History audiobooks

The Lost City of the Monkey God

By: Douglas Preston

Narrated by: Bill Mumy

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning... Read more

The World After Gaza

By: Pankaj Mishra

Narrated by: Mikhail Sen

Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

"Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding.” —Naomi Klein

“This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers.” —Hisham Matar

“A triumphant work of empathy in a polarizing conflict.” —Anand Giridharadas

Named a Best Book of... Read more

By the Fire We Carry

By: Rebecca Nagle

Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

“Rebecca Nagle gives a clear and compelling narration of her look into how a small-town murder in the Muscogee Nation led to a significant 2020 Supreme Court case—and the largest restoration of Native tribal land in American history. . . . An illuminating listen.” — AudioFile""Impeccably researched. . . . A fascinating book and an important one.”... Read more

The River of Doubt

By: Candice Millard

Narrated by: Paul Michael

Length: 12 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the... Read more

A Brief History of Earth

By: Andrew H. Knoll

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

How well do you know the ground beneath your feet? A primer for every Earth resident, by Harvard’s acclaimed geologist.“A sublime chronicle of our planet."" –Booklist, STARRED reviewOdds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked... Read more

Midnight in Chernobyl

By: Adam Higginbotham

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

Length: 13 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019!

A New York Times Best Book of the Year
A Time Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2019

Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power... Read more

Strongmen

By: Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Narrated by: Chloe Cannon

Length: 9 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future.



For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers:... Read more

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

By: Walter Rodney

Narrated by: Mirron Willis

Length: 13 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis.



In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In... Read more

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

By: Peter Beinart

Narrated by: Peter Beinart

Length: 3 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time

“At this painful moment, Peter Beinart’s voice is more vital than ever. His reach is broad—from the tragedy of today’s Middle East to the South Africa he knows well to events centuries... Read more

Guns, Germs, and Steel

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Doug Ordunio

Length: 16 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.
 
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary... Read more

Kinky History

By: Esmé Louise James

Narrated by: Esmé Louise James

Length: 11 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

A provocative journey through human sexual history, packed with fun factoids and forgotten stories, from the historian and storyteller behind Kinky History, @esme.louisee on TikTok

Contrary to popular belief, our predecessors had all sorts of obscene hobbies long before Christian Grey hit the scene. In this enlightening romp, learn about the... Read more

Chasing Beauty

By: Natalie Dykstra

Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed

Length: 15 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its... Read more

The Witches Are Coming

By: Lindy West

Narrated by: Lindy West

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice,... Read more

The Spy and the Traitor

By: Ben Macintyre

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 13 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the celebrated author of Operation Mincement and The Siege comes the thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.

“The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the... Read more

They Thought They Were Free

By: Milton Mayer

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933–45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the... Read more

Embers of the Hands

By: Eleanor Barraclough

Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough

Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority.



Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the... 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

1491

By: Charles C. Mann

Narrated by: Darrell Dennis

Length: 16 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.

Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in... Read more

Built from the Fire

By: Victor Luckerson

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Length: 19 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa’s Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street,” that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification

“Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson’s outstanding book, the idea of building something new from the ashes of what has... Read more

After Jesus Before Christianity

By: Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott, Hal Taussig & W...

Narrated by: Cindy Kay

Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination.Christianity has... Read more

Heretic

By: Catherine Nixey

Narrated by: Lalla Ward

Length: 10 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

""A brilliant book...illuminates a forgotten world."" —The Times, Best of the Year""Heretic tells a moreish intellectual story and shakes up your understanding of Western history. At the same time, somewhat improbably, it supplies at least one good joke per paragraph; you have to keep turning back to enjoy them again."" ―The Economist, Best of... Read more

The Ship of Dreams

By: Gareth Russell

Narrated by: Jenny Funnell

Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

This original and “meticulously researched retelling of history’s most infamous voyage” (Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author) uses the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to examine the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift modernity brought to the Western world. “While there are many Titanic books, this is one... Read more

Music Is History

By: Questlove & Ben Greenman

Narrated by: Questlove

Length: 11 hours

Abridged: No

A New York Times bestseller, Music Is History combines multi–Grammy Award winner Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.

Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry, whether investigating how the blaxploitation... Read more

Becoming Kin

By: Patty Krawec

Narrated by: Patty Krawec

Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home."



Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and... Read more