History audiobooks

Drift

By: Rachel Maddow

Narrated by: Rachel Maddow

Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war.

"One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither Jefferson nor the other Found­ers could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of... Read more

The Infinity Puzzle

By: Frank Close

Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley

Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a scientific gold rush as physicists raced to chart the inner workings of the atom. The stakes were high: the questions were big, and there were Nobel Prizes and everlasting glory to be won. Many mysteries of the atom came unraveled, but one remained intractable—what Frank Close calls the... Read more

Hell Above Earth

By: Stephen Frater

Narrated by: Pete Larkin

Length: 9 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Hell Above Earth tells an unforgettable story of two World War II American bomber pilots who forged an unexpected but enduring bond in the flak-filled skies over Nazi Germany. But there's a twist: one of them was related to the head of the Luftwaffe, Reich Marshal Herman Goering, and the other had secret orders from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover... Read more

Fighting the Flying Circus

By: Eddie V. Rickenbacker

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 10 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Captain Eddie V. Rickenbacker, originally from Ohio, was best known as one of the commanders of the 94th "Hat-in-the-Ring" Squadron, a crack unit of pilots that included many former members of the famed Lafayette Escadrille. The 94th ended the war in France with the highest number of air victories of any American squadron. Captain Rickenbacker... Read more

Psychology of the Unconscious

By: Carl Jung

Narrated by: Robert Bethune

Length: 15 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Originally published in German as Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, this is the book that set Carl Jung on his independent path as a psychoanalytic theorist and explorer of the mysterious world of the unconscious mind of the individual and the mythological mind of humanity. He bases his work on an exploration of Miss Frank Miller's Quelques... Read more

Holding Our World Together

By: Brenda J. Child

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Length: 6 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

In this fascinating work, associate professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota and Red Lake Ojibwe Nation member Brenda J. Child spotlights the remarkable women of the Ojibwe Nation. A stunning look at a too-seldomly explored subject in history, Holding Our World Together shows how American Indian women have profoundly... Read more

The Finest Hours

By: Michael J. Tougias & Casey Sherman

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 5 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived.On February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer,... Read more

Why Nations Fail

By: Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 17 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”

“A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich... Read more

Shiloh, 1862

By: Winston Groom

Narrated by: Eric G. Dove

Length: 10 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

SHILOH, 1862 The Battle of Shiloh, fought in the wilderness of southern Tennessee in April 1862, marked a violent crossroads in the Civil War. What began as a surprise attack by Confederate troops on a Union stronghold to gain control of the Mississippi River Valley became a bloody two-day conflict that would eerily foretell the brutal reality... Read more

A Century of Wisdom

By: Caroline Stoessinger

Narrated by: Linda Korn

Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

The subject of the Academy Award–winning documentary The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, Alice Herz-Sommer was the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor when she died on February 23, 2014. A Century of Wisdom is the true story of her life—an inspiring story of resilience and the power of optimism.
 
Before her death at 110, the pianist Alice... Read more

Showdown

By: David Corn

Narrated by: David Corn

Length: 13 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Veteran journalist David Corn—Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones magazine and New York Times bestselling author of Hubris (with Michael Isikoff) and The Lies of George W. Bush—now brings us  Showdown, the dramatic inside story of Barack Obama’s fight to save his presidency. With Bob Woodward-esque insight and narrative flair, Corn takes... Read more

Wine and War

By: Don Kladstrup & Petie Kladstrup

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown—until now. This is the... Read more

God's Jury

By: Cullen Murphy

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

The Inquisition conducted its last execution in 1826—the victim was a Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy. But as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new work, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever.

God's Jury encompasses the diverse stories of the... Read more

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

By: Stephen R. Platt

Narrated by: Angela Lin

Length: 17 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2012 Cundill Prize in HistoryA gripping account of China’s nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the... Read more

The Ice Balloon

By: Alec Wilkinson

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

In this grand and astonishing account, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic... Read more

Soldier Dogs

By: Maria Goodavage

Narrated by: Nicole Vilencia

Length: 8 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

A leading dog-blogger offers a tour of military working dogs’ extraordinary training, heroic accomplishments, and the lasting impact they have on those who work with them.People all over the world have been riveted by the story of Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who was a part of the Navy SEAL team that led the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. A... Read more

Island of Vice

By: Richard Zacks

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

Length: 15 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

A ROLLICKING NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S EMBATTLED TENURE AS POLICE COMMISSIONER OF CORRUPT, PLEASURE-LOVING NEW YORK CITY IN THE 1880s, AND HIS DOOMED MISSION TO WIPE OUT VICE

In the 1890s, New York City was America’s financial, manufacturing, and entertainment capital, and also its preferred destination for sin, teeming with... Read more

The American Heritage History of World War I

By: S. L. A. Marshall

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 19 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawing on a lifetime of military experience, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, “one of our most distinguished military writers” (New York Times), delivers this unflinching history of the war that was supposed to end all wars. From the perspective of more than half a century, Marshall examines the blunders and complacency that turned what... Read more

NPR American Chronicles: Women's Equality

By: NPR

Length: 3 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

NPR explores the issues, struggles, and triumphs of the American women’s movement, from early pioneers to modern groundbreakers and leaders of today who fight to preserve hard-won rights. Profiles of Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony provide insights into the origins of the movement, while reflections from Betty... Read more

Homer - An den Wurzeln der europäischen Kultur - Abridged

By: Michael Stahl

Narrated by: Michael Stahl

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Jenseits aller Debatten um seine Herkunft oder die Lokalisierung Trojas ist Homer der erste Autor Europas in einem emphatischen Sinne. Seine Wirkung reicht weit über das Publikum im frühen Griechenland bis in die Gegenwart. Für jeden am Altertum Interessierten hält Homer wichtige Einsichten bereit: Die Epen "Ilias" und "Odyssee" schildern in... Read more

Legenden und Ihre Biographien - Abridged

By: Diverse

Narrated by: Sven Görtz

Length: 6 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Fünf große Leben - fünf packende Biographien! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Heinrich Heine, Nostradamus, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marilyn Monroe - keiner von ihnen wurde wirklich alt, und dennoch fließen ihre Lebensgeschichten geradezu über von faszinierenden Erlebnissen! Mozarts Geldnöte, Heines "Matratzengruft", Nostradamus' Prophezeiungen, Rilkes... Read more

Turing's Cathedral

By: George Dyson

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 15 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first... Read more

Revelations

By: Elaine Pagels

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Length: 6 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Elaine Pagels explores the surprising history of the most controversial book of the Bible.
In the waning days of the Roman Empire, militant Jews in Jerusalem had waged an
all-out war against Rome’s occupation of Judea, and their defeat resulted in the desecration
of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that war, John of Patmos, a... Read more

Winter King

By: Thomas Penn

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

A fresh look at the endlessly fascinating Tudors—the dramatic and overlooked story of Henry VII and his founding of the Tudor Dynasty—filled with spies, plots, counter-plots, and an uneasy royal succession to Henry VIIINear the turn of the sixteenth century, England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy and civil war. Henry Tudor clambered... Read more