Essays audiobooks

NPR Road Trips: Postcards from Around the Globe

By: NPR

Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Meet Colin Angus and Julie Wafael, who spent two years circumnavigating the globe using their hands and feet. Turn on the radio in Katmandu and hear music from the 70s. Learn how robot jockeys are solving a human rights problem in Dubai. (It has to do with camel races.) Get ready for carnival in Rio. And walk through old Beijing before it’s... Read more

Who Is Mark Twain?

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: John Lithgow

Length: 5 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

“[Twain] was, in the phrase of his friend William Dean Howells, ‘the Lincoln of our literature’... At the heart of his work lies that greatest of all American qualities: irreverence.”
— Washington Post “More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern.... Ninety-nine years after... Read more

Just When I Thought I'd Dropped My Last Egg

By: Kathie Lee Gifford

Narrated by: Kathie Lee Gifford

Length: 5 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

As one of America’s most recognized faces, Kathie Lee Gifford has been a part of our morning routine for more years than she cares to count. And that’s why it may come as a surprise to hear that there are still sides of this fiftysomething (!) devoted mother and dedicated television personality yet to be revealed.

Just When I Thought I’d Dropped... Read more

We Are Our Mothers' Daughters

By: Cokie Roberts

Narrated by: Cokie Roberts

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

“[A] paean to feminism and the solidarity of womenkind. . . . This book is a celebration of women in their various roles: mother, sister, civil rights advocate, consumer advocate, first-class mechanic, politician—which Roberts’ own mother once was.”
—Washington Post “The perfect combination of powerful feelings and a modulated style.”
— Los... Read more

Life Is Like a Sailboat

By: John Grogan

Narrated by: John Larroquette

Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

From columnist and author of Marley and Me, John Grogan, comes a collection of more than 80 newspaper articles. In pieces that reflect his unique understanding of the crazy-quilt world we inhabit, Grogan shows us all sides of the human condition. From the fragility of life at a crosswalk to cell phones driving us to distraction (as we drive!),... Read more

The Face on Your Plate

By: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Narrated by: Fred Stella

Length: 5 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Somewhere in between Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, between eating at McDonald’s and killing a pig for dinner, there is a need for an audiobook that will probe more deeply and provide greater understanding and insight into the psychological factors that influence decisions about what we eat and why – and how these choices affect... Read more

The Bullpen Gospels

By: Dirk Hayhurst

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 10 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

From the humble heights of a Class-A pitcher's mound to the deflating lows of sleeping on his gun-toting grandmother's air mattress, veteran reliever Dirk Hayhurst steps out of the bullpen to deliver the best pitch of his career—a raw and unflinching account of his life in the minor leagues. Whether training tarantulas to protect his room from... Read more

Pies and Prejudice - Abridged

By: Stuart Maconie

Narrated by: Stuart Maconie

Length: 5 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A Northerner in exile, Stuart Maconie goes on a journey in search of the North, attempting to discover where the clichés end and the truth begins. He travels from Wigan Pier to Blackpool Tower and Newcastle's Bigg Market to the Lake District to find his own Northern Soul, encountering along the way an exotic cast of chippy Scousers, pie-eating... Read more

Leipziger Sagen und Legenden

By: Katharina Hammann & Kristina Hammann

Narrated by: Heiner Giersberg

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Urpsrünglich bewohnten slawische Siedler, die Sorben das Gebiet mit den Flüssen Elster, Parthe und Pleiße. Die bekannteste urkundliche Erwähnung der Stadt stammt aus dem Jahre 1165 n. Chr., als Markgraf Otto der Reiche Leipzig das Stadtrecht verlieh. Dieses beinhaltete damals weitreichende Privilegien. So entwickelte sich Leipzig, das an den... Read more

American Thighs

By: Jill Conner Browne

Narrated by: Jill Conner Browne

Length: 8 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

"If I can save one woman from these thighs, I will not have lived in vain," #1 New York Times bestselling humorist Jill Conner Browne writes in American Thighs, her handbook and memoir for the Hot and Flashy. Whether young enough to look "hot" or of the age to only feel that way (in flashes with buckets of sweat), every woman has given, or will... Read more

Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs - Abridged

By: Joan Rivers

Narrated by: Joan Rivers

Length: 6 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Red carpet fashion laureate, comic icon, and outspoken superstar Joan Rivers gives her signature straight-talking advice to women on how to live better through looking better.

