History audiobooks

Riddle of the Compass - Abridged

By: Amir D. Aczel

Narrated by: Henry Leyva

Length: 3 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The story of the compass is shrouded in mystery and myth, yet most will agree it begins around the time of the birth of Christ in ancient China. A mysterious lodestone whose powers affected metal was known to the Chinese emperor. When this piece of metal was suspended in water, it always pointed north. This unexplainable occurrence led to the... Read more

The Big Enchilada

By: Stuart P. Stevens

Narrated by: Edward Holland

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Six years ago he owned a baseball team. Now he's the leader of the free world. "The Big Enchilada" is a comic anthem to the wild and improbable crusade that propelled George W. Bush into the White House and to the close-knit group of Texans who made it happen, written by "the Bush campaign's Renaissance man" (Time magazine).

Writer and political... Read more

The Rehnquist Choice - Abridged

By: John W. Dean

Narrated by: Boyd Gaines & John W. Dean

Length: 5 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The explosive story of how William Rehnquist became a Supreme Court Justice, told by the only person who could have revealed this information—John W. Dean.

In 1971, William Rehnquist seemed the perfect choice to fill a seat on the United States Supreme Court. He was a young, well-polished lawyer who shared many of President Richard Nixon's... Read more

Currahee! - Abridged

By: Donald R. Burgett

Narrated by: David Guion

Length: 1 hour 44 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Seven days in hell

In June 1944, the Allies launched a massive amphibious invasion against Nazi-held France. But under the cover of darkness, a new breed of fighting man leapt from airplanes through a bullet-stitched, tracer-lit sky to go behind German lines. These were the Screaming Eagles of the newly formed 101st Airborne Division. Their job... Read more

When Genius Failed - Abridged

By: Roger Lowenstein

Narrated by: Roger Lowenstein

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: Yes

John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then,... Read more

Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds - Abridged

By: Gary M. Pomerantz

Narrated by: Boyd Gaines

Length: 6 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In August 1995, twenty-six passengers and a crew of three board a commuter plane in Atlanta headed for Gulfport, Mississippi. Shortly after takeoff they hear an explosion and some see a mangled engine lodged against the wing. From that moment, nine minutes and twenty seconds elapse until the crippled plane crashes in a west Georgia hayfield.... Read more

War in a Time of Peace - Abridged

By: David Halberstam

Narrated by: David Halberstam

Length: 5 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Pulitzer Prize­-winning journalist David Halberstam chronicles Washington politics and foreign policy in post­ Cold War America.

Evoking the internal conflicts, unchecked egos, and power struggles within the White House, the State Department, and the military, Halberstam shows how the decisions of men who served in the Vietnam War, and those who... Read more

Ava's Man - Abridged

By: Rick Bragg

Narrated by: Rick Bragg

Length: 5 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: Yes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South.

This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible... Read more

Stephen Ambrose: The Wild Blue

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Gwen Ifill talks with historian and author Stephen Ambrose and World War II pilot and former Senator George McGovern about Ambrose's new book, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B24's over Germany. Read more

The Wild Blue

By: Stephen E. Ambrose

Narrated by: Jeffrey DeMunn

Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Stephen E. Ambrose, acclaimed author of Band of Brothers and Undaunted Courage, carries us along in the crowded and dangerous B-24s as their crews fought to destroy the German war machine during World War II.

The young men who flew the B-24s over Germany in World War II fought against horrific odds, and, in The Wild Blue, Ambrose recounts their... Read more

The Wild Blue - Abridged

By: Stephen E. Ambrose

Narrated by: Jeffrey DeMunn

Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Stephen E. Ambrose, acclaimed author of Band of Brothers and Undaunted Courage, carries us along in the crowded and dangerous B-24s as their crews fought to destroy the German war machine during World War II.

