Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Her Husband

By: Diane Middlebrook

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 11 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six and a half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and the style and substance of his verse.In this stunning new biography of their marriage, Diane... Read more

Frankie’s Place

By: Jim Sterba

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 9 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

One summer Jim Sterba, veteran war correspondent, accepts an invitation for a weekend visit from a woman he barely knows, author Frances FitzGerald. He arrives and discovers a secluded little house on the Maine coast, with evergreens and blackberry bushes all around, views of forested mountains, and a fjord full of seabirds and sailboats.He... Read more

Rothstein

By: David Pietrusza

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 13 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

The model for Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby and Guys and Dolls' Nathan Detroit, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, political fixer, and criminal mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of fifteen million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."David... Read more

Four against the Arctic

By: David Roberts

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1743, a Russian ship was blown off course and trapped in ice off the coast of Svalbard (Spitzbergen), a barren Arctic island. Four sailors went ashore with only two days' supplies, and only twenty pounds of flour for food. Upon return they found the ship had vanished, apparently crushed and sunk by the ice. Blessed with courage and ingenuity,... Read more

Aristotle in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided... Read more

Descartes in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

Abridged: No

René Descartes spent much of his life in solitude. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.” Convincing himself to doubt and disregard sensory knowledge, Descartes found he could prove his existence through his thoughts alone. This internal reality,... Read more

Nietzsche in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ultimately went mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and... Read more

Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it, he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished.Ludwig Wittgenstein was a superb logician who distrusted language and sought to solve the problems of philosophy by reducing them to logic. All else—metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, finally even philosophy itself—was... Read more

Heidegger in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Abridged: No

One of two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and his fundamental question: "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question was beyond the reach of reason and was the primary "given" of every individual life. To... Read more

Plato in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in philosophy. In 387 BC he founded the Academy, the world's first university, and taught his students that all we see is not reality but... Read more

Socrates in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was used to cut through the palaver of his adversaries... Read more

Stuffed

By: Patricia Volk

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat

Length: 7 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Patricia Volk's delicious, charming, and wildly funny memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, cheerful, infuriating, and wonderful family, where you're never just hungry—you're starving to death, and you're never just full—you're stuffed.Volk's family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced... Read more

Flying Colors

By: Tim Lefens

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

When Tim Lefens walked into the Matheny School in New Jersey to show slides of his paintings, his one-hour visit became a life-changing experience. The students he met had severe physical challenges: only one of them could talk, none could walk, and all lacked the use of their hands. As a painter facing his own gradual loss of eyesight, Tim had... Read more

The Unruly Life of Woody Allen

By: Marion Meade

Narrated by: Mary Woods

Length: 15 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

After forty years in the spotlight as comedian, author, director, and professional neurotic, Woody Allen is a living legend. To fans, his films have always represented a sort of ongoing autobiography. This is the first uncensored biography to investigate one of our era’s most celebrated, distinctive, and confounding filmmakers.For over three... Read more

One Man’s War

By: Tommy LaMore & Dan Baker

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Escaping certain death—not once but several times—lies at the core of the riveting, real-life story of an American soldier during World War II. In One Man's War, B-17 pilot Tommy LaMore vividly details his experiences in war-ravaged Germany, from the horrific to the romantic and beyond.LaMore's saga began when his plane collided with another... Read more

Steve Martin

By: Morris Wayne Walker

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the story of the wild and crazy years that the author spent growing up with Steve Martin and their apprenticeship in comedy. No one could better chronicle Steve’s life than his best and oldest friend, Morris Walker.Steve and Morris were class clowns together, charming the girls and the teachers with their wit and later setting out on the... Read more

Facets of Ayn Rand

By: Mary Ann Sures & Charles Sures

Narrated by: Susan O’Malley

Length: 3 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Facets of Ayn Rand is based on forty-eight hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well.Here are many examples of not only Ayn Rand’s mind and intellectual generosity in action but also lesser-known aspects of this unique woman.... Read more

What One Man Said to Another

By: Peter Josyph

Narrated by: Peter Josyph & Raymond Todd

Length: 10 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

What One Man Said to Another is, on one level, a series of extended conversations between friends. On another, it is the spoken autobiography of Richard Selzer, respected surgeon and writer, as recorded by artist and writer Peter Josyph.In these pages, we learn firsthand of Selzer’s life as a surgeon in an isolated village in Korea in the early... Read more

To Hell and Back

By: Audie Murphy

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The time is 1943, the place is Sicily, and the event is the start of the most remarkable career of any American infantryman in the war. Audie Murphy was a desperately poor eighteen-year-old orphan when he joined the Army, nineteen when he first saw a buddy die from an enemy bullet and an enemy die from one of his own. By V-E day, he had killed... Read more

The Rockefellers

By: Peter Collier & David Horowitz

Narrated by: Michael Anthony

Length: 30 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the story of an American dynasty. It begins with John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who amassed a fortune amid the muck and disorder of the Pennsylvania oil fields and left his son to deal with the public outcry. It follows Rockefeller junior as he built the charities and foundations that made the name a public institution, and it tracks the... Read more

In the Hands of Providence

By: Alice Rains Trulock

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 12 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Joshua Chamberlain of Maine forged an incredible career during the Civil War. An academic and theologian by training, this modest young professor left Bowdoin College to accept a commission as lieutenant colonel of the Twentieth Maine. He fought at Antietam and Fredericksburg, then led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the... Read more

Living Biographies of Great Painters

By: Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas

Narrated by: Pat Bottino

Length: 11 hours

Abridged: No

To appreciate the meaning and beauty of the great works of art, we must be familiar with the lives of the geniuses who created them, for in their personalities and life-stories lie the key to their masterpieces. Here are the vivid stories of these twenty painters who dreamed, struggled, and suffered so that they might give expression to their... Read more

East to the Dawn

By: Susan Butler

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 18 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Amelia Earhart captured the hearts of the nation after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1928—and her disappearance on an around-the-world flight in 1937 is an enduring mystery.The image we have of Amelia Earhart today—a tousle-haired, androgynous flier clad in shirt, silk scarf, leather jacket, and goggles—is only one... Read more

Dorothy Day

By: Robert Coles

Narrated by: C. M. Hébert

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Robert Coles first met Dorothy Day over thirty-five years ago when, as a medical student, he worked in one of her Catholic Worker soup kitchens. He remained close to this inspiring and controversial woman until her death in 1980. His book, an intellectual and psychological portrait, confronts candidly the central puzzles of her life: the... Read more