History audiobooks

Girly Drinks

By: Mallory O'Meara

Narrated by: Mallory O'Meara

Length: 11 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

“At last, the feminist history of booze we’ve been waiting for!” —Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist

From Los Angeles Times bestselling author Mallory O’Meara comes a lively and engrossing feminist history of women drinking through the ages

Strawberry daiquiris. Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in... Read more

Radio Free Afghanistan

By: Saad Mohseni & Jenna Krajeski

Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef

Length: 10 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

From Time 100 honoree Saad Mohseni, the deeply moving and surprising story of the attempt to build a truly independent media company in contemporary Afghanistan. Saad Mohseni, chairman and CEO of Moby Group, Afghanistan’s largest media company, charts a twenty-year effort to bring a free press to his country after years of Taliban rule, and how... Read more

Psychonauts

By: Mike Jay

Narrated by: Rachel Perry

Length: 11 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

A provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind



Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind... Read more

The Hawk and the Dove

By: Nicholas Thompson

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 15 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies for winning—and surviving—that harrowing conflict. Both men came to power during World War II, reached their professional peaks during the Cold War's most frightening moments, and fought epic... Read more

Oneida

By: Ellen Wayland-Smith

Narrated by: Khristine Hvam

Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

In the early nineteenth century, many Americans were looking for an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of the new country. Amid the fervor of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted followers with his fiery... Read more

Bombs Away

By: John Steinbeck

Narrated by: Scott Aiello

Length: 4 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America's great twentieth-century writers

A Penguin Classic

On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath and at the height of the American war effort John Steinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literary figures of his... Read more

The Hundred Years War

By: David Green

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 12 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

The Hundred Years War (1337–1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history. Historian David Green focuses on the ways the war affected different groups, among them... Read more

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

By: Gore Vidal

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

Length: 3 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed then too controversial to publish), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He... Read more

The Vanishing Velázquez

By: Laura Cumming

Narrated by: Siobhan Redmond

Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2016

“As compelling and entertaining as a detective novel” (The Economist), the incredible true story—part art history and part mystery—of a Velázquez portrait that went missing and the obsessed nineteenth-century bookseller determined to prove he had found it.

When John... Read more

Four Points of the Compass

By: Jerry Brotton

Narrated by: Liam Garrigan

Length: 5 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in 12 Maps, this is the revelatory history of the four cardinal directions that have oriented and defined our place on the globe for millennia.

North, south, east, and west: almost all societies use these four cardinal directions to orientate themselves and to understand who... Read more

The Great Transformation

By: Odd Arne Westad & Chen Jian

Narrated by: Feodor Chin

Length: 14 hours

Abridged: No

THE FIRST THOROUGH ACCOUNT OF A FORMATIVE AND LITTLE UNDERSTOOD CHAPTER IN CHINESE HISTORYOdd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. These... Read more

The Iron Cage

By: Rashid Khalidi

Narrated by: Shawn K. Jain

Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

At a time when a lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis seems unattainable, understanding the roots of their conflict is an essential step in restoring hope to the region. In The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi provides a lucid context for the realities on the ground today, a context that has been, until now, notably lacking in our... Read more

Imperial America

By: Gore Vidal

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

Length: 5 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Gore Vidal has been described as the last “noble defender” of the American republic. In Imperial America, Vidal steals the thunder of a right wing America—those who have camouflaged their extremist rhetoric in the Old Glory and the Red, White, and Blue—by demonstrating that those whose protest arbitrary and secret government, those who defend... Read more

The Greatest Fury

By: William C Davis

Narrated by: David H. Lawrence XVII

Length: 18 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

“Davis’s accounts of small fights won by hot blood and cold steel are thrilling.”—The Wall Street Journal

From master historian William C. Davis, the definitive story of the Battle of New Orleans, the fight that decided the ultimate fate not only of the War of 1812 but the future course of the fledgling American republic.

It was a battle that... Read more

The Gilded Page

By: Mary Wellesley

Narrated by: Mary Wellesley

Length: 9 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII.Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status—part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because... Read more

Ten Masterpieces of Music

By: Harvey Sachs

Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni

Length: 11 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes listeners into the heart of ten great works of classical music?works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters?Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert,... Read more

Islam and the West

By: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Narrated by: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Length: 8 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Islam and Christianity share both remarkable similarities and remarkable differences. In the grand scheme, both are relatively recent religions, with Christianity taking hold in Northern Europe at about the same time that Islam took hold in the Persian world (although Christianity appeared on the scene six centuries before Islam). Through the... Read more

Broadcast Hysteria

By: A. Brad Schwartz

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

On October 30, 1938, families across the country were gathered around their radios when their regular programming was interrupted by an announcer delivering news of a meteor strike in New Jersey. With increasing intensity, the announcer read bulletins describing terrifying war  machines moving toward New York City. As the invading force... Read more

Common Sense

By: Thomas Paine

Narrated by: Emma

Length: 2 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Common Sense by Thomas Paine is a powerful and persuasive pamphlet that played a pivotal role in advocating for American independence from British rule. Written in 1776, Paine’s clear and compelling arguments challenged the authority of the British monarchy and promoted the idea of self-governance. His accessible language and logical reasoning... Read more

A Brief History of Albert Einstein

By: Scott Matthews

Narrated by: Daniel Jones

Length: 3 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Are you captivated by the mysteries of the universe and the minds that unravel them? Eager to understand how a single equation transformed our understanding of everything from atoms to galaxies? Wondering how the thoughts of one visionary could redefine the boundaries of space, time, and reality itself?
Dive into the extraordinary life and legacy... Read more

Centrism

By: Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey

Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey & Ian Dunt

Length: 5 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

AN ORIGIN STORY BOOK

'Provides clarity, scholarship, wit and essential insight into why our world is the way it is' Adam Rutherford
'I wish I could make Ian and Dorian's work mandatory' Sathnam Sanghera

A coherent political philosophy or a vacuous cop-out? A pragmatic middle way between the extremes of left and right or a cynical strategy to secure... Read more

The Ancient Eight

By: John Feinstein

Narrated by: John Feinstein

Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

From an award-winning, bestselling author, a year inside Ivy League Football, unveiling the heart and soul of college football’s oldest teams as they compete amidst a rapidly changing collegiate sports world. 

The history of the Ivy League dates back to 1869 when Princeton played the first college football game against Rutgers. The Ancient Eight... Read more

Elements of the Philosophy of Right

By: Georg Wilhelm Hegel

Narrated by: Jonathan Booth

Length: 14 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Elements of The Philosophy of Right, a key work in the output of Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831), appeared in 1820 - and was arguably his last major publication. His intention was to state his views on the philosophy of law, political and social theory and ethics. Appearing as it did in a crucial time for the Prussian state - still affected by... Read more

Our Brave Foremothers

By: Rozella Kennedy

Narrated by: Deanna Anthony

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Inspired by her own foremothers’ legacies and the friendships formed throughout her life, Rozella Kennedy centers and celebrates the stories of 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women—both famous and little-known—who changed the course of US history.
 
In the beautiful pages of Our Brave Foremothers, discover an intergenerational,... Read more