History audiobooks

Bush at War - Abridged

By: Bob Woodward

Narrated by: James Naughton

Length: 6 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: Yes

With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers, after the initial shock of the September 11 attacks, led the nation to war.
Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council - -- and firsthand... Read more

The Conquerors - Abridged

By: Michael R. Beschloss

Narrated by: Michael R. Beschloss

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A New York Times bestseller, The Conquerors reveals how Franklin Roosevelt's and Harry Truman's private struggles with their aides and Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin affected the unfolding of the Holocaust and the fate of vanquished Nazi Germany.

With monumental fairness and balance, The Conquerors shows how Roosevelt privately refused... Read more

Blood Warriors - Abridged

By: Col. Michael Lee Lanning

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 2 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Rangers, Green Berets, SEALs, Delta Force, LRRPs, Force Recon—
and the struggle of the best and the bravest to keep America free

They’re some of the toughest and most highly trained fighting men in the world—going where no ordinary soldier would go and doing what no ordinary soldier would dare. Outnumbered and outgunned, operating in small teams... Read more

No End Save Victory - Abridged

By: Various

Narrated by: Leo Burmester

Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: Yes

No End Save Victory will find a large and appreciative audience eager to hear what our era's most distinguished historical thinkers and writers have to say about this most crucial of 20th-century conflicts, World War II. Read more

Live from New York - Abridged

By: Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller

Narrated by: Ensemble Cast

Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Live from New York does what no other book about the show has ever done: It lets the people who were there tell the story in their own words, blunt and loving and uncensored. Read more

No End Save Victory Volume 2 - Abridged

By: Various

Narrated by: Leo Burmester

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: Yes

This second set of essays from No End Save Victory will find a large and appreciative audience eager to learn more about his most crucial of 20th-century conflicts, World War II. Read more

Raising the Hunley - Abridged

By: Schuyler Kropf & Brian Hicks

Narrated by: Harry Chase

Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Two prize-winning journalists, Brian Hicks and Schulyer Kropf, have chronicled this fascinating story of military daring, momentary victory, sudden death, buried secrets, persistence, and ultimate payoff. Read more

Secrets - Abridged

By: Daniel Ellsberg

Narrated by: Dan Cashman & Daniel Ellsberg

Length: 10 hours

Abridged: Yes

Covering the decade between his entry into the Pentagon and Nixon's resignation, Secrets is Ellsberg’s meticulously detailed insider's account of the secrets and lies that shaped American foreign policy during the Vietnam era. Read more

The Demon in the Freezer - Abridged

By: Richard Preston

Narrated by: James Naughton

Length: 5 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.”—Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy

The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons.... Read more

The Age of Sacred Terror - Abridged

By: Daniel Benjamin & Steven Simons

Narrated by: Philip Bosco

Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon began working on this book shortly after leaving the National Security Council, where, as director and senior director for counterterrorism, they watched the rise of al-Qaeda and helped coordinate America’s fight against Usama bin Laden and his organization. They warned in articles and interviews about the... Read more

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Abridged

By: Edmund Morris

Narrated by: Harry Chase

Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt ... Read more

An Army at Dawn - Abridged

By: Rick Atkinson

Narrated by: Rick Atkinson

Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In the first volume of a remarkable trilogy, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.
The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is an epic story of courage and calamity, of miscalculation and enduring triumph. An Army at Dawn begins on the eve of Operation TORCH, the... Read more

The Measure of All Things - Abridged

By: Ken Alder

Narrated by: Brian Jennings

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their... Read more

Last Train to Paradise - Abridged

By: Les Standiford

Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie

Length: 6 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad—one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores.

In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D.... Read more

Spoon River Anthology - Abridged

By: Edgar Lee Masters

Narrated by: Patrick Fraley, Edward Asner & a full cast

Length: 4 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Deemed "essential" in the canon of American literature, this audiobook masterpiece performed in its entirety by a full cast of fifty makes the classic accessible to everyone. From a cemetery in a fictional mid-American town, the dead speak the truths about their lives. Some speak of hardships and sordid affairs, while others speak of their... Read more

Winston Churchill

By: John Keegan

Narrated by: Richard Matthews

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

"[Keegan is] the best military historian of the world."—Tom Clancy
 
When today’s world leaders require inspiration and strength in times of crisis, they often invoke Winston Churchill. The son of a member of Parliament, Churchill, a poor academic student, wanted to be a solider early in life. At this he succeeded brilliantly, fighting... Read more

The Age of Gold - Abridged

By: H. W. Brands

Narrated by: Brian Mancinelli

Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: Yes

By the Author of the Bestselling Pulitzer Prize Finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN

THEY WENT WEST TO CHANGE THEIR LIVES AND IN THE BARGAIN THEY CHANGED THE WORLD. THIS IS THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE GOLD RUSH.

When gold was first discovered on the American River above Sutter's Fort in January 1848, California was sparsely... Read more

William F. Buckley: Nuremberg

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Author William F. Buckley tells the story of young German-American Sebastian Reinhardt who served as an interpreter during the Nuremberg trials of 1945 in his novel Nuremberg: the Reckoning. In this interview, Buckley discusses the synergy of fact and fiction in the novel, performing research, the impact of the trials, and more. Read more

American Studies - Abridged

By: Louis Menand

Narrated by: Ron McLarty

Length: 6 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Brilliant, surprising insights into America yesterday and today from the New York Times bestselling author of The Metaphysical Club. Read more

The Cell - Abridged

By: John Miller & Michael Stone

Narrated by: John Miller

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

In New York City, a a handful of veteran FBI agents, police officers and investigative journalists had known for years that a terrorist event on the scale of 9/11 was likely. Ironically, one of the men who had been most aware of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden had recently left the FBI, where he had been following the movements of bin Laden... Read more

The Raid - Abridged

By: Benjamin F. Schemmer

Narrated by: Dick Rodstein

Length: 2 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Minutes after 2 A.M. on November 21, 1970, more than one hundred U.S. war planes shattered the dark calm of the skies over Hanoi. Their mission: rescue sixty-one American POWs from Son Tay prison. Less than thirty minutes later, the raid was over, but no Americans had been rescued. The prisoners had been moved from Son Tay four and a half months... Read more

A Ranger Born - Abridged

By: Robert W. Black

Narrated by: Charles Stransky

Length: 1 hour 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Even as a boy growing up amid the green hills of rural Pennsylvania, Robert W. Black knew he was destined to become a Ranger. With their three-hundred-year history of peerless courage and independence of spirit, Rangers are a uniquely American brand of soldier, one foot in the military, one in the wilderness—and that is what fired Black’s... Read more

A Long Way From Home

By: Tom Brokaw

Narrated by: Dan Cashman

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it, by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation.

In this beautiful memoir, Tom Brokaw writes of America and of the American experience. From his parents’ life in the 1930s, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in... Read more

Arab and Jew

By: David K. Shipler

Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld

Length: 27 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Arab stereotype portrays the Jew as a brutal, violent coward. The Jewish stereotype portrays the Arab as a primitive creature of animal vengeance and cruel desires. In this monumental Pulitzer Prize–winning work, revised in 2002, David Shipler delves into the origins of these prejudices that have been intensified by war, terrorism, and... Read more