History audiobooks

The Story of Philosophy

By: Will Durant

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 19 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

The product of eleven years of research, The Story of Philosophy is an endlessly inspiring and instructive chronicle of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Socrates to Santayana. Written with exacting and scrupulous scholarship, it was designed both to command the respect of educators and to capture the interest of the layman.Durant lucidly... Read more

Boiling Mad

By: Kate Zernike

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 5 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics.

They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called... Read more

The Lampshade

By: Mark Jacobson

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The journey that takes Mark Jacobson around the world began when a friend bought a lamp at a rummage sale and was told that it was made from the skins of Jews. While he didn't believe the story, he sent it to Mark, saying, "You're a journalist, you figure out what it is."



After three years of research in America, Poland, Germany, and Israel, and... Read more

Profiles in Folly

By: Alan Axelrod

Narrated by: Scott Peterson

Length: 11 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Using the same engrossing anecdotal format that has proved so popular in Profiles in Audacity, Alan Axelrod now turns to the dark side of audacious decision-making: those choices that, in retrospect, were shockingly wrongheaded.

Although Axelrod investigates some dumb decisions by stupid people and some evil decisions by evil people, the... Read more

Freedom from Fear

By: David M. Kennedy

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 31 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This Pulitzer Prize–winning history tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy... Read more

Simon Wiesenthal

By: Tom Segev

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 19 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

This first fully documented biography of Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, is also a brilliant character study of a man whose life was part invention but wholly dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for their crimes and that the destruction of European Jewry never be forgotten.

Like most Jews in Eastern Europe... Read more

Inside the Nazi War Machine

By: Bevin Alexander

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 7 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1940, as Nazi Germany spread its wings of war, France stood secure in the knowledge that they possessed the largest, most formidable, and best equipped army in Europe. France also had a stalwart ally in Britain and the support of Holland and Belgium. But they were all about to face a new kind of enemy who fought a new kind of war. In this... Read more

The Great Fire of Rome

By: Stephen Dando-Collins

Narrated by: John Lescault

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In 64 AD, on the night of July 19, a fire began beneath the stands of Rome's great stadium, the Circus Maximus. The fire would spread over the coming days to engulf much of the city of Rome. From this calamity, one of the ancient world's most devastating events, legends grew: that Nero had been responsible for the fire, and fiddled while Rome... Read more

Dancing in the Dark

By: Morris Dickstein

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 23 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, this vibrant portrait of 1930s culture masterfully explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of distressed Americans during the Great Depression.Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called "one of our best and most distinguished... Read more

Whose Bible is It?

By: Jaroslav Pelikan

Narrated by: Paul Hecht

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, Jaroslav Pelikan is Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This examination of the history of the Bible reflects half a century of study and research by the author. In Whose Bible Is It?,... Read more

The Darkest Days of the War

By: Peter Cozzens

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 14 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

During the late summer of 1862, Confederate forces attempted a three-pronged strategic advance into the North. The outcome of this offensive, the only coordinated Confederate attempt to carry the conflict to the enemy, was disastrous. The results at Antietam and in Kentucky are well known; the third offensive, the northern Mississippi campaign,... Read more

Never Call Retreat

By: Bruce Catton

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 19 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Never Call Retreat (Vol 3): Appomattox; the Vicksburg Campaign; the Battle of Atlanta and the March to the Sea; the assassination of Lincoln Read more

The Way Hollywood Tells It

By: David Bordwell

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today's bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers have created a durable tradition - one that... Read more

The Battle Of Britain

By: BBC

Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith

Length: 2 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

First-hand accounts featuring the RAF pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain - one of the chief turning points of World War Two. 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few' - Winston Churchill. The 'Few' were the nearly 3,000 RAF pilots who fought against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, which... Read more

Shattered

By: Frank Pastore & Ellen Vaughn

Narrated by: Frank Pastore

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Cincinnati Reds pitcher Frank Pastore stepped onto the mound in Dodger Stadium to throw another fastball—something he’d done thousands of times since childhood. But this time was different. The batter connected and the ball came rocketing back to the mound, shattering not only Frank’s pitching elbow—but also his dream of getting “rich and... Read more

Nazism and War

By: Richard Bessel

Narrated by: George Wilson

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Richard Bessel, history professor at the University of York, specializes in the social and political history of Nazi Germany. In four compelling essays, he forcefully argues that racism made war inevitable. The Third Reich, led by "a band of political gangsters," came to power with a deep ideological commitment to war and racism. As the driving... Read more

Interstate 69

By: Matt Dellinger

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

New Yorker contributor and decade-long staffer Matt Dellinger uses the controversy surrounding Interstate 69 as a lens through which to examine middle America's current political, social, and economic landscape, including hot-button issues like NAFTA and the country's troubled infrastructure. If completed, I-69 will stretch from Canada to Mexico... Read more

The White and the Gold

By: Thomas B. Costain

Narrated by: Richard Matthews

Length: 16 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the fascinating story of the French regime in Canada. Few periods in the history of North America can equal it for romance and color, drama and suspense, great human courage and far-seeing aspiration. Costain, who writes history in the terms of the people who lived it, wrote of this book: "Almost from the first I found myself caught in... Read more

The Twilight of the Bombs

By: Richard Rhodes

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 13 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age.

The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Rhodes... Read more

Broke, USA

By: Gary Rivlin

Narrated by: Scott Sowers

Length: 12 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Drive By comes a unique and riveting exploration of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing industries—the business of poverty. Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler... Read more

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream

By: Tanya Lee Stone

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 3 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Have you ever heard of the “Mercury 13” women? Did you know that nearly twenty years before the first women were let into NASA’s astronaut program, there were others who tried?What are the requirements for being shot into space, piloting a hunk of metal while carrying the hopes and fears of your nation? Mastery of flying, as well as courage,... Read more

Cardiff

By: Roy Noble

Narrated by: Roy Noble

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Roy Noble takes us back in time to trace the enthralling history of Cardiff from its earliest beginnings as a Roman settlement to its present status as the capital of Wales and Europe's most dynamic and fastest-growing international maritime city. Read more

Discover Your Family History

By: G2 Entertainment

Narrated by: G2 Entertainment

Length: 3 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Were your ancestor’s heroes or villains, masters or slaves, fighters or peace makers? Discover Your Family History gives you the chance to find out by going on a fascinating journey into your very own past. The programme will show you how to dig out the incredible wealth of information kept about your family in millions of lovingly preserved... Read more

Edinburgh

By: Richard Demarco

Narrated by: Richard Demarco

Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Presented by one of the legends of Edinburgh's cultural scene Richard Demarco, Edinburgh Through the Ages takes the listener on an historical and artistic journey around Scotland's great capital city. Starting with the development of the city as a bronze age settlement on the castle rock and on through the dangerous political climate of the 16th... Read more