History audiobooks

The Last Tycoons - Abridged

By: William Cohan

Narrated by: David Aaron Baker

Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank

Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its... Read more

Barbarians at the Gate - Abridged

By: Bryan Burrough & John Helyar

Narrated by: Bryan Burrough & John Helyar

Length: 3 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“One of the finest, most compelling accounts of what happened to corporate America and Wall Street in the 1980’s.” —New York Times Book Review
A #1 New York Times bestseller and arguably the best business narrative ever written, Barbarians at the Gate is the classic account of the fall of RJR Nabisco. An enduring masterpiece of investigative... Read more

The 48 Laws of Power - Abridged

By: Robert Greene

Narrated by: Don Leslie

Length: 9 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Cunning, instructive, and amoral, this controversial bestseller distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. Law 1: Never Outshine the Master. Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions. Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit. Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally. Law 33: Discover Each Man's... Read more

Not a Good Day to Die

By: Sean Naylor

Narrated by: John Henry Cox

Length: 19 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

At dawn on March 2, 2002, America's first major battle of the twenty-first century began. Over two hundred soldiers of the 101st Airborne and Tenth Mountain Division flew into Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot valley—and into the mouth of a buzz saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, high-level miscalculations that underestimated the... Read more

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

By: David Quammen

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 7 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that natural selection among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific basis of that time constitute a... Read more

Leap of Faith

By: Noor al-Hussein

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 16 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Leap of Faith is the dramatic and inspiring story of an American woman’s remarkable journey into the heart of a man and his nation.Born into a distinguished Arab-American family and raised amid privilege, Lisa Halaby joined the first freshman class at Princeton to accept women, graduating in 1974 with a degree in architecture and urban planning.... Read more

The Book on Bush

By: Eric Alterman & Mark Green

Narrated by: Nick Sullivan

Length: 19 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Not since Richard Nixon's heyday has there been a more controversial president capable of polarizing public opinion than George W. Bush. From his arrival in office through what many still regard as one of the most flagrant miscarriages of electoral justice in modern history to the long road to Iraq, liberals have vilified Bush as ardently as... Read more

Darwin's Origin of Species

By: Janet Browne

Narrated by: Josephine Bailey

Length: 4 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, award-winning biographer Janet Browne delves into... Read more

A Long Way Gone

By: Ishmael Beah

Narrated by: Ishmael Beah

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is how wars are... Read more

Jerusalem 1913

By: Amy Dockser Marcus

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 6 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Searching for the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, historians for years focused on the British Mandate period (1920-1948). Amy Dockser Marcus, however, demonstrates that the bloody struggle for power actually started much earlier, when Jerusalem was still part of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism laid the... Read more

On Call in Hell

By: Thomas Hayden & Richard Jadick

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting memoir from the Navy doctor praised as "Hero, M.D." on the cover of Newsweek.



Cdr. Richard Jadick's story is one of the most extraordinary to come out of the war in Iraq. At thirty-eight, the last place the Navy doctor was expected to be was on the front lines. He was too old to be called up, but not too old to volunteer. In November... Read more

Three Empires on the Nile

By: Dominic Green

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 13 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

A secular regime is toppled by Western intervention, but an Islamic backlash turns the liberators into occupiers. Caught between interventionists at home and fundamentalists abroad, a prime minister flounders as his ministers betray him, alliances fall apart, and a runaway general makes policy in the field. As the media accuse Western soldiers... Read more

No Retreat, No Surrender - Abridged

By: Tom DeLay & Stephen Mansfield

Narrated by: Tom DeLay

Length: 4 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A candid memoir of one of the most effective, controversial figures in modern politics. Read more

Religious Literacy

By: Stephen Prothero

Narrated by: Stephen Prothero

Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

What's Your Religious Literacy IQ? Quick—can you: Name the four Gospels? Name a sacred text of Hinduism? Name the holy book of Islam? Name the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament?Name the Ten Commandments? Name the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism? If you can't, you're not alone. We are a religiously illiterate... Read more

Planet India

By: Mira Kamdar

Narrated by: Shelly Frasier

Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

A Lively, indispensable, cutting-edge exploration of our stake in India's gambit to transform itself from a developing country into a global powerhouse in record time.

India is everywhere—Indian studios produce animated features and special effects for Hollywood movies; Indian software manages our health records; and Indian customer service... Read more

Too Far From Home

By: Chris Jones

Narrated by: Erik Davies

Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

An incredible true-life adventure set on the most dangerous frontier of all–outer space

For a special breed of individual, the call of space is worth the risk it entails: men such as U.S. astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, who in November 2002 left on what was to be a routine fourteen-week... Read more

Reading Judas

By: Elaine Pagels & Karen L. King

Narrated by: Karen L. King

Length: 3 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

The instant New York Times bestseller interpreting the controversial long-lost gospel

The recently unearthed Gospel of Judas is a source of fascination for biblical scholars and lay Christians alike. Now two leading experts on the Gnostic gospels tackle the important questions posed by its discovery, including: How could any Christian imagine... Read more

Too Far From Home - Abridged

By: Chris Jones

Narrated by: Erik Davies

Length: 6 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: Yes

An incredible, true-life adventure set on the most dangerous frontier of all—outer spaceIn the nearly forty years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, space travel has come to be seen as a routine enterprise—at least until the shuttle Columbia disintegrated like the Challenger before it, reminding us, once again, that the dangers are all too... Read more

Buried in the Bitter Waters

By: Elliot Jaspin

Narrated by: Don Leslie

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Jaspin exposes a shocking history of racial cleansing in the United States, and one that, alarmingly, continues to affect the geography of race in America to this day. Read more

A World Lit Only by Fire

By: William Manchester

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 11 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

The preeminent popular history of civilization’s rebirth after the Dark AgesFrom tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William... Read more

The Jesus Family Tomb

By: Simcha Jacobovici & Charles Pellegrino

Narrated by: Michael Ciulla

Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The Jesus Family Tomb tells the story of what may be the greatest archaeological find of all time—the discovery of the family tomb of Jesus of NazarethThe Jesus Family Tomb includes: A gripping real-life detective story that combines history, archaeology and cutting-edge science, and reveals the truth behind 2,000 years of mystery Scientific... Read more

The Qur'an

By: Bruce Lawrence

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 5 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Few books in history have been as important or as poorly understood as the Qur'an. Sent down in a series of revelations to the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur'an is the unmediated word of Allah: a ritual, political, and legal authority, an ethical and spiritual guide, and a literary masterpiece. It is revered by Muslims throughout the world, in whom... Read more

Lincoln's Letters and Lincoln's Prose

By: Abraham Lincoln

Narrated by: George Vail

Length: 5 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Lincoln comes alive through the reading of his speeches,essays and other writings, including "The Gettysburg Address" and "The Second Inaugural Address".

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Neither parent could read or write. His mother died in 1818 and his father remarried the... Read more

The Supreme Court

By: Jeffrey Rosen

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Length: 8 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives.



The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and... Read more