History audiobooks

Arthashastra, or, The Playbook of Material Gain

By: Chanakya

Narrated by: Chirag Patel

Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Truly radical "Machiavellianism", in the popular sense of that word, is classically expressed in Indian literature in the Arthashastra of Kautilya (written long before the birth of Christ, ostensibly in the time of Chandragupta): compared to it, Machiavelli's The Prince is harmless.
— Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (1919)
Chanakya's treatise,... Read more

Futhark

By: Edred Thorsson

Narrated by: Brian Arens

Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Runes are the ancient Norse alphabet used for communication, divination, and magical work. In Futhark, American runologist Edred Thorsson introduces listeners to the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, their definitions, and mystic properties. The runic system of magic and mysticism is one of the most powerful forms of metaphysical thought available... Read more

The Art Of War

By: Lionel Giles & Sun Tzu

Narrated by: Charles Featherstone

Length: 5 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

There are many versions of this work in English, and it is included as a useful reflection once one has pondered Daoism’s key texts. The title is properly ‘'Sun Tzu's Military Method'. It was written at the time of the Dao and Zhuang Zi, several centuries before the Lieh Tzu. For fifteen hundred years, it was part of China’s canonical strategic... Read more

Spurgeon the Pastor

By: Geoffrey Chang

Narrated by: Graham Geisler

Length: 7 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

How would you get more than 5,000 people to show up at your church?
 
Almost every pastor feels the pressure to get people in the doors. More people means more success, more stability, and more godly influence, right? Often, in their zeal for fruit and growth, pastors and church leaders adopt worldly mechanisms for church growth that end up... Read more

170 Chinese Poems

By: Arthur Waley

Narrated by: Charles Featherstone

Length: 4 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

A selection of the very best of Chinese poetry over the course of a thousand years, from 100 years before Christ was born up of the middle ages. Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry are still the benchmark by which such translations are held, nearly two hundred years after he introduced the west to the wonder of classical Chinese... Read more

The Freedom Shield

By: Maj. John D. Falcon (Ret)

Narrated by: Shawn Compton

Length: 17 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A Vietnam War helicopter pilot shares arresting accounts of flying troops into hot LZs and medevacking the wounded under fire.



The Freedom Shield brings together stories of veterans of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company, who were tasked with carrying troops into battle, attacking enemy positions, and evacuating the wounded in their UH-1... Read more

The World in Books

By: Kenneth C. Davis

Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Leon Nixon & Kenneth C. Davis

Length: 15 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

A delightful, inspiring, and idea-rich selection of fifty-two of the best, most important short nonfiction works of all time—from Plato to Michael Pollan and Dante to Joan Didion—chosen by historian, lifelong reader, and bestselling author of Don’t Know Much About History.

From ancient times to the present day, The World in Books offers a... Read more

Justice on Trial

By: Sean Dupree

Narrated by: Sean Dupree

Length: 3 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Discover the compelling narratives behind landmark legal battles that reshaped the fabric of justice in Justice on Trial: How High-Profile Court Cases Change the Law. Authored by Sean Dupree, this riveting book dives into cases that challenged societal norms, highlighted systemic flaws, and left an indelible mark on law and society.Explore the... Read more

Slaveroad

By: John Edgar Wideman

Narrated by: David Sadzin

Length: 8 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Major literary figure and “master of language” (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational perspective to explore what he calls the “slaveroad,” a daunting, haunting reality that runs throughout American history.

