Biography & Memoir audiobooks

The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up

By: Rich Blake

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 6 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Donny Herbert was a hardworking Buffalo city firefighter who, in December 1995, was searching the attic of a burning house when the snow-laden roof collapsed. For six minutes he was without oxygen. A beloved husband, a father of four boys, a neighborhood fixture who was always willing to lend a helping hand, Donny fell into a vegetative state... Read more

The Bible

By: Karen Armstrong

Narrated by: Josephine Bailey

Length: 6 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book—it has been translated into over 2,000 languages—and the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history.... Read more

Brother, I'm Dying

By: Edwidge Danticat

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her "second father," when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new... Read more

El manana

By: Mirta Ojito

Narrated by: Mirta Ojito

Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

En estasmemorias sobre una nina, dos culturas y la lucha por la libertad, la periodistaMirtaOjito, ganadora del Premio Pulitzer, vuelve al evento en su adolescencia que cambio su vida para siempre: el exodo en el 1980 demas de 125.000 cubanos, conocido como el puente maritimo del Mariel. Con perservancia y mucho corazon, Ojito logra localizar a... Read more

A Life Decoded

By: J. Craig Venter

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 16 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Growing up in California, J. Craig Venter didn't appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the navy and went to Vietnam, where the life-and-death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing... Read more

Max Planck - Abridged

By: Ernst Peter Fischer

Narrated by: Ernst Peter Fischer

Length: 1 hour 15 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Max Planck (1858 - 1947) gehört zu den Menschen, vor denen man sich verneigen sollte. Planck war groß als Physiker und sein Name ist - mindestens durch das Plancksche Quantum der Wirkung - unsterblich geworden. Sein Name wird durch die (seit 1948) nach ihm benannte Gesellschaft in alle Welt verbreitet. Er war überzeugend als Philosoph, wobei... Read more

Born Standing Up

By: Steve Martin

Narrated by: Steve Martin

Length: 4 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The riveting, mega-bestselling, beloved and highly acclaimed memoir of a man, a vocation, and an era named one of the ten best nonfiction titles of the year by Time and Entertainment Weekly.

In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit... Read more

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

By: Jean-Dominique Bauby

Narrated by: René Auberjonois

Length: 2 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem.  After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had... Read more

My Lobotomy

By: Howard Dully & Charles Fleming

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of twelve.



Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered.



"In 1960," he writes, "I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy.... Read more

One Man Great Enough

By: John C. Waugh

Narrated by: David Drummond

Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Lincoln is the central axis of this story about America’s seemingly unstoppable march toward war, the shattering of its political landscape, and its grappling with the moral underpinnings of a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.Here are such key events as the Mexican-American War, the Dred Scott Case, westward expansion,... Read more

Finding Iris Chang

By: Paula Kamen

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 10 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Iris Chang, bestselling author of The Rape of Nanking and tireless human rights activist, symbolized strength to many in the literary and social justice worlds. Her fearlessness made it all the more shocking when she committed suicide in 2004 at age thirty-six.Longtime friend and confidante Paula Kamen, author of the critically acclaimed All in... Read more

Listening Is an Act of Love - Abridged

By: Dave Isay

Narrated by: Dave Isay & StoryCorps Participants

Length: 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From more than ten thousand interviews, StoryCorps—the largest oral history project in the nation's history—presents a tapestry of American stories, told by the people who lived them to the people they love. 

StoryCorps began with the idea that everyone has an important story to tell. And since 2003, this remarkable project has been collecting... Read more

Boom!

By: Tom Brokaw

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 18 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Greatest Generation, his landmark bestseller, Tom Brokaw eloquently evoked for America what it meant to come of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Now, in Boom!, one of America’s premier journalists gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America as he brings to life the tumultuous Sixties, a fault line... Read more

A Slave No More

By: David W. Blight

Narrated by: Arthur Morey & Dominic Hoffman

Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama... Read more

Surrender is Not an Option - Abridged

By: John Bolton

Narrated by: John Bolton

Length: 6 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

With no-holds-barred candor, Donald Trump's new National Security Adviser and former ambassador to the United Nations takes us behind the scenes at the UN and the US State Department and reveals why his efforts to defend American interests and reform the UN resulted in controversy. He also shows how the US can lead the way to a more realistic... Read more

Sage-ing While Age-ing - Abridged

By: Shirley MacLaine

Narrated by: Shirley MacLaine

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Bestselling author and award-winning actress Shirley MacLaine invites readers to share in her decades-long quest for spiritual, physical, and personal harmony and truth. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover now in paperback, this book offers a provocative and enlightening synthesis of what Shirley has discovered in her years of searching for... Read more

A Slave No More - Abridged

By: David W. Blight

Narrated by: David W. Blight, Richard Allen & Dion Graham

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama... Read more

Boom! - Abridged

By: Tom Brokaw

Narrated by: Tom Brokaw

Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In The Greatest Generation, his landmark bestseller, Tom Brokaw eloquently evoked for America what it meant to come of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Now, in Boom!, one of America’s premier journalists gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America as he brings to life the tumultuous Sixties, a fault line... Read more

The Everything Martin Luther King Jr. Book

By: Jessica McElrath

Narrated by: Dwain Kyles

Length: 9 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most inspirational figures in American history. From his march on Washington to his time in a Birmingham jail, King’s life and work continue to have a profound effect on our nation. The Everything® Martin Luther King Jr. Book explores King’s life, times and influence. Fascinating facts and little-known... Read more

Chasing Rubi

By: Marty Wall & Isabella Wall

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 5 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Was he a spy, assassin, or just a gigolo? Porfirio Rubirosa mingled with kings, dined with princes, and socialized with presidents, dictators, mobsters, and movie stars. In the wake of his frenzied activities, he left screaming headlines, hundreds of one-night stands, multiple divorces from the world’s richest women—including one who paid... Read more

Shattered Air

By: Bob Madgic

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 8 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

On the evening of July 27, 1985, five hikers made a fateful choice to climb Yosemite's fabled Half Dome, even as the sky darkened and thunder rolled. By night's end, two would be dead from a lightning strike, three gravely wounded, and desperate EMTs would be overseeing a harrowing midnight helicopter rescue.Shattered Airis a haunting account of... Read more

The Man Who Knew Infinity

By: Robert Kanigel

Narrated by: Humphrey Bower

Length: 17 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1913, a young, unschooled Indian clerk named Srinivasa Ramanujan wrote a letter to G. H. Hardy, begging that pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers.Hardy, realizing the letter was the work of a genius, arranged for Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most remarkable collaborations... Read more

If I Only Knew Then...

By: author

Narrated by: Charles Grodin & Marion Grodin

Length: 3 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Writer, activist, and actor Charles Grodin delivers a fascinating collection of more than eighty intimate and revealing stories from friends and colleagues in the worlds of entertainment, sports, journalism, politics, and business-inspiring, entertaining, and heartfelt accounts of mistakes they've made and the lessons they learned.


Carol Burnett... Read more

American Creation

By: Joseph J. Ellis

Narrated by: John H. Mayer

Length: 10 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

From the first shots fired at Lexington to the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, Joseph J. Ellis guides us through the decisive issues of the nation’s founding, and illuminates the emerging philosophies, shifting alliances, and personal and political foibles of our now iconic... Read more