History audiobooks

Lewis & Clark - Abridged

By: Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns

Narrated by: Ken Burns & Adam Arkin

Length: 3 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film, with more than 150 illustrations, most in full color.

In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President oThomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana... Read more

The Bin Ladens - Abridged

By: Steve Coll

Narrated by: Erik Singer

Length: 10 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap

"Riveting . . . The most psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind yet." - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

In The Bin Ladens, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll continues where Ghost Wars left off, shedding new light on one... Read more

April 4, 1968

By: Michael Eric Dyson

Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson

Length: 6 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., the prophet for racial and economic justice in America, was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a Memphis hotel. Only hours earlier, he had ended his final public speech with the words, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised... Read more

A Picture Book of George Washington Carver

By: David Adler

Narrated by: Nathan Hinton

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

With an emphasis on his early life and the hardships he overcame, this informative biography offers a clear, authentic introduction to one of the country's most important scientists. Read more

Worlds at War

By: Anthony Pagden

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 20 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

In the tradition of Jared Diamond and Jacques Barzun, prize-winning historian Anthony Pagden presents a sweeping history of the long struggle between East and West, from the Greeks to the present day.



The relationship between East and West has always been one of turmoil. In this historical tour de force, a renowned historian leads us from the... Read more

The Much Too Promised Land

By: Aaron David Miller

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 13 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played a central role in US efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace. His position as an advisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisors has given him a unique perspective on a problem that American leaders have wrestled with for more than half a century: Why has the world’s... Read more

American-Made

By: Nick Taylor

Narrated by: James Boles

Length: 20 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, a staggering 13 million American workers were jobless and many millions more of their family members were equally in need. Desperation ruled the land.



What people wanted were jobs, not handouts—the pride of... Read more

Panama Fever

By: Matthew Parker

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 17 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

The building of the Panama Canal was one of the greatest engineering feats in human history. A tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicine, Panama Fever charts the challenges that marked the long, labyrinthine road to the building of the canal. Drawing on a wealth of new materials and sources, Matthew Parker brings to life the... Read more

Retribution

By: Max Hastings

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 27 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.

By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to... Read more

General Lee’s Army

By: Joseph T. Glatthaar

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 25 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

This sweeping history of the Civil War and the Confederacy is told through the lens of its most crucial army, the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Robert E. Lee. General Lee’s Army takes listeners across the Rebel landscape, from campfires to battlefields to their homes, as it portrays a world of life, death, healing, and hardship.... Read more

The Translator

By: Daoud Hari

Narrated by: Mirron Willis

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me.

The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.

The... Read more

Vienna 1814

By: David King

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 14 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The Napoleonic Wars had torn Europe apart, and the peace conference of 1814 was to be held in the continent's grandest city: Vienna. Everyone had an agenda in the postwar world, and spy networks, bitter hatreds, illicit affairs, and tangled alliances ensued.



Despite the gravity of the situation, the Hapsburg Emperor of Austria, in opening his... Read more

The End of America

By: Naomi Wolf

Narrated by: Karen White

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The Founding Fathers believed that the proper goal of the State was to make men and women free to develop their faculties and to pursue virtue and wisdom. Our Constitution was built around these principles, protecting civil liberties and developing a careful system of checks and balances that protected our freedom from tyranny.



Naomi Wolf's... Read more

Red Land, Black Land

By: Barbara Mertz

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Length: 14 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Esteemed Egyptologist Barbara Mertz updates her widely praised social history of the people of ancient Egypt, which was originally published in 1968. Combining impeccable scholarship with a delightfully personal style, the author reconstructs the life of the Egyptians from birth to death, and beyond death, too. She also presents much fascinating... Read more

Dreams and Shadows

By: Robin Wright

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 17 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Robin Wright first landed in the Middle East on October 6, 1973, the day the fourth Middle East war erupted. She has covered every country and most major crises in the region since then, through to the rise of al Qaeda and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For all the drama of the past, however, the region's most decisive traumas are unfolding today as... Read more

The Lodger Shakespeare

By: Charles Nicholl

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 9 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Acclaimed author Charles Nicholl presents a brilliantly drawn detective story with entirely new insights into Shakespeare's life.

In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster; it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routine—a dispute over an unpaid marriage dowry—but it... Read more

This Republic of Suffering

By: Drew Galpin Faust

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

During the Civil War, 620,000 soldiers lost their lives—equivalent to six million in today's population. This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of the enormous death toll from material, political, intellectual, and spiritual angles.Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives, but the life of the nation,... Read more

Eleanor Roosevelt

By: Russell Freedman

Narrated by: Barbara Caruso

Length: 3 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Almost anything scares young Eleanor: mice, the dark, and a host of imaginary dangers. But she learns to hide her feelings-her father disapproves of fear, and she longs only to please him. She knows she will always disappoint her beautiful, socialite mother, because Eleanor is painfully shy and plain. As a young debutante in Manhattan, she... Read more

The Purpose of the Past

By: Gordon S. Wood

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

History is to society what memory is to the individual—without it, we don’t know who we are and we can’t make wise decisions about our future. But while the nature of memory is constant, the nature of history has changed radically over the past forty years.In The Purpose of the Past, historian Gordon S. Wood examines this sea change in his field... Read more

Founding Faith

By: Steven Waldman

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 9 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the... Read more

The Republic: Book VII

By: Plato

Narrated by: Adrian Cronauer

Length: 4 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

"Behold! Human beings living in an underground den. Like ourselves, they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave." With that statement, Plato - one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind - introduces one of his of most important philosophical constructs: the... Read more

The Rough Riders

By: Theodore Roosevelt

Narrated by: John Randolph Jones

Length: 5 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

When the Spanish government declared war against the United States in 1898, Theodore Roosevelt resigned his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to take his place as lieutenant colonel of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. His involvement with this unit, nicknamed The Rough Riders, established "Teddy" as a household name. The Rough Riders is... Read more

Ten Days that Shook the World

By: John Reed

Narrated by: Jack Hrkach

Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

This eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution by John Reed, an American who observed the Bolshevik upheaval firsthand, is an unparalleled modern classic. Reed recreates the swift, tumultuous events of November 1917, including the capture of the Winter Palace, the emergence of Lenin's political genius, and the carnage at the Kremlin wall.... Read more

Stealing God's Thunder

By: Philip Dray

Narrated by: David Chandler

Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Award-winning author Philip Dray delves into the lesser-known side of an American icon in Stealing God's Thunder. Benjamin Franklin, more often viewed as a statesman and founding father than as a man of science, challenged religion, science, and reason with his inventions. But in a time when everything was blamed on sin, it was the lightning... Read more