History audiobooks

The Founders of the Western World

By: Michael Grant

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 9 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Through his in-depth analysis, Michael Grant introduces us to the political, military, cultural, social, economic, and religious life of the times that were the building blocks of what we now call the Western World. He creates a vivid panorama of the Greco-Roman world by bringing together the most dramatic events on record from its beginnings in... Read more

Who Is This Man?

By: John Ortberg

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

The day after Jesus' death, whatever small mark he made on the world seemed destined to disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled, leading believers and nonbelievers alike to ask, Who Is This Man?In Who Is This Man, bestselling author John Ortberg explores the paradox of Jesus, history's most familiar figure while... Read more

Dearie

By: Bob Spitz

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 25 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station.  And yet, that’s exactly what Julia Child did.  The... Read more

Gangster Squad

By: Paul Lieberman

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 13 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

"Read this man's book." --James Ellroy

Gangster Squad presents a harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels—the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Brothers film starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

GANGSTER SQUAD chronicles the true story of the... Read more

Mutiny on Board HMS Bounty

By: William Bligh

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1787, William Bligh, commander of the Bounty, sailed under Captain Cook on a voyage to Tahiti to collect plants of the breadfruit tree, with a view to acclimatizing the species to the West Indies. During their six-month stay on the island, his men became completely demoralized and mutinied on the return voyage. But a resentful crew, coupled... Read more

The Little Red Guard

By: Wenguang Huang

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his... Read more

Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

By: Simon Callow

Narrated by: Simon Callow

Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

A short biography of Charles Dickens by acclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow that offers a fresh perspective on one of the greatest novelists in the English language in a lively, highly readable account. "It has all the gusto that a popular biography of Dickens—a man who “could do nothing by halves”—should possess. . . . The best biography... Read more

Jefferson Davis

By: William C. Davis

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 30 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

This book paints a vivid picture of Jefferson Davis as a multifaceted, often charismatic man who mirrored the turbulent times in which he lived and who stood solidly for the South that he loved. Ranging over the complete span of his long life, it shows him as a hardworking Mississippi planter, a compassionate slave owner, a hero of the Mexican... Read more

Inventing the Middle Ages

By: Norman F. Cantor

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 20 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

In this groundbreaking work, Norman Cantor explains how our current notion of the Middle Ages—with its vivid images of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights and ladies—was born in the twentieth century. The medieval world was not simply excavated through systematic research. It had to be conceptually created: it had to be... Read more

Who Killed Homer?

By: Victor Davis Hanson & John Heath

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

For over two millennia in the West, familiarity with the literature, philosophy, and values of the Classical World has been synonymous with education itself. The traditions of the Greeks explain why Western Culture’s unique tenets of democracy, capitalism, civil liberty, and constitutional government are now sweeping the globe. Yet the general... Read more

American Empire

By: Joshua Freeman

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 24 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

A compelling look at the movements and developments that propelled America to world dominance

In this landmark work, acclaimed historian Joshua Freeman has created an epic portrait of a nation both galvanized by change and driven by conflict. Beginning in 1945, the economic juggernaut awakened by World War II transformed a country once defined by... Read more

The Sultans

By: Noel Barber

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

This brilliantly readable work of history tells the bizarre story of the Ottoman Empire as seen through the lives of its extravagant and tyrannical sultans. With their absolute power, their love of pomp, and their overwhelming venality and corruption, rarely has a great empire been ruled by such grotesque and awesome figures. There was Suleiman... Read more

The Oath

By: Khassan Baiev

Narrated by: Robert O'Keefe

Length: 14 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

When Chechen rebels took Moscow theatergoers hostage in October 2002, it tragically highlighted the ongoing conflict between Russia and its breakaway republic, Chechnya-a war that has claimed an estimated 200,000 Chechen lives in the past decade. Yet the true nature of the debacle lies behind the headlines. In The Oath, a heroic Chechen doctor... Read more

American Brutus

By: Michael W. Kauffman

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 22 hours

Abridged: No

In American Brutus, popular historian Michael W. Kauffman delivers a history that reads more like a best-selling novel. This definitive masterwork dispels commonly held myths and reveals the truth about John Wilkes Booth. Luring Southern sympathizers into a "noble" presidential kidnapping, Booth stunned his puzzled pawns by murdering Lincoln.... Read more

The Twelve Caesars

By: Michael Grant

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The personalities of the Twelve Caesars of ancient Rome—Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors who followed him—have profoundly impressed themselves upon the world. They bore the perilous responsibility of governing an empire comparable in its gigantic magnitude and diversity to the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1980s. It... Read more

Life after Television

By: George Gilder

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 2 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

In this remarkably prescient book, Gilder predicts how television will merge with other technologies and evolve into the telecomputer, a personal computer adapted for video processing and connected by fiberoptic threads to other personal computers around the world. This interactive system will change how we do business, educate our children, and... Read more

Reveille in Washington

By: Margaret Leech

Narrated by: Grace Conlin

Length: 21 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Margaret Leech's Pulitzer Prize–winning history paints a wonderfully vivid and lively picture of Washington, DC, during the Civil War. In addition to the major events and figures such as Lincoln, Leech uses telling anecdotes and draws upon cameo players such as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, and a Confederate lady spy to... Read more

The Common Law

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Narrated by: Robert Morris

Length: 12 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is considered one of the greatest justices of the United States Supreme Court and profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, especially in the areas of civil liberties and judicial restraint. At the same time, his abilities as a prose stylist earned him a position among the literary elite.In The Common Law, derived... Read more

The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour

By: Rupert Colley

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 20 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. In 1917 the world changed forever. One of the most influential and contentious events in recent history, the Russian Revolution unleashed the greatest political experiment ever conducted, one which continues to influence both Eastern and Western politics today. ... Read more

The Vietnam War: History in an Hour

By: Neil Smith

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. ‘War, what is it good for?’ THE VIETNAM WAR: HISTORY IN AN HOUR gives a gripping account of the most important Cold War-era conflict, fought between the United States and the Viet Cong, the Vietnam People’s Army and their Communist allies. It was one of the most... Read more

South Africa: History in an Hour

By: Anthony Holmes

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 20 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. With the passing of Nelson Mandela, ‘the father of the nation’, comes the end of an era, and the moment to look back on his remarkable saving, and remaking, of South Africa. After years of oppression and racial inequality, concentrated violence and apartheid, Mandela led... Read more

The Queen: History in an Hour

By: Sinead Fitzgibbon

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Elizabeth II is the longest lived and, after Queen Victoria, second longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. From her coronation in 1953 to her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Queen Elizabeth II has stood on the world stage as the figurehead for Britain. The... Read more

The Afghan Wars: History in an Hour

By: Rupert Colley

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Britain has invaded Afghanistan twice before in the nineteenth century. Both times tenacious Afghan fighters defended their country to humiliating British defeats. The Soviet Union also discovered what a tough enemy the Afghans are after nearly a decade of conflict from... Read more

World War One: History in an Hour

By: Rupert Colley

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. World War One brought with it the world’s first experience of Total War, involving all of the world’s great powers, polarized between the Triple Entente, lead by Britain, France and Russia, and the Central Powers, dominated by Germany and Austria-Hungary. Around 9... Read more