John Edgar Wideman’s “slaveroad” is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great... Read more

Countdown 1960

By: Chris Wallace

Narrated by: Dylan Baker & Chris Wallace

Length: 14 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting new work and fresh take on the lead-up to the presidential election of 1960, drawing timely parallels to the choice Americans face in 2024

It’s January 2, 1960: the day that Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy declared his candidacy; and with this opening scene, Chris Wallace offers readers a front-row seat to history. From the... Read more

A Life in the American Century

By: Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

For the past eight decades, we have lived in "the American Century"—a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivaled power—be it political, economic, or military—on the global stage. Born on the cusp of this new era, Joseph S. Nye Jr. has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world... Read more

Diary of a Crisis

By: Saul Friedländer

Narrated by: Barry Abrams

Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Searching reflections on the crisis in Israel and Gaza by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Holocaust



Diary of a Crisis explores the past tumultuous and traumatic year in Israel-Palestine. The eminent historian Saul Friedländer began a diary of Israeli politics in January 2023 as the country was convulsed by protests against Netanyahu's... Read more

Skid Road

By: Murray Morgan

Narrated by: Bob Souer

Length: 10 hours

Abridged: No

Skid Road tells the story of Seattle "from the bottom up," offering an informal and engaging portrait of the Emerald City's first century, as seen through the lives of some of its most colorful citizens. With his trademark combination of deep local knowledge, precision, and wit, Murray Morgan traces the city's history from its earliest days as a... Read more

The Question of Unworthy Life

By: Dagmar Herzog

Narrated by: Kaliswa Brewster

Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

This audiobook narrated by Kaliswa Brewster reveals the dark history of eugenic thought in Germany from the nineteenth century to today—and the courageous countervoicesBetween 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diagnosed with psychiatric illness or cognitive deficiencies. Not until the 1980s... Read more

Hotel Lux

By: Maurice J. Casey

Narrated by: Maurice Casey

Length: 12 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O'Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future and their time spent in the Comintern's Moscow living quarters.



Historian Maurice Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in... Read more

Baikonur Man

By: Barry L. Stoddard

Narrated by: Rich Miller

Length: 6 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Against the backdrop of the late Cold War, a tiny American start-up company forged a secret deal to place American scientific payloads aboard the Soviet space station MIR. Born out of sheer desperation after the Challenger explosion and grounding of the United States space shuttle program, the agreement was negotiated and approved behind the... Read more

Japan's Holocaust

By: Bryan Mark Rigg, PhD

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 15 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Japan's Holocaust combines research conducted in over eighteen research facilities in five nations to explore Imperial Japan's atrocities from 1927 to 1945 during its military expansions and reckless campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific. This book brings together the most recent scholarship and new primary research to ascertain that Japan... Read more

The Hidden Globe

By: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Narrated by: Patrick Harrison

Length: 12 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TOP 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024

“Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable…What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect.” — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker

"A season of unrest looms ahead, and The Hidden Globe lays out the unvarnished... Read more

The Girl With Three Birthdays

By: Patti Eddington

Narrated by: Rosemary Benson

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable enough to questions—but she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she didn't. The story of her mother cutting off and dying her hair when she was a toddler? She thought it was eccentric and funny, nothing more. When she discovered at fifteen that... Read more

Secret Agenda

By: Jim Hougan

Narrated by: Al Kessel

Length: 15 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Ten years after the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, Jim Hougan—then the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine—set out to write a profile of Lou Russell, a boozy private-eye who plied his trade in the vice-driven underbelly of the nation's capital. Hougan soon discovered that Russell was "the sixth man, the one... Read more

The Unexpected Abigail Adams

By: John L. Smith, Jr.

Narrated by: Janet Metzger

Length: 14 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, was an eyewitness to America's founding, and helped guide the new nation through her observations and advice to her famously prickly husband, who cherished her. In The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman "Not Apt to Be Intimidated," writer and researcher John L. Smith, Jr. draws on more than two thousand letters... Read more

Only in America

By: Richard Bernstein

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

A probing biography of world-renowned Jewish singer and actor Al Jolson and the history of his performance in and the making of The Jazz Singer

Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a... Read more

Jewish Priorities

By: David Hazony

Narrated by: Barry Abrams

Length: 19 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely "pan-Jewish" conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora... Read more

The Burning Earth

By: Sunil Amrith

Narrated by: Esh Alladi

Length: 11 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024



In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of... Read more