History audiobooks

The Naval War of 1812

By: Theodore Roosevelt

Narrated by: Paul Costanzo

Length: 15 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Published when Theodore Roosevelt was only twenty-three years old, The Naval War of 1812 was immediately hailed as a literary and scholarly triumph, and it is still considered the definitive book on the subject. It caused considerable controversy for its bold refutation of earlier accounts of the war, but its brilliant analysis and balanced tone... Read more

Two Americans

By: William Lee Miller

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 20 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, consecutive presidents of the United States, were midwesterners alike in many ways—except that they also sharply differed.  Born within six years of each other (Truman in 1884, Eisenhower in 1890), they came from small towns in the Missouri-Mississippi River Valley—in the midst of cows and wheat, pigs and... Read more

The Idea Factory

By: Jon Gertner

Narrated by: Chris Sorensen

Length: 17 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the 1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1,200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell... Read more

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

By: Anthony Everitt

Narrated by: John Curless

Length: 14 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Born in A.D. 76, Hadrian lived through and ruled during a tempestuous era, a time when the Colosseum was opened to the public and Pompeii was buried under a mountain of lava and ash. Acclaimed author Anthony Everitt vividly recounts Hadrian’s thrilling life, in which the emperor brings a century of disorder and costly warfare to a peaceful... Read more

Our Game

By: Charles C. Alexander

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 14 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

This entertaining history blends anecdote, incident, and analysis as it chronicles the story of our national pastime. Alexander covers the advent of the first professional baseball leagues, the game’s surge in the early twentieth century, the Golden Twenties and the Gray Thirties, the breaking of the color line in the late forties, and the... Read more

When the Tea Party Comes to Town

By: Robert Draper

Narrated by: Holter Graham

Length: 11 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain, the definitive book about the Bush Presidency, a revealing and riveting look at the new House of Representatives, elected in the history-making 2010 midterm elections. Read more

Midnight in Peking

By: Paul French

Narrated by: Erik Singer

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In the last days of old Peking, where anything goes, can a murderer escape justice?Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking. Is it the work of a madman? One... Read more

After Camelot

By: J. Randy Taraborrelli

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 21 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

For more than half a century, Americans have been captivated by the Kennedys - their joy and heartbreak, tragedy and triumph, the dark side and the remarkable achievements. In this ambitious and sweeping account, Taraborelli continues the family chronicle begun with his bestselling Jackie, Ethel, Joan and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the... Read more

Undefeated

By: Bill Sloan

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 13 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Called "a master of the combat narrative" (The Dallas Morning News), author Bill
Sloan captures the valor, fortitude, and suffering of the American
defenders of the Philippines as no other author has. Abandoned by their
government, the men and women of the American garrison struggled against
impossible military odds, rampant disease, and slow... Read more

Oklahoma City

By: Andrew Gumbel & Roger G. Charles

Narrated by: Todd Waring

Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

In the early morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove into downtown Oklahoma City in a rented Ryder truck containing a deadly fertilizer bomb that he and his army buddy Terry Nichols had made the previous day. He parked in a handicapped-parking zone, hopped out of the truck, and walked away into a series of alleys and streets. Shortly... Read more

Prague Winter

By: Madeleine Albright

Narrated by: Madeleine Albright

Length: 15 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

“A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action, a chronicle of a war in progress from a partisan faithful to the idea of Czechoslovakian democracy.” -- Los Angeles TimesDrawn... Read more

Founding Rivals

By: Chris DeRose

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1789, James Madison and James Monroe ran against each other for Congress—the only time that two future presidents have contested a congressional seat.

But what was at stake, as author Chris DeRose reveals in Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation, was more than personal ambition. This was... Read more

City of Scoundrels

By: Gary Krist

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 9 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into “the Metropolis of the World.” But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same... Read more

The Presidents Club

By: Nancy Gibbs & Michael Duffy

Narrated by: Bob Walter

Length: 22 hours

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling history of the private relationships among the last thirteen presidents—the partnerships, private deals, rescue missions, and rivalries of those select men who served as commander in chief.

The Presidents Club, established at Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration by Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, is a complicated... Read more

Crossing the Borders of Time

By: Leslie Maitland

Narrated by: Leslie Maitland

Length: 18 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees—the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbors. Then, barred... Read more

Travels in Alaska

By: John Muir

Narrated by: Noah Waterman

Length: 7 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

In the late 1800s, John Muir made several trips to the pristine, relatively unexplored territory of Alaska, irresistibly drawn to its awe-inspiring glaciers and its wild menagerie of bears, bald eagles, wolves, and whales. Half poet and half geologist, he recorded his experiences and reflections in Travels in Alaska, a work he was in the process... Read more

The Last Battle

By: Cornelius Ryan

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 15 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler's Third ReichThe Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater. The last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, it devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and... Read more

Aristotle for Everybody

By: Mortimer J. Adler

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 5 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

“Almost all of the philosophical truths that I have come to know and understand I have learned from Aristotle,” says Mortimer J. Adler. This easy-to-listen-to exposition of Aristotle’s thoughts about nature, human actions, and the conduct of life confirms convictions that most of us hold, though we may not be fully aware of them. This is because... Read more

The Confessions

By: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 30 hours

Abridged: No

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that "Rousseau was a very bad man," but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia: (1) free expression of the... Read more

Front Burner

By: Kirk S. Lippold

Narrated by: Kirk S. Lippold

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

On October 12, 2000, at 11:18 a.m., an 8,400-ton destroyer called the USS Cole was rocked by an enormous explosion. The ship’s commander, Kirk Lippold, watched as tiles tumbled from the ceiling, mugs of coffee tumbled to the floor, and everything not bolted down seemed to float in midair. Lippold knew in a matter of moments that the Cole had... Read more

A Slave in the White House

By: Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, PhD

Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly & Judith West

Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first... Read more

Gulag

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 27 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

The Gulag—a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners—was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the... Read more

Joe Rochefort's War

By: Elliot Carlson

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

Length: 22 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Elliot Carlson's biography of Captain Joe Rochefort is the first to be written of the officer who headed the U.S. Navy's decrypt unit at Pearl Harbor and broke the Japanese Navy's code before the Battle of Midway. Listeners will share his frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto's fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and... Read more

China in Ten Words

By: Yu Hua

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 7 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation.

Framed by ten phrases common in the... Read more