History audiobooks

Unfamiliar Fishes

By: Sarah Vowell

Narrated by: Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, John Hodgman, Catheri...

Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Sarah Vowell thinks of Hawaii as the most American state. She argues that it’s “breathtaking in its beauty, sometimes hideously developed, overwhelmingly religious, impoverished (except for pockets of staggering wealth), crass and spiritual all at once.” In Unfamiliar Fishes, she will explore the exceptional history of Hawaii with her personal... Read more

NPR American Chronicles: The Civil War

By: NPR

Narrated by: Neal Conan

Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

NPR captures the battlefield action, the personal struggles, and the moral dilemmas of the war that pitted brother against brother (and sometimes sister) and friend against friend. This revealing collection of Civil War stories features gripping history, expert commentary, and unforgettable voices:

Shelby Foote reflects on the southern... Read more

Half the Church

By: Carolyn Custis James

Narrated by: Ruth Bloomquist

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Women comprise at least half the world, and usually more than half the church, but so often Christian teaching to women either fails to move beyond a discussion of roles or assumes a particular economic situation or stage of life. This all but shuts women out from contributing to God’s kingdom as they were designed to do. Furthermore, the plight... Read more

Joschka Fischer is not convinced - lit.COLOGNE live (ungekürzt)

By: Joschka Fischer

Narrated by: Joschka Fischer & Eckart Conze

Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Der zweite Teil von Joschka Fischers Memoiren "I am not convinced" beginnt mit dem 11. September 2001. Fischer beschreibt die dramatische Entwicklung bis zum Irak-Krieg, gegen den er mit Gerhard Schröder Stellung bezog. Es geht um das Zerwürfnis zwischen Deutschland und Amerika, die dramatischen Tage, als es um das Abstimmungsverhalten... Read more

Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs

By: Patrick K. O’Donnell

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

"Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs is a superbly told story of the men and women of the OSS. They helped write the book on special operations. I was struck by the similarity of the context of their stories to ones I've experienced in different combat situations. This book is a must-read for those in the special operations business today and... Read more

The Civil War: 50-48 BC

By: Julius Caesar

Narrated by: Larry McKeever

Length: 4 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Here is a rare chance to hear the Roman Emperor speak. In plain, soldierly language, Julius Caesar chronicles his struggle to win the Roman Civil War. Beneath the rhetoric crackles the intelligence of an extraordinary man. Read more

Branch Rickey

By: Jimmy Breslin

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 4 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The idea of integrating baseball began as a dream in the mind of Branch Rickey. In 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he defied racism on and off the field to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, changing the sport and the nation forever. Rickey's is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose... Read more

The Frontiersmen

By: Allan W. Eckert

Narrated by: Kevin Foley

Length: 30 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men. They were often rough and illiterate, sometimes brutal and vicious, often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east. In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,... Read more

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

By: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman

Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

""We're far more accustomed to—and comfortable with—seeing women portrayed as victims of war who deserve our sympathy rather than as resilient survivors who demand our respect…"" Former ABC journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells the riveting true story of Kamila Sidiqi and other women of Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s fearful rise to... Read more

Rawhide Down

By: Del Quentin Wilber

Narrated by: Jason Culp

Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011

On March 30, 1981, President Reagan walked out of a hotel in Washington, D.C. and was shot by a would-be assassin. For years, few people knew the truth about how close the president came to dying, and no one has ever written a detailed narrative of that harrowing day. Now, drawing on exclusive... Read more

When Pride Still Mattered

By: David Maraniss

Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson

Length: 28 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

In this groundbreaking biography, David Maraniss captures all of football great Vince Lombardi: the myth, the man, his game, and his God.

More than any other sports figure, Vince Lombardi transformed football into a metaphor of the American experience. The son of an Italian immigrant butcher, Lombardi toiled for twenty frustrating years as a high... Read more

The Twelve Caesars

By: Suetonius

Narrated by: Clive Chafer

Length: 17 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colorful biographical works in history. The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the... Read more

The Eichmann Trial

By: Deborah Erika Lipstadt

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a... Read more

Citadels of Power: Castles in History and Archaeology

By: Thomas Finan

Narrated by: Thomas Finan

Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Professor Thomas J. Finan conducts an enthralling series of lectures on a subject that is an enduring part of the popular imagination: the castle. Professor Finan examines the castle from a variety of contemporary perspectives, including those of history, archaeology, geography, and landscape studies. The course also covers the morphology of... Read more

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

By: Jennifer Tobin

Narrated by: Jennifer Tobin

Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Esteemed professor Jennifer Tobin leads a compelling series of lectures on the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Examining the historical and social context of each wonder, Tobin answers such questions as, Why was it build? and What can it tell us about the people who built it? From the Great Pyramid at Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes and the... Read more

Five Days in London

By: John Lukacs

Narrated by: Aelred Rosser

Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

In May 1940, the course of history hung in the balance for five long days while Churchill's War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or continue opposition. In this compelling narrative, scholar and renowned author John Lukacs draws on memoirs and papers to convey the drama of those troubled times. Prime Minister Winston Churchill,... Read more

The First Salute

By: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by: Davina Porter

Length: 13 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

The prize-winning historian's fresh look at the people and events that decided America's struggle for independence. Its suspenseful climax is the 500-mile march undertaken by General Washington to surround Cornwallis at Yorktown. Read more

Testament

By: Benson Bobrick

Narrated by: Richard Harries

Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Benson Bobrick, recipient of the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, tells the story of Benjamin "Webb" Baker, his great-grandfather. Webb enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 and thereafter suffered through horrid conditions in camp and absolute hell in combat. Benson's fascinating look at the Civil War also contains a... Read more

Josephine

By: Carolly Erickson

Narrated by: Davina Porter

Length: 14 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Popular biographer Carolly Erickson creates intimate and richly detailed portraits of her historical subjects. In this book she offers a provocative new perspective on Josephine and her fabled marriage to Napoleon. Josephine's story is as turbulent as the revolutionary era in which she lived-and even more tantalizing than her reputation.Brought... Read more

Thomas Paine

By: Craig Nelson

Narrated by: Paul Hecht

Length: 15 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that "history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine." Thomas Edison called him "the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible." He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, "The United States of America." He rose from abject poverty in... Read more

To Kingdom Come

By: Robert J. Mrazek

Narrated by: David Drummond

Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

On September 6, 1943, three hundred and thirty-eight B-17 "Flying Fortresses" of the American Eighth Air Force took off from England, bound for Stuttgart, Germany, to bomb Nazi weapons factories.



Dense clouds obscured the targets, and one commander's critical decision to circle three times over the city—and its deadly flak—would prove... Read more

Then Everything Changed

By: Jeff Greenfield

Narrated by: Michael Kramer & Jeff Greenfield

Length: 17 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

A brilliant and brilliantly entertaining tour de force of American politics from one of journalism's most acclaimed commentators.History turns on a dime. A missed meeting, a different choice of words, and the outcome changes dramatically. Nowhere is this truer than in the field where Jeff Greenfield has spent most of his working life, American... Read more

Wait Til Next Year

By: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 7 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

By the award-winning author of Team of Rivals and The Bully Pulpit, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball.

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were... Read more

Benjamin Franklin

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 24 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative... Read more