History audiobooks

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

By: James Boswell & Samuel Johnson

Narrated by: Alexander Spencer & Patrick Tull

Length: 4 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1773, an unlikely pair-a dominant figure of English literature and a young lawyer-set out on horseback to follow roads and cattle-trails across the Highlands to the Western Islands of Scotland. Their conversation and accounts are filled with curious detail, flashing wit and fascinating encounters with the high and low of the country. Read more

The Glory of Their Times

By: Lawrence S. Ritter

Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

"Oh, the game was very different in my day from what it's like today. I don't mean just that the fences were further back and the ball was deader and things like that. I mean it was more fun to play ball then." - Davy Jones

First published in 1966, The Glory of Their Times is a universally hailed classic. A loving look back at the way baseball... Read more

The Day Freedom Died

By: Charles Lane

Narrated by: Jim Bond

Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats. In The Day Freedom Died,... Read more

Pictures at a Revolution

By: Mark Harris

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 17 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967—Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde—and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever.



It's the mid-1960s, and westerns,... Read more

Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s

By: Charles A. Cerami

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 7 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Soon after the new Constitution took effect and George Washington became president, the United States was in serious danger of disaster. A bitter political rivalry between two men who had once been allies and two surging issues that inflamed the nation led to grim talk of breaking up the fledgling republic. Then, a single great evening—arguably... Read more

A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin

By: David Adler

Narrated by: Patrick Collins

Length: 10 minutes

Abridged: No

."This read-along shows how Ben Franklin, one of 17 children in a poor family in Colonial Massachusetts, became one of our greatest statesmen and inventors. This straightforward biography is embellished with soft background music and sound effects that are picked up from the details in the lively, quaint illustrations in the accompanying... Read more

Inventing A Nation

By: Gore Vidal

Narrated by: Paul Hecht & Gore Vidal

Length: 5 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Gore Vidal, one of the master stylists of American literature and an acute observer of American life and history, turns his literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the formidable trio of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In "Inventing a Nation", Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and... Read more

Insurgent Mexico

By: John Reed

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 7 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1913, at the height of the Mexican Revolution, magazine correspondent John Reed headed South to cover the story of the year. His travels with a group of rebels that included the legendary Pancho Villa earned him everlasting fame as a reporter and left behind a series of unmatched portraits of a people, a place and a time. Read more

Inventing Japan

By: Ian Buruma

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 6 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

LA Times Book Award winner and expert on the past and present Japan, Ian Buruma examines the transformation of a country. Following Japan's history from its opening to the West in 1853 to its hosting of the 1964 Olympics, Buruma focuses on how figures such as Commodore Matthew Perry, Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Mitsushito helped shape this... Read more

The Lost Ark of The Covenant

By: Tudor Parfitt

Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm

Length: 10 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

The Lost Ark of the Covenant is the real-life account of Professor Tudor Parfitt's effort to recover the revered artifact that contained the Ten Commandments sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This holy object disappeared from the Temple in Jerusalem when the Babylonians invaded in 586 BCE and was lost—apparently forever.With... Read more

Faith of My Fathers - Abridged

By: John McCain & Mark Salter

Narrated by: John McCain

Length: 4 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: Yes

John McCain is one of the most admired leaders in the United States government, but his deeply felt memoir of family and war is not a political one and ends before his election to Congress. With candor and ennobling power, McCain tells a story that, in the words of Newsweek, "makes the other presidential candidates look like pygmies."... Read more

I've Got a Home in Glory Land

By: Karolyn Smardz Frost

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

Length: 14 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Acclaimed archeologist and historian Karolyn Smardz Frost painstakingly resurrects Thornton and Lucie Blackburn's perilous 1830s journey from Kentucky slavery to Canadian freedom. "Exhaustively researched and poignantly told," this compelling story "pulsates with the breathtaking urgency of a thriller" (Boston Globe). ". [an] engrossing look at... Read more

Hitler and the Holocaust

By: Robert S. Wistrich

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 9 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

For over 50 years scholars and philosophers alike have attempted to make some sense of the Third Reich and its "Final Solution" campaign. Historian Robert Wistrich takes listeners on a guided tour through the death camps and meticulously details the events that led to this horrific tragedy and the lasting repercussions it had on the world... Read more

