History audiobooks

The Narrow Corridor

By: Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

Length: 23 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

From the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics and the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor,... Read more

How to Survive a Plague

By: David France

Narrated by: Rory O'Malley

Length: 24 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times 2016 Notable Book

The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic—from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague.

A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific... Read more

Disarming Leviathan

By: Caleb E. Campbell

Narrated by: Caleb E. Campbell

Length: 7 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Pastor Caleb Campbell has watched as Christian nationalism has taken over large swaths of the United States. And he's suffered the relational fallout of standing against it, both in his community and his church. While it's possible to be both a Christian and hold Christian nationalist ideas, Christian nationalism itself is an un-Christian... Read more

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

By: Bettany Hughes

Narrated by: Bettany Hughes

Length: 13 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

An immersive, awe-inspiring tour of the ancient sites that kindle our imagination and afford us a glimpse into our shared history

“This fascinating book is brimming with stories of people and places, all told with Bettany’s natural sense of wonder and adventure.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The World

For... Read more

The Lost Tomb

By: Douglas Preston

Narrated by: Will Collyer

Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Douglas Preston, the #1 bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, presents jaw-dropping true stories of Egyptian burial chambers, prehistoric ruins, pirate treasure, bizarre crimes, and more… 

What's it like to be the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that's been sealed for thousands of years? What horrifying secret was found... Read more

Aftermath

By: Harald Jähner

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 12 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust.
 
The years... Read more

The World

By: Richard Haass

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 10 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller

“A clear and concise account of the history, diplomacy, economics, and societal forces that have molded the modern global system.” —Foreign Affairs

An invaluable primer from Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, that will help anyone, expert and non-expert alike, navigate a time in which many... Read more

We Are What We Eat

By: Alice Waters

Narrated by: Alice Waters

Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

From chef and food activist Alice Waters, an impassioned plea for a radical reconsideration of the way each and every one of us cooks and eats

In We Are What We Eat, Alice Waters urges us to take up the mantle of slow food culture, the philosophy at the core of her life’s work. When Waters first opened Chez Panisse in 1971, she did so with the... Read more

Liftoff

By: Eric Berger

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. 

In 2006, SpaceX—a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees—rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at Kwajalein Atoll. After a groundbreaking launch from the... Read more

Atlantic

By: Simon Winchester

Narrated by: Simon Winchester

Length: 14 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

""Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account."" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and exposition, New York Times bestselling author Simon... Read more

Armageddon

By: Bart D. Ehrman

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 7 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A “humane, thoughtful, and intelligent” (The New York Times Book Review) bestselling Biblical scholar reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters.

You’ll find nearly everything the Bible says about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery,... Read more

Into the Raging Sea

By: Rachel Slade

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 11 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

“A Perfect Storm for a new generation, Rachel Slade's Into the Raging Sea is a masterful page-turning account of the El Faro's sinking.”
—Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of FacebookOn October 1, 2015, Hurricane Joaquin barreled into the Bermuda Triangle and swallowed the container ship El Faro whole,... Read more

The Reluctant Widow

By: Georgette Heyer

Narrated by: Daon Broni

Length: 9 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Brought to you by Penguin.

One of the best-known and most beloved historical novelists, Georgette Heyer as ever, captures a whole new audience's heart.

Stepping into the wrong carriage at a Sussex village, Elinor Rochdale is swept up in a thrilling and dangerous adventure. Overnight the would-be governess becomes mistress of a ruined estate and... Read more

Before the Movement

By: Dylan C. Penningroth

Narrated by: Terrence Kidd

Length: 12 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The familiar story of civil rights goes like this: once, America's legal system shut Black people out and refused to recognize their rights, their basic human dignity, or even their very lives. When lynch mobs gathered, police often closed their eyes, if they didn't join in. For Black people, law was a hostile, fearsome power to be avoided... Read more

Imperial Twilight

By: Stephen R. Platt

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 17 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War.
 
As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China... Read more

The Metaphysical Club

By: Louis Menand

Narrated by: Paul Heitsch

Length: 17 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of... Read more

A More Beautiful and Terrible History

By: Jeanne Theoharis

Narrated by: Kim Staunton

Length: 11 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of... Read more

Ten Myths About Israel

By: Ilan Pappe

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 6 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

The myths and reality behind the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from "the most eloquent writer on Palestinian history" (New Statesman)



The outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.



The "ten myths"—repeated... Read more

Crisis Averted

By: Caitlin Rivers, PhD

Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick

Length: 7 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

“Readers should come away from Crisis Averted with a better comprehension of what public health does and why it is such a crucial endeavor.” —The Washington Post

"A master class in how we can pinpoint and prevent health crises before they spiral out of control."—Scott Gottlieb, MD, author of Uncontrolled Spread

A fascinating window into the secret... Read more

A Brief History of Everything

By: Ken Wilber

Narrated by: Steve Grad & Willow Pearson

Length: 5 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A Brief History of Everything is an altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in a universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom New York Times reporter Tony Schwartz says: "No one has described the path to wisdom better than Ken Wilber."

Wilber examines the course of evolution as the unfolding... Read more

Islam

By: Karen Armstrong

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Best-selling author and renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong presents a concise and articulate history of Islam, the world's fastest-growing faith. Beginning with the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Medina and concluding with an examination of modern Islamic practices and concerns, Armstrong delivers an unbiased overview. She contends that... Read more

Woodrow Wilson

By: Christopher Cox

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 25 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

A timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women’s voting rights.

More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality... Read more

On Killing

By: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Narrated by: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed." In World War II, only 15 to 20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles.... Read more

The Moscow Rules

By: Antonio J. Mendez & Jonna Mendez

Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A “devilishly fun” (New York Times Book Review) account of a deadly serious business: the undercover spies and the tactics they developed to survive the Cold War in Moscow, from legendary former-CIA operatives.
Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous... Read more