Measure of My Powers is the story of one woman's search for self-love, experienced through food and travel.

"With searing vulnerability and unflinching honesty, Jackie Kai... Read more

Other Colors

By: Orhan Pamuk

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 16 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

A luminous essay collection about loneliness, contentment, and the books and cities that have shaped the experience of a Nobel Prize winner and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red.

"One of the essential writers that both East and West can gratefully claim as their own.” —The New York Times Book Review

In the three decades that Nobel... Read more

The Return of Marco Polo's World

By: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades from the bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy
 
“[Kaplan] has emerged not only as an eloquent defender of foreign-policy realism but as a grand strategist to whom the Pentagon turns for a tour d’horizon.”—The Wall Street... Read more

Would You Rather?

By: Katie Heaney

Narrated by: Katie Heaney

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of poignant, relatable essays from the author of Never Have I Ever about coming out in her late twenties, entering into her first relationship, and figuring out what it means to be an adult.

When Katie Heaney published her first book of essays, chronicling her singledom up to age twenty-five, she was still waiting to meet the right... Read more

Can It Happen Here?

By: Cass R. Sunstein

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

“What makes Trump immune is that he is not a president within the context of a healthy Republican government. He is a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party – and he specifically campaigned on a platform of one-man rule. This fact permeates “Can It Happen Here? . . . which concludes, if you read between the lines, that... Read more

Tell Me How It Ends

By: Valeria Luiselli

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US.

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young... Read more

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll

By: Andrew Friedman

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll transports listeners back in time to witness the remarkable evolution of the American restaurant chef in the 1970s and 1980s. Andrew Friedman goes inside Chez Panisse and other Bay Area restaurants to show how the politically charged backdrop of Berkeley helped spark this new profession; into the historically... Read more

Stay Hungry

By: Sebastian Maniscalco

Narrated by: Sebastian Maniscalco

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

From comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco—star of the film About My Father with Robert DeNiro—an inspiring, honest, uproarious collection of essays tracing his career from playing boxing rings and bowling alleys to reaching the pinnacles of comedy success.

At twenty-four, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum... Read more

Don't Call Me Princess

By: Peggy Orenstein

Narrated by: Peggy Orenstein

Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays—funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls’ and women’s progress (or lack thereof) in what Orenstein once called a “half-changed world.”... Read more

What Are We Doing Here?

By: Marilynne Robinson

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith.Whether... Read more

Sold into Egypt

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now.Is Joseph—the deserted son of Jacob from the Old Testament—relevant in our modern age? For Madeleine L’Engle, the... Read more

Stories I Love to Tell

By: Gene Edwards

Narrated by: Milton Bagby

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

America’s beloved storyteller will guide and thrill your imagination with these classic tales. Join Gene Edwards as he recounts his favorite stories from more than 50 years of travel and ministry. Considered the “Paul Harvey” of Christian writers, Gene Edwards is one of America’s most beloved authors. Stories I Love to Tell, his new book, is a... Read more

A Stone for a Pillow

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now.In this book for the curious, spiritual seeker, Madeleine L’Engle offers relevant lessons drawn from the life of... Read more

And It Was Good

By: Madeleine L'Engle

Narrated by: Pamela Almand

Length: 6 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now.In the first book of her Genesis Trilogy, beloved author Madeleine L’Engle casts long, loving, and perceptive... Read more

Everybody Is Awful

By: Jim Florentine

Narrated by: Jim Florentine & Jim Norton

Length: 7 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

A rant-ish memoir by the veteran stand-up comedian and former cohost of That Metal Show, with a foreword by Jim Norton.

Twitter Trolls. Facebook Freaks. Instagram Exhibitionists. These are just a few of the creatures our technology-obsessed culture has spawned in its quest to simplify our lives. The madness is so universal now that everyone has... Read more

Politics Of The Womb

By: Pinki Virani

Narrated by: Monisha Narang

Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Among life’s choices is to have children or remain childfree. Yet those who want a child and find themselves unable, live through the trauma of ‘infertility’—cruelly attributed as ‘their fault’—to undergo the tribulations of assisted reproductive technology.

But how safe is aggressive Ivf, invasive Icsi, exploitative ovarian hyper-stimulation... Read more

I Wrote This Book Because I Love You

By: Tim Kreider

Narrated by: Tim Kreider

Length: 6 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

*A People Top 10 Book of 2018*

The New York Times essayist and author of We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider trains his singular power of observation on his (often befuddling) relationships with women.

Psychologists have told him he’s a psychologist. Philosophers have told him he’s a philosopher. Religious groups have invited him to speak. He had a... Read more

Up Up, Down Down

By: Cheston Knapp

Narrated by: Cheston Knapp

Length: 9 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Daring, wise, hilarious, and tender, this exhilarating collection of seven linked essays by Cheston Knapp tackles Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues: an examination of a local professional wrestling promotion becomes a meditation on pain and his relationship with his father; a profile on UFO enthusiasts ends up probing his history... Read more

The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist

By: Orhan Pamuk

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

From the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and the acclaimed author of My Name is Red—an inspired, thoughtful, and deeply personal book of essays about reading and writing novels.

In this fascinating set of essays, based on the talks he delivered at Harvard University as part of the distinguished Norton Lecture series, Pamuk presents a comprehensive... Read more

I've Got This Round

By: Mamrie Hart

Narrated by: Mamrie Hart

Length: 6 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Hilarious, candid, and full of shenanigans, YouTube sensation Mamrie Hart—the New York Times bestselling author of You Deserve a Drink—is back with more adventures.
 
When Mamrie simultaneously enters her 30s and finds herself single for the first time since college, the world is suddenly full of possibilities. Emboldened by the cool confidence... Read more

Feel Free

By: Zadie Smith

Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird

Length: 13 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism 

A New York Times Notable Book

From Zadie Smith, one of the most beloved authors of her generation, a new collection of essays

Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's... Read more