History audiobooks

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

Kant in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Königsberg. How appropriate it is then that in his philosophy he should deny that all knowledge was derived from experience. Kant's aim was to restore metaphysics. He insisted that all experience must conform to... Read more

Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense, yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn't write about the world, he wrote about life, about how we live, and how we choose to live. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective... 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

The Masters

By: Curt Sampson

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

The Masters golf tournament weaves a hypnotic spell. Success at Augusta National breeds legends, while failure can overshadow even the most brilliant of careers. But as Curt Sampson, author of the bestseller Hogan, reveals in The Masters, a cold heart beats behind the warm antebellum façade of this famous Augusta course.The Masters is an... Read more

Bums

By: Peter Golenbock

Narrated by: Raymond Todd

Length: 19 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

Before the team headed to Los Angeles in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were one of the most colorful and beloved teams in baseball. Even today, they remain ingrained in the fabric of our national pastime. In Bums, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has compiled a fascinating oral history of the Ebbets Field heroes with recollections from former... 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

The Twentieth Maine

By: John J. Pullen

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

It was at Little Round Top that the volunteer regiment, the Twentieth Maine, with Joshua Chamberlain in command, performed one of the miracles of the Civil War and saved the left flank of the Union battle line. Outnumbered two to one, their front doubled back to the shape of a horseshoe. And with ammunition gone, the men fixed bayonets, charged,... Read more

Wonderful Memories of It’s a Wonderful Life

By: Jimmy Hawkins

Narrated by: Jimmy Hawkins

Length: 1 hour 31 minutes

Abridged: No

When the movie It’s a Wonderful Life opened in December 1946, it captured five Academy Award nominations. It also captured the hearts of millions of Americans. Over the past fifty years, It’s a Wonderful Life has become as much a holiday tradition as Thanksgiving dinner and the Christmas tree. For many people, Christmas just isn’t complete until... Read more

Scourge

By: Jonathan B. Tucker

Narrated by: John Lescault

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Smallpox, the only infectious disease to have been eradicated, was one of the most terrifying of human scourges. It covered the skin with hideous, painful boils, killed a third of its victims, and left the survivors disfigured for life. In this riveting, often terrifying look at the history of smallpox, Jonathan B. Tucker tells the story of this... Read more

Defying Hitler

By: Sebastian Haffner

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

When the famous German author Sebastian Haffner died at age ninety-one in 1999, a manuscript was discovered among his unpublished papers that offers a compelling eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler and Nazism. He describes the country's inflation and the political climate that contributed to Hitler's rise to power and also examines the... Read more

Jazz 101

By: John F. Szwed

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Jazz 101 is a fascinating entr├®e into the world of jazz, for the beginner, novice, or jazz enthusiast. Szwed takes listeners on a tour of the varied and nonlinear history of jazz, exploring how it developed from an ethnic music to become America's most popular music and then part of the avant-garde in less than fifty years. Szwed's complete... Read more

Commander of the Exodus

By: Yoram Kaniuk

Narrated by: William Sutherland

Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most inventive, brilliant novelists in the Western world,” Yoram Kaniuk turns his hand to nonfiction to bring us his most important work yet. It is the story of Yossi Harel, a modern-day Moses who defied the blockade of the British Mandate to deliver more than 24,000 displaced Holocaust survivors to... Read more

Ethnic America

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: James Bundy

Length: 12 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the greatest dramas in all of modern times involves the peopling of America. In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell provides a useful and concise record tracing the history of nine ethnic groups: the Irish, the Germans, the Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Blacks, the Puerto Ricans, and the Mexicans.Sowell offers... Read more

Silicon Gold Rush

By: Karen Southwick

Narrated by: Sneha Mathan

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

A hotbed of activity for farsighted thinkers and determined doers, the high-technology industry has given rise to a pioneering group of entrepreneurs and executives that is not only behind today’s most innovative technological advances, but at the forefront of a dynamic new movement in business.Armed with groundbreaking management approaches,... Read more

Compassion versus Guilt, and Other Essays

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: Michael Kevin

Length: 6 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Sociologist-economist Sowell, a noted conservative, draws this collection of essays from his Scripps-Howard syndicated column and his contributions to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.Sowell offers opinions on social and foreign policy, law, education, and race, criticizing the trend of American politics since... 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

Six Days of War

By: Michael B. Oren

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 17 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as “the Setback.” Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish... Read more

A Conflict of Visions

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: Michael Edwards

Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conlficts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern.In this book, which the author calls a "culmination of thirty years of work in the history of ideas," Sowell attempts to explain the ideological difference between liberals and conservatives as a... Read more

The Triumph of Liberty

By: Jim Powell

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 26 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Of humankind’s great achievements over the past 2,000 years, one towers above all the rest: the arduous, painstaking process of wresting liberty from tyranny’s iron fist. The Triumph of Liberty chronicles this inspiring story through sixty-five biographical portraits. From the millions of men and women whose struggles and successes have made... Read more

Forbes Greatest Investing Stories

By: Richard Phalon

Narrated by: Edward Lewis

Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Biotech, high tech, bubbles, and busts—no two stock markets are ever the same. Getting ahead of the game demands something hard to find on Wall Street these days: a flexible long-term strategy good for all seasons. These great investing stories provide a well-honed guide to the practicalities of dealing with the turbulent markets of the new... Read more

Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty

By: Dumas Malone

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 19 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

The third volume in Dumas Malone's distinguished, Pulitzer Prize–winning study of Thomas Jefferson and his time deals with one of the most fascinating and controversial periods of Jefferson's life. It includes the story of the final and most crucial phase of his secretaryship of state; his retirement to Monticello; his assumption of the... Read more