History audiobooks

Witchcraft

By: Marion Gibson

Narrated by: Rose Akroyd

Length: 11 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

National Bestseller
A New Yorker Best Book of 2024

A “thought-provoking and timely” (The Times, London) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history.

This “inventive and... Read more

On Juneteenth

By: Annette Gordon-Reed

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

Length: 3 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the nation’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction... Read more

Barracoon

By: Zora Neale Hurston

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God that brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last ""Black Cargo"" ship to arrive in... Read more

Code Girls

By: Liza Mundy

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 14 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the American women who secretly served as codebreakers during World War II--a "prodigiously researched and engrossing" (New York Times) book that "shines a light on a hidden chapter of American history" (Denver Post).

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more ... Read more

Frederick Douglass

By: David W. Blight

Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi

Length: 36 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

* Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times * Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History *

“Extraordinary…a great American biography” (The New Yorker) of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading... Read more

Madhouse at the End of the Earth

By: Julian Sancton

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 13 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “exquisitely researched and deeply engrossing” (The New York Times) true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry—with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter

“The energy of the narrative never flags. . . . Sancton has produced a... Read more

Frostbite

By: Nicola Twilley

Narrated by: Nicola Twilley

Length: 12 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

"Engrossing...hard to put down." — The New York Times Book Review

“Frostbite is a perfectly executed cold fusion of science, history, and literary verve . . . as a fellow nonfiction writer, I bow down. This is how it's done.” — Mary Roach, author of Fuzz and Stiff

An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution... Read more

The Wretched of the Earth

By: Frantz Fanon

Narrated by: Aaron Goodson

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

The definitive English translation by Constance Farrington.   First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth offers a powerful exploration of race, colonialism, and the psychological impact of oppression. This seminal text has inspired generations of revolutionaries and activists, influencing movements from decolonization... Read more

Goethe

By: A. N. Wilson

Narrated by: A.N. Wilson

Length: 16 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Bloomsbury presents Goethe, written and read by A. N. Wilson

Goethe remains one of the most influential figures in modern literature and thought.

Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and... Read more

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

By: Ilan Pappe

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 12 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.



Denied for almost six decades, had it... Read more

1177 B.C.

By: Eric H. Cline

Narrated by: Eric H. Cline

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and bestselling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark AgesIn 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened... Read more

Indigenous Continent

By: Pekka Hamalainen

Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab

Length: 18 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus "discovers" a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing "New World" as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists... Read more

The Real Odessa

By: Uki Goñi

Narrated by: Pat Grimes

Length: 16 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

As Russian forces closed in on Berlin and Hitler’s premiership drew to a close, many Nazi officials fled Germany. In this startling, meticulously researched account, acclaimed journalist Uki Goñi unravels the complex network that led them to Argentina. Relying on international support—in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Italy—and the enthusiasm of... Read more

Blood in the Machine

By: Brian Merchant

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 15 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year

The "rich and gripping" true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today (Naomi Klein) The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural... Read more

The Story of Art Without Men

By: Katy Hessel

Narrated by: Katy Hessel

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

The story of art as it's never been told before, from the Renaissance to the present day.



How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?



Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering... Read more

The Worst Hard Time

By: Timothy Egan

Narrated by: Jacob York

Length: 12 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.
 
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through... Read more

Stamped from the Beginning

By: Ibram X. Kendi

Narrated by: Avery Kidd Waddell

Length: 23 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America—it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.



In... Read more

Madame Restell

By: Jennifer Wright

Narrated by: Mara Wilson

Length: 14 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Discover the true story of a self-taught surgeon and trailblazing figure in medical history—Madame Restsell, a revolutionary surgeon who fought for women's rights and healthcare in Gilded Age New York.Madame Restell is a sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history which introduces us to an iconic, yet tragically overlooked, feminist heroine: a... Read more

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

By: Leah Price

Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers

Length: 5 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the... 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

Mobituaries

By: Mo Rocca

Narrated by: Mo Rocca

Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and humorist Mo Rocca, a rigorously researched, “funny and smart” (Jon Stewart) book that celebrates the dead people who have long fascinated him.

Mo Rocca has always loved obituaries—reading about the remarkable lives of global leaders, Hollywood heavyweights, and innovators who changed the world.... Read more

Hiding Mengele

By: Betina Anton

Narrated by: Taylor Harvey

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Read the international sensation already translated into 9 languages! A Brazilian journalist’s investigation unearths the story of a network of people responsible for hiding The Angel of Death, the infamous Nazi doctor who fled to South America and escaped justice for over thirty years. Josef Mengele, known worldwide for unimaginably cruel human... Read more

She Came to Slay

By: Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Narrated by: Robin Miles & Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history—Harriet Tubman—a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonate today.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading... Read more

The Pioneers

By: David McCullough

Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd

Length: 10 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that’s “as resonant today as ever” (The Wall Street Journal)—the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would... Read more