Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Speaking My Mind - Abridged

By: Ronald Reagan

Narrated by: Ronald Reagan

Length: 5 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: Yes

One man, more than any other, has helped define the most important issues of our time. His name is Ronald Reagan -- one of our nation's most powerful and popular Presidents. This extraordinary audio collection includes historical excerpts from selected addresses that span his political career, laying out his vision for America and the world.... Read more

When Pride Still Mattered - Abridged

By: David Maraniss

Narrated by: David Maraniss

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In this groundbreaking biography, David Maraniss captures all of football great Vince Lombardi: the myth, the man, his game, and his God.

More than any other sports figure, Vince Lombardi transformed football into a metaphor of the American experience. The son of an Italian immigrant butcher, Lombardi toiled for twenty frustrating years as a high... Read more

All the Best, George Bush - Abridged

By: George H.W. Bush

Narrated by: Barbara Bush & George H.W. Bush

Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Former President George H.W. Bush, revealed through his letters and writings from 1941 to 2010, is “worth its weight in gold…a valuable update of the life of an honorable American leader” (The Washington Post).

“Who knew that beneath George Bush’s buttoned-up propriety pulsed the warm heart of a prolific and occasionally poetic writer with a... Read more

'Tis - Abridged

By: Frank McCourt

Narrated by: Frank McCourt

Length: 6 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A #1 New York Times bestseller and the eagerly anticipated sequel to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angela’s Ashes, this masterpiece from Frank McCourt tells of his American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur.

Frank McCourt’s glorious childhood memoir, Angela’s Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers... Read more

Marcel Proust

By: Edmund White

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Considered one of the greatest—and most influential—writers of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust was also one of its most fascinating figures. A strange, reclusive genius who often lay in bed for days at a time obsessively rewriting his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past, Proust was at other times a tireless socialite, attending the... Read more

Der geschenkte Gaul

By: Hildegard Knef

Narrated by: Hildegard Knef

Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

"Der geschenkte Gaul", die 1970 veröffentlichte "Geschichte einer Generation", gilt auch heute noch als bedeutender literarischer Beitrag zur Geschichte Deutschlands zwischen den Jahren 1930 und 1950. Dank seiner mitreißenden, eigenwilligen und ungeschönten Sprache wurde das Werk direkt nach Erscheinen zu einer literarischen Sensation und... Read more

Havana Dreams

By: Wendy Gimbel

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the fascinating true story of four generations of Cuban women whose personal lives are woven with the story of their nation. At its center is Naty, a socialite born in 1925, who becomes intoxicated with Castro and his revolution. Here, published for the first time, are the letters they exchanged while Castro was in jail. Naty raises... Read more

Before the Wind - Abridged

By: Stefan Rudnicki

Narrated by: Kevin Kling

Length: 4 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In seafaring literature, no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Before the Wind is the memoir of early nineteenth-century sea captain Charles Tyng— from his childhood and love affair with the sea to his rise through the ranks to captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade. Before the Wind takes... Read more

Comrades - Abridged

By: Stephen E. Ambrose

Narrated by: Stephen E. Ambrose

Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the author of Undaunted Courage and D-Day comes this celebration of male friendship, taken both from the pages of history and from Ambrose’s own life.

Acclaimed historian Stephen Ambrose begins his examination with a glance inward—he starts this book with his brothers, his first and forever friends, and the shared experiences that join them... Read more

Nixon in Winter

By: Monica Crowley

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 18 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Monica Crowley served as a personal assistant to former president Richard M. Nixon from July 1990 until his death in April 1994. This remarkable story of his final public and private years is based on full reconstructions of the conversations she had with him at the time. Nixon in Winter puts the reader behind the scenes with the former... Read more

Deadlines and Datelines

By: Dan Rather

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Compelling essays from Peabody and Emmy-award winning newsman Dan RatherWith his distinctive blend of frontline determination and a journalist's knack for a good story, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather looks at the awesome struggles and everyday accomplishments he's witnessed at home and around the globe. Ranging from the Iraq conflict to a... Read more