Froissart's Chronicles—Excerpts

By: Jean Froissart

Narrated by: John Horton

Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Jean Froissart (1337-1410) was the world's first great war correspondent, covering the great age of the Hundred Years War. His Chronicles deliver a contemporary perspective on the latest Medieval news-from the crowning of Edward III to the downfall of Richard II-made all the richer by Froissart's clear enthusiasm as he files his reports from the... Read more

The Faith

By: Charles W. Colson & Harold Fickett III

Narrated by: Charles W. Colson

Length: 6 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Rightly understood and rightly communicated, the Christian faith is one of great joy. It is an invitation to God's kingdom, where tears are replaced by laughter and longing hearts find their purpose and their home.This is the heart of the gospel: God's search to reclaim us and love us as his own. But have we truly grasped this? Those of us who... Read more

Charlatan

By: Pope Brock

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

Length: 8 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

The rise and fall of the greatest medical con man of all time.



This is the enormously entertaining story of how a fraudulent surgeon made a fortune by inserting goats' testes into impotent American men. "Doctor" John Brinkley became a world renowned authority on sexual rejuvenation in the 1920s, with famous politicians and even royalty asking for... Read more

President Lincoln

By: William Lee Miller

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 19 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

The American president has come to be the most powerful figure in the world—and back in the nineteenth century, a great man held that office. William Lee Miller's new book closely examines that great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president.



Wars waged by American presidents have come to be pivotal historical events. Here... Read more

A Short History of Medicine

By: F. Gonzalez-Crussi

Narrated by: John McDonough

Length: 9 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Praised for his erudite writing, renowned scientist Frank GonzAlez-Crussi penned this concise history of medicine, beginning with the most primitive healthcare practices and ending with the technology of modern medicine that we enjoy today. As with all Modern Library Chronicles, A Short History of Medicine is a wonderful primer for anyone... Read more

Fidel Castro: My Life

By: Fidel Castro & Ignacio Ramonet

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor & Todd McLaren

Length: 26 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

For decades, people have tried to persuade the leader of the Cuban Revolution to tell his own life story. Ignacio Ramonet, the celebrated editor in chief of Le Monde diplomatique, has finally succeeded. For the first time, in a series of extensive and probing interviews, Fidel Castro describes his life from the 1950s to the present day. In frank... Read more

The Secret History of the World

By: Mark Booth

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 15 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

They say that history is written by the victors. But what if history—or what we have come to know as history—has all along been written by the wrong people? What if everything we've been told is only part of the story? What if it's the wrong part?



In this groundbreaking new work, Mark Booth embarks on an enthralling intellectual tour of our... Read more

Twilight at Monticello

By: Alan Pell Crawford

Narrated by: James Boles

Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama—one of the greatest—played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths. But Twilight at Monticello is something entirely new: an... Read more

Upstream

By: Alfred S. Regnery

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 16 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In the 1950s, a handful of intellectuals, supported by several wealthy businessmen and a few editorial writers, set the stage in their writings and other efforts for what has become the most vibrant political and cultural force of our time. Veteran conservative publisher Alfred Regnery writes an insider’s account of the American conservative... Read more

What the Gospels Meant

By: Garry Wills

Narrated by: Garry Wills

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

“A remarkable achievement—a learned yet eminently readable and provocative exploration of the four small books that reveal most of what’s known about the life and death of Jesus.” (Los Angeles Times)

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.
 
In his New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant and What... Read more

Hörportrait: Rainer Maria Rilke - Abridged

By: Sven Görtz

Narrated by: Sven Görtz

Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Wenn das eigene Leben Themen, Motive und Bilder für das schriftstellerische Werk vorgibt, dann kommt man an der Biographie von Rainer Maria Rilke, Lieblingslyriker der Deutschen, nicht vorbei: Die Kindheit in Mädchenkleidern, die jäh beendet wird durch den Besuch der Militärrealschule, seine - milde ausgedrückt - unkonventionellen Beziehungen zu... Read more