History audiobooks

For All the Tea in China

By: Sarah Rose

Narrated by: Sarah Rose

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China—territory forbidden to foreigners—to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China... Read more

The Pacific

By: Hugh Ambrose

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 23 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling official companion book to the Emmy® Award-winning HBO® miniseries.

Look for The Pacific miniseries, now available to stream on Netflix!

Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August of 1945, five men connected... Read more

Christianity

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 46 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Reformation returns with the definitive history of Christianity for our time

Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be heard-a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is... Read more

The Twilight Zone Companion, Second Edition

By: Marc Scott Zicree

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

The Twilight Zone Companion is the complete, five season (1959-64) show-by-show guide to one of television's greatest series. Zicree's well-written account is fascinating reading for even the casual fan. Coverage of each episode includes plot synopsis, Rod Serling's opening narration, behind-the-scenes stories from the original artists who... Read more

The Watchers

By: Shane Harris

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

Length: 15 hours

Abridged: No

Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers.... Read more

Courting Disaster

By: Marc A. Thiessen

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Length: 12 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Marc Thiessen knows more than almost anyone outside the CIA about what went on at CIA “black sites” and at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al-Qaeda terrorists. He has since spent... Read more

NPR Classic Driveway Moments

By: NPR

Length: 2 hours

Abridged: No

Presented together for the first time, here are the very first, and very best, definitive listener favorites that came to be known as Driveway Moments: the classic, spellbinding stories that keep getting better with repeated listening, selected from the National Public Radio archives. These tales were first heard on Morning Edition, All Things... Read more

Mrs. Adams in Winter

By: Michael O'Brien

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 12 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Early in 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son left St. Petersburg in a heavy Russian carriage and set out on a difficult journey to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. She traveled through the snows of eastern Europe, down the Baltic coast to Prussia, across the battlefields of Germany, and into a France that was then... Read more

A Country of Vast Designs

By: Robert W. Merry

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 18 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of... Read more

The Zimmermann Telegram

By: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 7 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

In the dark winter of 1917, World War I was deadlocked. For Europe to be saved, the United States had to join the war—but President Wilson remained unshakable in his neutrality. Then, with a single stroke, the tool to propel America into the war came into a quiet British office. One of countless messages intercepted by the crack team of British... Read more

Citizens of London

By: Lynne Olson

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 17 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

In Citizens of London, Lynne Olson has written a work of World War II history even more relevant and revealing than her acclaimed Troublesome Young Men. Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow,... Read more

Voodoo Histories

By: David Aaronovitch

Narrated by: James Langton

Length: 14 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism we live in, the role of conspiracy is a serious one—one that can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence.

For award-winning journalist David Aaronovitch, there came... Read more

The History of the Medieval World

By: Susan Wise Bauer

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 22 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.



In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of... Read more

The Poisoner's Handbook

By: Deborah Blum

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their... Read more

The Man Who Ate His Boots

By: Anthony Brandt

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of nineteenth-century British exploration.

After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled... Read more

Whirlwind

By: Barrett Tillman

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Whirlwind is the only book to examine in depth the human drama behind the most important bombing campaign in history. While the air war against Nazi Germany has been covered in-depth by many books, Barrett Tillman, a renowned authority on military aircraft and the air war in the Pacific, is the first to tackle the air war against Japan.



For... Read more

Islands of the Damned

By: R. V. Burgin & William Marvel

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

This is an eyewitness—and eye-opening—account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R. V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty and, with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic,... Read more

Circle of Greed

By: Patrick Dillon

Narrated by: Erik Davies

Length: 20 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Circle of Greed is the epic story of the rise and fall of Bill Lerach, once the leading class action lawyer in America and now a convicted felon.  For more than two decades, Lerach threatened, shook down and sued top Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Apple, Time Warner, and—most famously—Enron.  Now, the man who brought corporate moguls... Read more

Brian Johnston Down Your Way: Favourite People And Places Vol. 1

By: Brian Johnston

Narrated by: Brian Johnston & Guests

Length: 1 hour 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Down Your Way was one of the most popular programmes on radio and spanned six decades. Every week the presenter would visit towns and villages throughout the UK, discovering fascinating people and places. Brian Johnston presented the series for fifteen years and 733 programmes. For this recording, his son Barry has selected the most eccentric,... Read more

Helmet for My Pillow

By: Robert Leckie

Narrated by: John Allen Nelson

Length: 10 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow, we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging... Read more

The Tudors

By: G. J. Meyer

Narrated by: Robin Sachs

Length: 24 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • For the first time in decades comes a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country.

“A thoroughly readable and often compelling narrative . . . Five centuries have not diminished the appetite for all things Tudor.”—Associated Press

In 1485, young Henry... Read more

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War

By: Phillip Jennings

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 6 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Think the United States lost the Vietnam War? Think again.No war in American history is so shrouded in obfuscation and myth as the Vietnam War. "Vietnam" has entered into our national memory as a byword for disaster, usually accompanied by the word "quagmire," and the specter of the war has haunted our foreign policy discussions ever since.... Read more

The Remains of Company D

By: James Carl Nelson

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 13 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Haunted by an ancestor’s tale of near death on a distant battlefield, James Carl Nelson set out in pursuit of the scraps of memory of his grandfather’s small infantry unit. Years of travel across the world led to the retrieval of unpublished personal papers, obscure memoirs, and communications from numerous doughboys, as well as original... Read more

Shock of Gray

By: Ted Fishman

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 16 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times best-selling author Ted C. Fishman reveals the stunning challenges of a world awash with seasoned citizens. By 2030, those over 50 will outnumber people under 17 for the first time in history. Fishman explores the resulting impact on families, businesses, nations, and medical care. Read more