A Sportsman's Life - Abridged

By: Leigh Perkins & Geoffrey Norman

Narrated by: Doug Ordunio

Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Insights from a businessman who achieved the ultimate accomplishment— transforming his personal enthusiasm into a wildly successful company.Imagine if you could live a life in which there were no boundaries between work and play, if you could blend the job you love— running a company that is committed to excellence— ... Read more

Braces - Abridged

By: Donald Davis

Narrated by: Donald Davis

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Braces hurt. Braces are embarrassing. Braces are inconvenient. Many get fitted with them at the very time of their life when their self-confidence is lowest and their self-consciousness is highest. This coming-of-age story, created and performed by Donald Davis, employs the author's trademark characterizations and humor to explore the state of... Read more

The Life of Samuel Johnson

By: James Boswell

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 54 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

James Boswell forever changed the genre of biography when he painstakingly transformed a scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson.James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities and is the source of much of what we know about one of the... Read more

Eva Perón

By: Nicholas Fraser & Marysa Navarro

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is fifteen. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Per├Án being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire... Read more

Christian Dior

By: Marie-France Pochna

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 12 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Christian Dior's career, a veritable fairy tale, is set in a rich tapestry of Paris cultural life before, during, and after the war. Much of Dior's daily inspiration emanated from the world of the intellectual and artistic elite, in which he moved with such people as Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Henry Sauguet, Jean Cocteau, and Raoul Dufy.Born... Read more

Rodin

By: Frederic V. Grunfeld

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 27 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Auguste Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor—known for such works as The Thinker, The Kiss, The Hand of God, and dozens of others—but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. He was an artist who outraged contemporaries with his disturbingly unfinished monuments, a sensualist who shocked France with his scandalous... Read more

The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe - Abridged

By: Donald Wolfe

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan & William Atherton

Length: 3 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe enchanted and captivated the world. Sixty years after her death, devotion to the pop culture icon is as strong as ever, and the truth about her mysterious death continues to fascinate fans and experts alike. With explosive revelations concerning the "National... Read more

Rocket Boys - Abridged

By: Homer Hickam

Narrated by: Beau Bridges

Length: 4 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives....And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a... Read more

The Starr Report

By: Kenneth Starr & Tracy Brooks Swope

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: 8 hours

Abridged: No

Following an unprecedented, relentless four-year investigation, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr delivered 36 boxes of evidence against then-President Bill Clinton to the House of Representatives on September 9, 1998. Dubbed “The Starr Report,” the documents alleged—in lurid detail—that Clinton lied under oath in a sworn deposition about his... Read more

Forgotten Heroes

By: Susan Ware

Narrated by: Susan Ware

Length: 5 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

For Forgotten Heroes, thirty-five prominent historians chose their favorite stories of unsung American figures. From Johnny Appleseed and John Quincy Adams to abolitionist Sojourner Truth and Margaret Anderson, the publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, these profiles remind us that history depends upon the great deeds of women and men, whether... Read more

I Am Jackie Chan - Abridged

By: Jackie Chan & Jeff Yang

Narrated by: Daxing Zhang

Length: 3 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

As one of the biggest stars in the world, Jackie Chan has wowed audiences with death-defying stunts for decades. But who really is this boyishly handsome, lightning-fast Charlie Chaplin of martial arts moviemaking? Jackie Chan has never told his own story in his own words. In I Am Jackie Chan, he tells the fascinating, harrowing, ultimately... Read more

Our Lady of the Freedoms - Abridged

By: Corwin Morman

Narrated by: Charles Kuralt

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A great American voice narrates a poignant tribute to our most outstanding monument. One of Charles Kuralt's last projects, Our Lady of the Freedoms is a full-scale production of writer-director Norman Corwin's account of how the Statue of Liberty came to New York harbor.
Charles Kuralt's brilliant narration accompanies dramatizations of the... Read more

Warped Factors - Abridged

By: Walter Koenig

Narrated by: Walter Koenig

Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

This is actor Walter Koenig's story— from growing up as the neurotic child of Russian immigrants in 1940s Manhattan through his rise to fame on Star Trek as Pavel Chekov, Russian navigator of the U.S.S. Enterprise. With wry wit, striking candor, and a true gift for storytelling, Koenig takes us on a sometimes bumpy but often... Read more