History audiobooks

On Killing

By: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Narrated by: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed." In World War II, only 15 to 20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles.... Read more

The Moscow Rules

By: Antonio J. Mendez & Jonna Mendez

Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A “devilishly fun” (New York Times Book Review) account of a deadly serious business: the undercover spies and the tactics they developed to survive the Cold War in Moscow, from legendary former-CIA operatives.
Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous... Read more

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister

By: Jung Chang

Narrated by: Catherine Ho

Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history.

Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the 'Father of China', Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao's... Read more

Goddess of Anarchy

By: Jacqueline Jones

Narrated by: Nylsa Smallwood

Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

From a prize-winning historian, a new portrait of an extraordinary activist and the turbulent age in which she lived

Goddess of Anarchy recounts the formidable life of the militant writer, orator, and agitator Lucy Parsons. Born to an enslaved woman in Virginia in 1851 and raised in Texas-where she met her husband, the Haymarket "martyr" Albert... Read more

The Republic of Pirates

By: Colin Woodard

Narrated by: Lewis Grenville

Length: 13 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

The untold story of a heroic band of Caribbean pirates whose defiance of imperial rule inspired revolt in colonial outposts across the worldIn the early eighteenth century, the Pirate Republic was home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, “Black Sam” Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former... Read more

The Soviet Century

By: Karl Schlögel

Narrated by: Ciaran Saward

Length: 29 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

An encyclopedic and richly detailed history of everyday life in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of... Read more

Long Walk to Freedom - Abridged

By: Nelson Mandela

Narrated by: Danny Glover

Length: 6 hours

Abridged: Yes

Read by Danny Glover, with an introduction by Kofi Annan.


Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from... Read more

A Furious Sky

By: Eric Jay Dolin

Narrated by: Bob Souer

Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of... Read more

The Rebel

By: Albert Camus

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 11 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the “essential dimensions” of human nature, manifested in man’s timeless Promethean struggle against the conditions of his existence, as well as the popular uprisings against established... Read more

The Ghost Forest

By: Greg King

Narrated by: Galen Osier

Length: 17 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down.

Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California’s famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the... Read more

The New Silk Roads

By: Peter Frankopan

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

From the bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes an updated, timely, and visionary book about the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.  

"All roads used to lead to Rome. Today they lead to Beijing." So argues Peter Frankopan in this revelatory new book.

In... Read more

The Shortest History of Japan

By: Lesley Downer

Narrated by: Lucy Rayner

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Zen, haiku, martial arts, sushi, anime, manga, film, video games . . . Japanese culture has long enriched our Western way of life. Yet from a Western perspective, Japan remains a remote island country that has long had a complicated relationship with the outside world.



Even at the nearest point, Japan—an archipelago strung like a necklace around... Read more

Lesbian Love Story

By: Amelia Possanza

Narrated by: Amelia Possanza

Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

For readers of Saidiya Hartman and Jeanette Winterson, Lesbian Love Story is an intimate journey into the archives—uncovering the romances and role models written out of history and what their stories can teach us all about how to loveWhen Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer... Read more

A History Of Britain

By: Simon Schama

Narrated by: Timothy West

Length: 7 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

To look back at the past is to understand the present. In this vivid account of over 4,000 years of British history Simon Schama takes us on an epic journey which encompasses the very beginnings of the nation’s identity, when the first settlers landed on Orkney. From the successes and failures of the monarchy to the daily life of a Roman soldier... Read more

Nimitz at War

By: Craig L. Symonds

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 14 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

From America's preeminent naval historian, the first full-length portrait in over fifty years of the man who won the war in the Pacific in World War Two.

Only days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped Chester W. Nimitz to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. Nimitz transformed the devastated and... Read more

Sisters in Resistance

By: Tilar J. Mazzeo

Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

In a tale as twisted as any spy thriller, discover how three women delivered critical evidence of Axis war crimes to Allied forces during World War II: “Mazzeo is a fascinating storyteller” (New York Journal of Books).
 
In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by Italy's Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, had permeated public consciousness. What... Read more

Soul by Soul

By: Walter Johnson

Narrated by: Tom Perkins

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson... Read more

Rogers v. Rogers

By: Alexandra Posadzki

Narrated by: Emily Nixon

Length: 11 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting, deeply reported account that takes us inside the dramatic battle for control of Canada’s largest wireless carrier, and paints a broader picture of the cutthroat telecom industry, the labyrinth of regulatory and political systems that govern it, and the high-stakes corporate games played by the Canadian establishment.

Alexandra... Read more

We Are Home

By: Ray Suarez

Narrated by: Ray Suarez

Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

From a veteran broadcaster and historian comes a richly reported portrait of the newest Americans, immigrants from all over the globe who are living all across the country, filled with their own voices. We are a nation of immigrants, never more than now. In recent decades, the numbers have skyrocketed, thanks to people coming from many... Read more

Generations

By: William Strauss & Neil Howe

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 23 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed by national leaders as politically diverse as former Vice President Al Gore and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Generations has been heralded by reviewers as a brilliant, if somewhat unsettling, reassessment of where America is heading.



William Strauss and Neil Howe posit the history of America as a succession of generational... Read more

Under the Knife

By: Arnold van de Laar

Narrated by: Rich Keeble

Length: 9 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell this engrossing history of surgery through 28 famous operations—from Louis XIV and Einstein to JFK and Houdini.

From the story of the desperate man from seventeenth-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife... Read more

Dawn of Detroit

By: Tiya Miles

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit.



In this richly... Read more

Bobby Kennedy

By: Larry Tye

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 19 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

“A multilayered, inspiring portrait of RFK . . . [the] most in-depth look at an extraordinary figure whose transformational story shaped America.”—Joe Scarborough, The Washington Post

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be a Hulu original series starring Chris Pine. Larry Tye appears on CNN’s American Dynasties: The Kennedys.

“We are in Larry... Read more

Last Train to Paradise

By: Les Standiford

Narrated by: Del Roy

Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

The fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad—one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores.

In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D.... Read more