History audiobooks

Storm’s Edge

By: Peter Marshall

Narrated by: Kenny Blyth

Length: 22 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

'A surprising page-turner, full of humour and startling details' THE TIMES 'If I read a better history this year, I will be lucky' TOM HOLLAND 'An astonishing tour de force’ SPECTATOR From Peter Marshall, winner of the... Read more

Endurance

By: Alfred Lansing

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

This is a new reading of the thrilling account of one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded.In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October, 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in the ice. For five months, Sir... Read more

Facing the Mountain

By: Daniel James Brown

Narrated by: Louis Ozawa

Length: 17 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
One of NPR's "Books We Love" of 2021
Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography 

Winner of the Christopher Award 
 
“Masterly. An epic story of four Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for military service and displayed uncommon heroism… Propulsive and gripping, in part because... Read more

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

By: Séamas O'Reilly

Narrated by: Séamas O'Reilly

Length: 5 hours

Abridged: No

A heart-warming and hilarious family memoir of growing up as one of eleven siblings raised by a single dad in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. Séamas O’Reilly’s mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the... Read more

The Rediscovery of America

By: Ned Blackhawk

Narrated by: Jason Grasl

Length: 17 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The most enduring feature of US history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American... Read more

Unruly

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: David Mitchell

Length: 11 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • A rollicking history of England’s kings and queens from Arthur to Elizabeth I, a tale of power, glory, and excessive beheadings by award-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

“Clever, amusing, gloriously bizarre and razor sharp. Mitchell [is] a funny man and a skilled historian.”―The Times

Think... Read more

Four Hundred Souls

By: Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain

Narrated by: Various

Length: 14 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.

The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion... Read more

Except for Palestine

By: Marc Lamont Hill & Mitchell Plitnick

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States. Except for Palestine deftly... Read more

The Once and Future Sex

By: Eleanor Janega

Narrated by: Samara Naeymi

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior.

What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about... Read more

The Sisterhood

By: Liza Mundy

Narrated by: Liza Mundy

Length: 17 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

A “rip-roaring” (Steve Coll), “staggeringly well-researched” (The New York Times) history of three generations at the CIA, “electric with revelations” (Booklist) about the women who fought to become operatives, transformed spycraft, and tracked down Osama bin Laden, from the bestselling author of Code Girls

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’... Read more

Before We Were Trans

By: Dr. Kit Heyam

Narrated by: Dr. Kit Heyam

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity  

Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.  
 
Before We Were Trans illuminates... Read more

Alexander Hamilton

By: Ron Chernow

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 35 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

The inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton! 

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust... Read more

Medgar and Myrlie

By: Joy-Ann Reid

Narrated by: Joy-Ann Reid

Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 New York Times Bestseller“Medgar Evers deserves a place alongside Malcolm X and Dr. King in our historical memory. Evers, with Myrlie as his partner in activism and in life, was doing civil rights work in the single most hostile and dangerous environment in America.”—from Medgar and MyrlieBy MSNBC's Joy-Ann Reid, a triumphant work of... Read more

The Day the World Came to Town

By: Jim DeFede

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Perfect for fans of the musical Come From Away!When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded... Read more

These Truths

By: Jill Lepore

Narrated by: Jill Lepore

Length: 28 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. The American experiment rests on three ideas?"these truths," Jefferson called them?political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too,... 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

Vagina Obscura

By: Rachel E. Gross

Narrated by: Siho Ellsmore

Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

A scientific journey to the center of the new female body.

The Latin term for the female genitalia, pudendum, means “parts for which you should be ashamed.” Until 1651, ovaries were called female testicles. The fallopian tubes are named for a man. Named, claimed, and shamed: Welcome to the story of the female body, as penned by men.

Today, a new... Read more

Operation Paperclip

By: Annie Jacobsen

Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen

Length: 19 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs (The Boston Globe), from the New York Times bestselling author of Area 51. In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis'... Read more

ArtCurious

By: Jennifer Dasal

Narrated by: Jennifer Dasal

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast

We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you... Read more

Mott Street

By: Ava Chin

Narrated by: Ava Chin

Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

“Essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history but American history—and the American present.” —Celeste Ng, #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere

* TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle's Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Library Journal Best Memoir and Biography of 2023... Read more

Let This Radicalize You

By: Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

Narrated by: Diana Blue

Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the... Read more

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

By: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the U.S. settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history.

Roxanne... 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

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