The young men who flew the B-24s over Germany in World War II fought against horrific odds, and, in The Wild Blue, Ambrose recounts their... Read more

Guns, Germs and Steel - Abridged

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history’s broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age... Read more

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

By: Daniel Stashower

Narrated by: Richard Matthews

Length: 15 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

This compelling biography examines the extraordinary life and strange contrasts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the struggling provincial doctor who became the most popular storyteller of his age when he created Sherlock Holmes. From his youthful exploits aboard a whaling ship, to his often stormy friendships with such figures as Harry Houdini and... Read more

Pete Hamill on Eddie Stanky - Abridged

By: Pete Hamill

Narrated by: Pete Hamill

Length: 14 minutes

Abridged: Yes

It's a cold spring day in 1944. A young Pete Hamill is with his father watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Boston Braves. The wartime teams are just dismal - many major league players are serving their country and the teams have been clogged with has-beens and guys that are 4-F. But Pete's father tells him to "watch this little guy." His name... Read more

Dante

By: R. W. B. Lewis

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 5 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In Dante, Lewis traces the life and complex development—emotional, artistic, philosophical—of this supreme poet-historian, from his wanderings through Tuscan hills and splendid churches to his days as a young soldier fighting for democracy, to his civic leadership and years of embittered exile from the city that would fiercely reclaim him a... Read more

War Letters - Abridged

By: Andrew Carroll

Narrated by: Joan Allen & Tom Brokaw

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project, with the goal of remembering Americans who have served their nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, over 50,000 letters have poured in from around the country. Nearly two hundred of them comprise this amazing collection—including never-before-published letters that... Read more

Ghost Soldiers - Abridged

By: Hampton Sides

Narrated by: James Naughton

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A tense, powerful, grand account of one of the most daring exploits of World War II.

On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected troops from the elite U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty miles in an attempt to rescue 513 American and British POWs who had spent three years in a... Read more

Close to Shore - Abridged

By: Michael Capuzzo

Narrated by: Len Cariou

Length: 6 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.

In July 1916 a lone Great White left its usual... Read more

John Adams

By: David McCullough

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 29 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling biography of America’s founding father and second president that was the basis for the acclaimed HBO series, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent,... Read more

John Adams - Abridged

By: David McCullough

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann & Jan Maxwell

Length: 9 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling biography of America’s founding father and second president that was the basis for the acclaimed HBO series, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent,... Read more

An Album of Memories - Abridged

By: Tom Brokaw

Narrated by: Tom Brokaw

Length: 3 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“I cannot go anywhere in America without people wanting to share their wartime experiences....The stories and the lessons have emerged from long-forgotten letters home, from reunions of old buddies and outfits, from unpublished diaries and home-published memoirs....As the stories in this album of memories remind us, it truly was an American... Read more

Diary of an Airborne Ranger - Abridged

By: Frank Johnson

Narrated by: Don Leslie

Length: 1 hour 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Perhaps the most accurate story of LRRPs at war
ever to appear in print!

When Frank Johnson arrived in Vietnam in 1969, he was nineteen, a young soldier untested in combat like thousands of others--but with two important differences: Johnson volunteered for the elite L Company Rangers of the 101st Airborne Division, a long range reconnaissance... Read more

LRRP Company Command - Abridged

By: Kregg P. Jorgenson

Narrated by: Don Leslie

Length: 2 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A gripping account of ordinary men with extraordinary courage and heroism who had one last chance to make good—and one helluva war zone to do it in.
 
The new commander of the Company E, 52d Infantry LRRPs, Capt. George Paccerelli, was tough, but the men’s new AO was brutal. It was bad enough that the provinces of Binh Long, Phuoc Long, and Tay... Read more

Far Appalachia

By: Noah Adams

Narrated by: Noah Adams

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

With his sharp eye and gentle wit, Noah Adams doesn't just tell stories, he lets them unfold quietly, powerfully, and eloquently. Now the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered and bestselling author of Piano Lessons takes us on a river journey through the heart of Appalachia--a journey shared by pioneers and preachers, white-water... Read more