History audiobooks

Operation Paperclip

By: Annie Jacobsen

Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen

Length: 19 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs (The Boston Globe), from the New York Times bestselling author of Area 51. In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis'... Read more

Clanlands

By: Sam Heughan & Graham McTavish

Narrated by: Diana Gabaldon, Graham McTavish & Sam Heughan

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the Audie Award 2022 for Best History/Biography Audiobook. Earphones Award Winner 2021.

A road trip book with a difference. Stars of Outlander - Sam Heughan & Graham McTavish - explore Scotland, a land of raw beauty, poetry, feuding, music, history, and warfare.

Narrated by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish, with a foreword written and... Read more

The Cruelty Is the Point

By: Adam Serwer

Narrated by: Adam Serwer

Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From an award-winning journalist at The Atlantic, these searing essays make a powerful case that “real hope lies not in a sunny nostalgia for American greatness but in seeing this history plain—in all of its brutality, unadorned by euphemism” (The New York Times).

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “No... Read more

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

By: James H. Cone

Narrated by: Leon Nixon

Length: 6 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Read more

Code Name: Pale Horse

By: Scott Payne

Narrated by: Scott Payne

Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

The thrilling true story of one man who risked his life to infiltrate the most dangerous neo-Nazi group in the United States, an “urgent and exciting look into the life of an FBI undercover agent” (Joe Pistone) by “one of the top undercover agents in the Bureau” (Joaquin “Jack” Garcia).

When Scott Payne was growing up, an ‘80s kid with a big... Read more

Fifth Sun

By: Camilla Townsend

Narrated by: Christina Delaine

Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story—and the story of what happened afterwards—has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the... Read more

How to Stop Fascism

By: Paul Mason

Narrated by: Paul Mason

Length: 11 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Brought to you by Penguin.

The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again - and we need to find a better way to fight it.

In How to Stop Fascism, Paul Mason offers a radical,... Read more

Off The Map

By: Meriwether Lewis

Narrated by: Pat Grimes

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Lewis and Clark's famous 1804 expedition was told with great detail by the explorers themselves in an eight-volume account. Now young historians have the opportunity to learn the thrills, challenges, and adventures in a version accessible for them. Two years' worth of entries are condensed into a flowing account that maintains the historical... Read more

Work Won't Love You Back

By: Sarah Jaffe

Narrated by: Sarah Jaffe

Length: 12 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.

You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor... Read more

A Place of Our Own

By: June Thomas

Narrated by: June Thomas

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

A deeply researched and highly readable cultural history of queer women’s lives in the second half of the twentieth century, told through six iconic spaces. For as long as queer women have existed, they’ve created gathering grounds where they can be themselves. From the intimate darkness of the lesbian bar to the sweaty camaraderie of the... Read more

The Stonewall Reader

By: New York Public Library

Narrated by: Various

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

"...a remarkable audio experience that emphasizes the revolutionary power of LGBTQ voices and provides an invaluable record of a community that refuses to be silenced." -AudioFile magazine Earphones Award winner

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and... Read more

Spell Freedom

By: Elaine Weiss

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 15 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The acclaimed author of the “stirring, definitive, and engrossing” (NPR) The Woman’s Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.


In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural... Read more

Enemy Child

By: Andrea Warren

Narrated by: Caroline McLaughlin

Length: 3 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

One by one, things that Norm and his Japanese American family took for granted are taken away. In a matter of months they, along with everyone else of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, are forced by the government to move to internment camps, leaving everything they have known behind. At the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming,... Read more

John Lewis

By: David Greenberg

Narrated by: David Sadzin

Length: 24 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times Book Review Top 100 Books of 2024

Explore the “comprehensive and compelling” (Jon Meacham) biography of civil rights leader John Lewis, celebrated as “the conscience of Congress,” through a narrative that weaves together exclusive interviews, never-before-seen FBI files, and documents, offering profound insights into his... Read more

The Half Has Never Been Told

By: Edward E Baptist

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 19 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman PrizeA groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved peopleAmericans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but... Read more

Meditations

By: Marcus Aurelius

Narrated by: Richard Armitage

Length: 6 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Richard Armitage, star of Peter Jackson'sThe Hobbit trilogy and also known for his roles in Ocean's 8 and Spooks. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Diskin Clay.

Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations has become a key... Read more

American Sirens

By: Kevin Hazzard

Narrated by: Gilbert Glenn Brown

Length: 9 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

The extraordinary story of an unjustly forgotten group of Black men in Pittsburgh who became the first paramedics in America, saving lives and changing the course of emergency medicine around the world
 
Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local... Read more

Cooked

By: Michael Pollan

Narrated by: Michael Pollan

Length: 13 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules, and How to Change Your Mind, explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen in Cooked. 

Cooked is now a Netflix docuseries based on the book that focuses on the four kinds of "transformations" that occur in cooking. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker... Read more

Band of Brothers

By: Stephen E. Ambrose

Narrated by: Tim Jerome

Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

Stephen E. Ambrose’s classic New York Times bestseller and inspiration for the acclaimed HBO series about Easy Company, the ordinary men who became the World War II’s most extraordinary soldiers at the frontlines of the war's most critical moments. Featuring a foreword from Tom Hanks.

They came together, citizen soldiers, in the summer of 1942,... Read more

Patrick

By: The Voice of the Martyrs

Narrated by: Lance Smith

Length: 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Go beyond the St. Patrick’s Day symbols of shamrocks and leprechauns and hear the story of a man determined to share the message of salvation with the people who had made him a slave. When Patrick was a young boy, pirates invaded his home and made him a slave on the island known today as Ireland. While there, he recalled the Bible stories that... Read more

Stephen

By: The Voice of the Martyrs

Narrated by: Lance Smith

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

He defended the faith and became Christianity’s first martyr. Stephen lived a life full of faith, performing miracles, boldly telling others about Jesus and even serving with others to help widows in their time of need. Then, his courageous witness was silenced. However, the gospel could not be stopped, as his martyrdom caused the gospel to be... Read more

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

By: Edmund Morris

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 26 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt ... Read more

The Blazing World

By: Jonathan Healey

Narrated by: Oliver Hembrough

Length: 19 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

AN ECONOMIST AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A fresh, exciting, “readable and informative” history (The New York Times) of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world. • “Recapture[s] a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible.”—Adam... Read more

Nicholas

By: The Voice of the Martyrs

Narrated by: Lance Smith

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Look behind the legends and tales of Santa Claus to learn the true story of a steadfast, godly man who refused t deny Christ and then suffered for His sake. When Nicholas was a young boy, both of his parents died and he used his inheritance to help others. As a grown man, he became a leader in the church. He was later imprisoned under the Roman... Read more