History audiobooks

The Great War and Modern Memory

By: Paul Fussell

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Length: 15 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a... Read more

Chaos

By: Tom O'Neill

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

Length: 16 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.
Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months... Read more

Ireland: A Short History

By: Joseph Coohill

Narrated by: Enda Oates

Length: 8 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

From the first prehistoric inhabitants of the island to the St Andrews Agreement and decommissioning of IRA weapons, this uniquely concise account of Ireland and its people reveals how differing interpretations of history, ancient and modern, have influenced modern Irish society. Combining factual information with a critical approach, Coohill... Read more

The Sleepwalkers

By: Christopher Clark

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Length: 23 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — The Boston GlobeOne of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of... Read more

The Fate of the Day

By: Rick Atkinson

Narrated by: Grover Gardner & Rick Atkinson

Length: 32 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.

The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution—which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton—was... Read more

Amazing Grace

By: Bruce Hindmarsh & Craig Borlase

Narrated by: Alan Irving, Bruce Hindmarsh & Craig Borlase

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Amazing Grace is the surprising true story of John Newton, author of the song that has touched millions. A biography that reads like a novel, it reveals Newton’s dramatic story of sin and salvation as a slave trader before his ultimate transformation to speaking out against the horror of slavery. His story speaks to the brokenness within us all... Read more

The Power Broker

By: Robert A. Caro

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 66 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York.

One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, Robert Caro's... Read more

Twilight of Democracy

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated by: Anne Applebaum

Length: 5 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism.

From the United States and... Read more

The Emerald Mile

By: Kevin Fedarko

Narrated by: Kevin Fedarko

Length: 17 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983.

In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented... Read more

Mediocre

By: Ijeoma Oluo

Narrated by: Ijeoma Oluo

Length: 10 hours

Abridged: No

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, an  “illuminating” (New York Times Book Review) history of white male identity.

What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color,... Read more

Women's Work

By: Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Narrated by: Donna Postel

Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies.



Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.



Despite the... Read more

Black on Both Sides

By: C. Riley Snorton

Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton

Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on... Read more

The Five

By: Hallie Rubenhold

Narrated by: Louise Brealey

Length: 10 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.



Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran... Read more

The Situation Room

By: George Stephanopoulos

Narrated by: George Stephanopoulos, Peter Ganim & Elisabeth ...

Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

George Stephanopoulos, the legendary political news host and former advisor to President Clinton, recounts the history-making crises from the place where twelve presidents made their highest-pressure decisions: the White House Situation Room. 

No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room.... Read more

The Future Is History (National Book Award Winner)

By: Masha Gessen

Narrated by: Masha Gessen

Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 

WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD  

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST,  BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE,... Read more

Rot

By: Padraic X. Scanlan

Narrated by: Stephen Hogan

Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster

In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more... Read more

Home of the Happy

By: Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

Narrated by: Christine Lakin

Length: 13 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

A compelling blend of true crime and memoir tracing the author’s investigation into the kidnapping and murder of her great-grandfather in 1980s Louisiana and the reverberations on her family and community throughout the decades""Riveting and atmospheric, Home of the Happy is also a heartfelt grappling with a trauma in the author’s family and her... Read more

The Mesopotamian Riddle

By: Joshua Hammer

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies

Length: 10 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe... Read more

The Wright Brothers

By: David McCullough

Narrated by: David McCullough

Length: 10 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

The #1 New York Times bestseller from David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize—the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly—Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers—bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio—changed history.... Read more

Gangsters of Capitalism

By: Jonathan M. Katz

Narrated by: Adam Barr

Length: 14 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking journey tracing America’s forgotten path to global power—and how its legacies shape our world today—told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine.

Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting... Read more

Love & Whiskey - Abridged

By: Fawn Weaver

Narrated by: Fawn Weaver

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NARRATED BY THE AUTHOR 

BONUS CHAPTER NOT INCLUDED IN HARDCOVER EDITION 
Love & Whiskey is the true story of Jack Daniel, Nearest Green, the man, and Uncle Nearest, the whiskey company Fawn Weaver founded to honor and amplify Green's legacy. But it’s not the whole story. A bonus chapter in the audiobook edition... Read more

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

By: Adreas Malm

Narrated by: Brian Arens

Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Property will cost us the earth. The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high,... Read more

The British Are Coming

By: Rick Atkinson

Narrated by: George Newbern & Rick Atkinson

Length: 26 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

**One of AudioFile Magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2019**

"The winning combination of George Newbern's engaging narration and Rick Atkinson's vivid new work of history--the first in a planned trilogy about the American Revolution--brings to life what could have been a dry account of Revolutionary battles." -- AudioFile Magazine

This program... Read more

The Swans of Harlem

By: Karen Valby

Narrated by: Karlya Shelton-Benjamin, Sheila Rohan, Lydia Ab...

Length: 10 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now.

“This is the kind of history I wish I learned as a child dreaming of the stage!” —Misty... Read more