Joan Rivers’s abiding life philosophy is simple: in the appearance focused society of the twenty-first century, beauty is key—especially where men are concerned. So,... Read more

More Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas

By: Ace Collins

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Ace Collins has dug deep to uncover the true stories behind your favorite Christmas songs. Explore how these songs came into being, and discover a deeper appreciation for these melodic messages of peace, hope, and joy that celebrate the birth of Jesus. Read more

Why Businessmen Need Philosophy and Other Essays

By: Ayn Rand, various authors, Leonard Peikoff, Har...

Narrated by: Susan O’Malley

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

"Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth," wrote Ayn Rand.In the title essay of this collection, Leonard Peikoff applies this principle to the world of business. He shows that certain philosophic ideas, such as reason, egoism, and individualism, are needed to defend and protect the freedom of businessmen, while the... Read more

Why We Suck - Abridged

By: Denis Leary

Narrated by: Denis Leary

Length: 4 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Abridged CDs * 4 CDs, 5 hours

“Denis Leary snarls as naturally as most actors smile,” says one critic of the writer and comic. In Why We Suck, Leary snarls to brilliant effect. With his patented highspeed ranting and killer comic instinct, Denis Leary has become a beloved antihero whose bracing invective and outrageous riffs have earned him a... Read more

The Bloody Crossroads

By: Norman Podhoretz

Narrated by: Phillip J. Sawtelle

Length: 6 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

This is a series of essays dealing with authors who stand at “the bloody crossroads: where literature and politics meet.” Why bloody? Because writers’ blood has often been shed when they boldly expressed their opinions, and their opinions have often influenced political leaders to shed the blood of others.In his analysis of contemporary writers... Read more

The Sea and the Jungle

By: H. M. Tomlinson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

One rainy morning in the winter of 1909, a man with an altogether average look about him quit his job at the London Morning Leader, kissed his wife and children goodbye, and took a train to Swansea in Wales, where he talked his way aboard a freighter bound for the upper reaches of the Amazon. Three years later, Tomlinson published a book about... Read more

Too Fat to Fish

By: Artie Lange

Narrated by: Artie Lange, The Reverend Bob Levy, Gary Dell'A...

Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

When Artie Lange joined the permanent cast of The Howard Stern Show in 2001, it was possibly the greatest thing ever to happen in the Stern universe, second only to the show’s move to the wild, uncensored frontier of satellite radio. Lange provided what Stern had yet to find all in the same place: a wit quick enough to keep pace with his own, a... Read more

Venice for Lovers

By: Louis Begley & Anka Muhlstein

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 3 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Every year for the thirty they have been married, Louis Begley and Anka Muhlstein have escaped to Venice to write. In Venice for Lovers, Begley and Muhlstein fashion their own personal homages to Venice, one with a novella, the other with a personal essay. In her contribution to the book, Muhlstein charmingly describes how she and her husband... Read more

The Voice of Reason

By: Ayn Rand

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 15 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand’s life, they reflect a... Read more

Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas

By: Ace Collins

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 4 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Enrich your holiday celebrations as you discover the incredible stories and the inspiration behind the Christmas songs you know and love.Jingle Bells Mary
Did You Know?
The First Noel
O Holy Night
Silver Bells
White ChristmasThe songs that you've sung since you were a child continue to bring Christmas to life each year. Now, you'll learn how your... Read more

Alphabet Juice - Abridged

By: Roy Blount, Jr., Jr.

Narrated by: Roy Blount, Jr., Jr.

Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Ali G: How many words does you know?

Noam Chomsky: Normally, humans, by maturity, have tens of thousands of them.

Ali G: What is some of 'em?
— Youtube.com


After forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, Roy Blount Jr. still can't get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the... Read more

From Baghdad to America

By: Jay Kopelman

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 3 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman won the hearts of readers with his moving story of adopting an abandoned puppy named Lava in a hellish corner of Iraq. For this Marine and his comrades, the puppy served as an important emotional touchstone in a grim and seemingly endless war.



Kopelman now writes about what it's like to be home. He credits his... Read more

In Morocco

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

"To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guidebook, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the most replete sightseer. The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row out into the harbor of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat headed across the... Read more

Sparring with Charlie

By: Christopher Hunt

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

When Christopher Hunt set off in search of Vietnam's notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail, he hardly expected to end up on a rickety, Russian-made motorcycle navigating 5,000 kilometers of paths rarely traveled by tourists and on roads missing from maps.Hunt left the United States expecting to explore the 1,700-kilometer highway that was once the supply... Read more