History audiobooks

Challenger

By: Adam Higginbotham

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

Length: 17 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2024 Kirkus Nonfiction Prize • Shortlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book of 2024

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Stunning…A heart-pounding thriller…Challenger is a remarkable book.” —The Atlantic • “Devastating…A universal story that transcends time.” —The New York... Read more

A People's History of the United States

By: Howard Zinn

Narrated by: Jeff Zinn

Length: 34 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

THE CLASSIC NATIONAL BESTSELLER""A wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future."" –Howard FastHistorian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing... Read more

Off The Map

By: Meriwether Lewis

Narrated by: Pat Grimes

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Lewis and Clark's famous 1804 expedition was told with great detail by the explorers themselves in an eight-volume account. Now young historians have the opportunity to learn the thrills, challenges, and adventures in a version accessible for them. Two years' worth of entries are condensed into a flowing account that maintains the historical... Read more

The Demon of Unrest

By: Erik Larson

Narrated by: Will Patton & Erik Larson

Length: 17 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times).

“A feast of historical insight and narrative verve . . . This is Erik Larson at his best,... Read more

Amelia Earhart

By: Andrew Prentice

Narrated by: Elizabeth Cottle

Length: 2 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Before Amelia Earhart (1897–1939) became a world-famous pilot, she was a little tomboy from Kansas with a taste for adventure. When she visited an airfield and took a short plane ride, she knew she had to be a pilot. She signed up for flying lessons and cropped her hair short so that the other pilots would take her seriously. She became the... Read more

A Ben Of All Trades

By: Michael J. Rosen & Matt Tavares

Narrated by: Qarie Marshall

Length: 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Young Benjamin Franklin wants to be a sailor, but his father won’t hear of it. The other trades he tries—candle maker, joiner, boot closer, turner—bore him through and through. Curious and inventive, Ben prefers to read, swim, fly his kite, and fly his kite while swimming. But each time he fails to find a profession, he takes some important bit... Read more

An Unfinished Love Story

By: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Narrated by: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Length: 17 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

Narrated by Doris Kearns Goodwin with the star of Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston! The audio edition also includes archival recordings of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy.

The #1 New York Times bestseller from “America’s historian-in-chief” (New York magazine).

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by... Read more

The Small and the Mighty

By: Sharon McMahon

Narrated by: Sharon McMahon

Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.

In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the... Read more

A Promised Land

By: Barack Obama

Narrated by: Barack Obama

Length: 29 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post •... Read more

Caste (Oprah's Book Club)

By: Isabel Wilkerson

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 15 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the... Read more

Talking to Strangers

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell

Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Pres
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a... Read more

Major Battles in U.S. History

By: Various

Narrated by: Qarie Marshall

Length: 49 minutes

Abridged: No

This close-up look at key battles throughout the history of the United States offers engaging anecdotes about those battles and provides historical context for each of them. Each audiobook examines the decisive moments and lasting impact of major battles such as The Battle of Gettysburg and The Battle of Little Bighorn. With interesting facts... Read more

Say Nothing

By: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narrated by: Matthew Blaney

Length: 14 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century
 
"Masked intruders... Read more

Through the Wardrobe

By: Lina Maslo

Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds

Length: 33 minutes

Abridged: No

As a child, Clive Staples Lewis imagined many things... heroic animals and knights in armor and a faraway land called Boxen. He even thought of a new name for himself—at four years old, he decided he was more of a Jack. As he grew up, though, Jack found that the real world was not as just as the one in his imagination. No magic could heal the... Read more

Spare

By: Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex

Narrated by: Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex

Length: 15 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the global phenomenon that tells an unforgettable story of love, loss, courage, and healing.

“Compellingly artful . . . [a] blockbuster memoir.”—The New Yorker (Best Books of the Year)

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s... Read more

SPQR

By: Mary Beard

Narrated by: Phyllida Nash

Length: 18 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

A sweeping, revisionist history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists. Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power... Read more

The Only Plane in the Sky

By: Garrett M. Graff

Narrated by: A Full 45-Person Cast

Length: 15 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

2020 AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR AUDIE AWARD WINNER!

2020 MULTI-VOICED PERFORMANCE AUDIE AWARD WINNER!

Audio bonus! The audio edition includes an exclusive interview with Garrett Graff and Holter Graham as well as archival audio from United States Presidential addresses, In-Flight Communications, and Air Traffic Control.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“This... Read more

The Dawn of Everything

By: David Graeber & David Wengrow

Narrated by: Mark Williams

Length: 24 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

"An all-encompassing treatise on modern civilization, offering bold revisions to canonical understandings in sociology, anthropology, archaeology and political philosophy that led to where we are today." - The New York Times

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social... Read more

The Bookshop

By: Evan Friss

Narrated by: Jay Myers

Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Goodreads Choice Award Winner in History & Biography

One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

"A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category." —The New York Times

"It is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book." —Emma Straub,... Read more

Harry Houdini

By: Kjartan Poskitt

Narrated by: Pete Cross

Length: 2 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Before Harry Houdini (1874–1926) became the greatest magician in the world, he was just little Ehrich Weisz, a Hungarian-born immigrant who moved to America with his family and performed stage tricks for a little extra cash. He started off with card tricks and then eventually began performing the escape acts that would make him famous. Known for... Read more

The Wager

By: David Grann

Narrated by: Dion Graham & David Grann

Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on... Read more

The Wide Wide Sea

By: Hampton Sides

Narrated by: Peter Noble

Length: 15 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the... Read more

Nexus

By: Yuval Noah Harari

Narrated by: Vidish Athavale

Length: 17 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

“Striking original . . . A historian whose arguments operate on the scale of millennia has managed to capture the zeitgeist perfectly.”—The Economist

“This deeply important book comes at a critical... Read more

The Barn

By: Wright Thompson

Narrated by: Wright Thompson

Length: 11 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Slate, Vanity Fair, TIME, Buzzfeed, Smithsonian, BookPage, KCUR, and Kirkus

“It literally changed my outlook on the world…incredible.” —Shonda Rhimes

"The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought... Read more