Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Mozart

By: Peter Gay

Narrated by: Alexander Adams

Length: 4 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

The greatest mind in Western music is examined by a National Book Award–winning writer on culture and psychology in this concise account of the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The composer’s unshakable hold on the public’s fascination can only be strengthened by the historian and biographer Peter Gay’s bold new perspective.  

His passionate and... Read more

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

By: Frederick Douglass

Narrated by: Charles Turner

Length: 4 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Uncertain of his date of birth or the identity of his father, Frederick Douglass came into the world with one surety: he was born a slave, and would die a slave. But as he grew up, Douglass determined that he would teach himself to read and write, and that one day he would be free from slavery. In 1832, Douglass was sent to a plantation in St.... Read more

Out of Africa - Abridged

By: Isak Dinesen

Narrated by: Julie Harris

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

"When I was a young girl, it was very far from my thoughts to go to Africa, nor did I dream then that an African farm should be the place in which I should be perfectly happy."After the failure of her coffee farm, Karen Blixen returned to Denmark, where she wrote this classic account of her experiences. Out of Africa is a celebration of her life... Read more

They Made a Monkee Out of Me - Abridged

By: Davy Jones

Narrated by: Davy Jones

Length: 2 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Aiming to cash in on the success of The Beatles, American television producers created a television show that featured a quartet of fun-loving musicians, achieving instant success with The Monkees. Davy Jones, a young, aspiring actor was cast in the series, which aired for the first time on September 12th, 1966. Within two months, the show had... Read more

Been There, Done That - Abridged

By: Eddie Fisher & David Fisher

Narrated by: Eddie Fisher

Length: 5 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: Yes

By the time he was 21 years old, Eddie Fisher was one of America's most popular entertainers. But for Eddie, that was only the beginning of a two-decade affair with fame and fortune that made him more popular than Frank Sinatra, turned out more consecutive hit records than the Beatles, and earned him millions of dollars. He married America's... Read more

Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs - Abridged

By: Dave Barry

Narrated by: Mike Dodge

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Based on the results from Dave Barry's monumental reader survey, Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs is a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written. Read more

A Jerk on One End

By: Robert Hughes

Narrated by: Peter Renaday

Length: 2 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

For Robert Hughes fishing was a lifelong obsession and the pastime that he loved best. In A Jerk on One End he brings the wit and insight that have characterized his art criticism to the subjects of fish and fishing. He traces his love of fishing to his boyhood on Sydney Harbour and recounts the high and low points of his career with rod and... 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

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

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

By: Frank McCourt

Narrated by: Frank McCourt

Length: 14 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

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

'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

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

Before the Wind - Abridged

By: Charles Tyng

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

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

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

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

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

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