History audiobooks

Fearless Speech

By: Mary Anne Franks

Narrated by: Soneela Nankani & Mary Anne Franks

Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful debunking of First Amendment orthodoxy that critiques "reckless speech," which endangers vulnerable groups, and elevates "fearless speech," which seeks to advance equality and democracy.

Freedom of speech has never been more important—or more controversial. From debates about what's permissible on social media, to the politics of... Read more

Bad Mexicans

By: Kelly Lytle Hernández

Narrated by: Joana Garcia

Length: 13 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Bad Mexicans tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and... Read more

Lords of Finance

By: Liaquat Ahamed

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 18 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for... Read more

Bloodlands

By: Timothy Snyder

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 19 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century.

Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed... Read more

Black against Empire

By: Joshua Bloom & Waldo E. Martin, Jr.

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 18 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the U.S., the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S.... Read more

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

By: Donald J. Robertson

Narrated by: Donald J. Robertson

Length: 8 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

"This book is a wonderful introduction to one of history's greatest figures: Marcus Aurelius. His life and this book are a clear guide for those facing adversity, seeking tranquility and pursuing excellence." — Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way and The Daily Stoic

The life-changing principles of Stoicism taught through... Read more

Shakespeare

By: Bill Bryson

Narrated by: Bill Bryson

Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Shakespeare: The Illustrated Edition is an exquisitely illustrated, updated edition of Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare that takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship. With more than 100 color and black-and-white illustrations throughout, and... Read more

Dark Laboratory

By: Tao Leigh Goffe

Narrated by: Tao Leigh Goffe

Length: 12 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking investigation of the Caribbean as both an idyll in the American imagination and a dark laboratory of Western experimentation, revealing secrets to racial and environmental progress that impact how we live today.

“Dark Laboratory is a gargantuan, soulful work. It obliterates most of what I thought I knew about the Caribbean’s... Read more

I Am Nobody's Slave

By: Lee Hawkins

Narrated by: Lee Hawkins

Length: 14 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

A 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Wall Street Journal writer exhaustively examines his family’s legacy of post-enslavement trauma and resilience, in this riveting memoir—a soulful, shocking, and spellbinding read that blends the raw power of Natasha Tretheway’s Memorial Drive and the insights of Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed. I Am... Read more

Three Women

By: Lisa Taddeo

Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari & L...

Length: 11 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

NOW A SERIES ON STARZ STARRING SHAILENE WOODLEY * BETTY GILPIN * DeWANDA WISE * GABRIELLE CREEVY * with BLAIR UNDERWOOD

“Staggeringly intimate...Groundbreaking.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A breathtaking and important book.” —Cheryl Strayed
“Extraordinary...A nonfiction literary masterpiece.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

#1 New York Times Bestseller and a... Read more

The Cycle

By: Shalene Gupta

Narrated by: Shalene Gupta

Length: 6 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking exploration of a debilitating disorder that’s underdiagnosed and misunderstood.

Most days, Shalene Gupta was the person she’d always aspired to be. She was hardworking, excelled at work, and had a long-term boyfriend who she desperately loved.

Then, every month like clockwork, it all came crashing down in fits of rage and... Read more

The Scottish Clearances

By: T.M. Devine

Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart

Length: 13 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Eighteenth-century Scotland is famed for generating many of the enlightened ideas which helped to shape the modern world. But there was in the same period another side to the history of the nation. Many of Scotland's people were subjected to coercive and sometimes violent change, as traditional ways of life were overturned by the "rational"... Read more

The Constitution Today

By: Akhil Reed Amar

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 19 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

When the stories that lead our daily news involve momentous constitutional questions, present-minded journalists and busy citizens cannot always see the stakes clearly. In The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades—from... Read more

Ancient Christianities

By: Paula Fredriksen

Narrated by: Rachel Perry

Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

How, over the course of five centuries, one particular god and one particular Christianity came to dominate late Roman imperial politics and piety



The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire?... Read more

The Cherokees

By: David Narrett

Narrated by: DeLanna Studi

Length: 22 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A sweeping new history reveals how the Cherokees became a nation as they navigated a century and a half of intertribal conflicts and colonial expansion that threatened their way of life. For more than 150 years between their first encounters with the English in the 1670s and forced removal along the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees negotiated... Read more

Surreal

By: Michele Gerber Klein

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Length: 9 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

""Michele Gerber Klein—at long last—gives Gala Dalí the close-up she deserves. When Gala met Salvador, they met their destinies. Surreal takes us backstage at the endless performance piece that was the couple’s life’s work and life’s play—a salient ingredient—and reshuffles art history along the way. Pour a stiff Pernod or Absinthe, kick back,... Read more

Midnight in Washington

By: Adam Schiff

Narrated by: Adam Schiff

Length: 18 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, from the rise of autocracy unleashed by Trump to the January 6 insurrection, and a warning that those forces remain as potent as ever—from the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump

“Engaging and informative . . . a manual for... Read more

Unwell Women

By: Elinor Cleghorn

Narrated by: Hanako Footman

Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health—from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases—brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative.
 
Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told... 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

After 1177 B.C.

By: Eric H. Cline

Narrated by: Eric H. Cline & John Chancer

Length: 9 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

This audiobook narrated by John Chancer tells the gripping story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever Features Eric Cline's FAQs as bonus content At the end of Eric Cline's bestselling history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age... Read more

The Old Ways

By: Robert Macfarlane

Narrated by: Robin Sachs

Length: 11 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places comes an engrossing exploration of walking and thinking.In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond.... Read more

Parting the Waters

By: Taylor Branch

Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi & Janina Edwards

Length: 45 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a “compelling…masterfully told” (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness.

Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement,... Read more

Salt Sugar Fat

By: Michael Moss

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 14 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Atlantic • The Huffington Post • Men’s Journal • MSN (U.K.) • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD FOR WRITING AND LITERATURE

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at The New York Times comes the explosive story of... Read more

The Democracy Project

By: David Graeber

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world—democracy—and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America, from the co-author of The Dawn of Everything

Democracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution—from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But... Read more