Biography & Memoir audiobooks

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

Write it When I'm Gone

By: Thomas M. DeFrank

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller?and the candid voice of an American president

In 1974, Newsweek correspondent Thomas M. DeFrank was interviewing Gerald Ford when the Vice President blurted out something astonishingly indiscreet. He then extracted a promise not to publish it. ?Write it when I?m dead,? Ford said? and thus began a thirty-two-year... Read more

Shakespeare

By: Bill Bryson

Narrated by: Bill Bryson

Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Shakespeare: The Illustrated Edition is an exquisitely illustrated, updated edition of Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare that takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship. With more than 100 color and black-and-white illustrations throughout, and... Read more

For Love of Politics

By: Sally Bedell Smith

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 21 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

During their eight years in the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton worked together more closely than the public ever knew. FOR LOVE OF POLITICS is the first book to explain the dynamics of their relationship, showing that it is impossible to understand one Clinton without factoring in the other.

Acclaimed author Sally Bedell Smith offers... Read more

Marco Polo

By: Laurence Bergreen

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 16 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, comes the first fully authoritative... Read more

For Love of Politics - Abridged

By: Sally Bedell Smith

Narrated by: Richard McGonagle

Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: Yes

During their eight years in the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton worked together more closely than the public ever knew. Their intertwined personal and professional lives had far-reaching consequences–for politics, domestic policy, and international affairs–and their marital troubles became a national soap opera. Based on unparalleled... Read more

Marco Polo - Abridged

By: Laurence Bergreen

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 9 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: Yes

As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, comes the first fully authoritative... Read more

Lion in the White House

By: Aida D. Donald

Narrated by: Pam Ward

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

New York state assemblyman, assistant secretary of the Navy, New York City police commissioner, governor of New York, vice president, and, at forty-two, the youngest president ever, Theodore Roosevelt—in his own words—"rose like a rocket." He was also a cowboy, a soldier, a historian, an intrepid explorer, and an unsurpassed environmentalist—all... Read more

Fair Game - Abridged

By: Valerie Plame Wilson

Narrated by: Valerie Plame Wilson

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: Yes

On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The... Read more

The Bond

By: Margaret Bernstein, Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt ...

Narrated by: Richard Allen

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

The Three Doctors—Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt—discovered early in their friendship that they shared one disturbing trait: as children, they had to navigate life in inner-city Newark without a father's support and guidance. While each young man dealt with the turmoil caused by an absent father, with no male role model to... Read more

Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends

By: William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, Edward "Babe" Hef...

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Tom Hanks introduces the rousing story of two inseparable friends and soldiers portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.



William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward "Babe" Heffron were among the first paratroopers of the U.S. Army—members of an elite unit of the 101st Airborne Division called Easy Company. Arguably the bravest, most... Read more

Escape

By: Carolyn Jessop & Laura Palmer

Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee

Length: 15 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day... Read more

Young Stalin

By: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrated by: James Adams

Length: 16 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest, and finally embracing revolutionary idealism as his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar and terrorist, a mastermind of bank robberies, extortion, piracy, and murder, he was so impressive in... Read more

Escape - Abridged

By: Carolyn Jessop & Laura Palmer

Narrated by: Alison Fraser

Length: 4 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three... Read more

Schulz and Peanuts - Abridged

By: David Michaelis

Narrated by: Holter Graham

Length: 12 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us an in-depth biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts.It is the most American of stories: How a barber's son grew up from modest... Read more

The Center Cannot Hold

By: Elyn R. Saks

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most... Read more

Switching Time

By: Richard Baer

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 12 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Switching Time is the first story centering on multiple personality disorder to be told by the treating physician. It is the incredible saga of a young woman stranded in unimaginable darkness who, in order to survive, created seventeen different versions of herself.



In 1989, Karen Overhill walked into the office of psychiatrist Richard Baer... Read more

The Jesuit and the Skull

By: Amir D. Aczel

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

In December 1929, in a cave near Peking, a group of anthropologists and archaeologists that included a young French Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin uncovered a prehuman skull. The find quickly became known around the world as Peking Man and was acclaimed as the missing link between erect hunting apes and our Cro-Magnon ancestors.... Read more

American Gangster and Other Tales of New York

By: Mark Jacobson

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 10 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

In the 1970s, Frank Lucas was the king of the Harlem drug trade, bringing in over a million dollars a day. He lived a glamorous life, hobnobbing with athletes, musicians, and politicians, but Lucas was a ruthless gangster. He was notorious for using the coffins of dead GIs to smuggle heroin into the United States and, before being sentenced to... Read more

Clapton

By: Eric Clapton

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life. More than a rock star, Eric Clapton is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a profession marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable... Read more

The Year of Living Biblically - Abridged

By: A. J. Jacobs

Narrated by: A. J. Jacobs

Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Now a TV series Living Biblically streaming on CBS All Access!

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible. A.J. Jacobs chronicles his hilarious and thoughtful year spent obeying―as literally as possible―the tenets of the Bible.

Raised in a secular family but... Read more

Blue Skies, No Fences - Abridged

By: Lynne Cheney

Narrated by: Lynne Cheney

Length: 5 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In Blue Skies, No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family, Lynne Cheney re-creates the years after World War II in a small town on the high plains of the West. Portraying an era that started with the Ink Spots on the Zenith Radio in her family's living room and ended with Elvis on the jukebox at the local canteen, she tells of coming of age in... Read more

Clapton - Abridged

By: Eric Clapton

Narrated by: Bill Nighy

Length: 5 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way.”

With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography.... Read more

Foreskin's Lament

By: Shalom Auslander

Narrated by: Shalom Auslander

Length: 6 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

A bitingly funny memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional Jewish family and wrestling with a vengeful God. Read more