Politics & Economy audiobooks

Joe Biden

By: Evan Osnos

Narrated by: Evan Osnos & David Remnick

Length: 4 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

*A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR*
A concise, brilliant, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s successful lifelong quest for the presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos.

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career... Read more

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

By: Kristen R. Ghodsee

Narrated by: Esther Wane

Length: 5 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

A spirited, deeply researched exploration of why capitalism is bad for women and how, when done right, socialism leads to economic independence, better labor conditions, better work-life balance and, yes, even better sex.

In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The... Read more

Thanks, Obama

By: David Litt

Narrated by: David Litt

Length: 9 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERRemember when presidents spoke in complete sentences instead of in unhinged tweets? David Litt does. In his comic, coming-of-age memoir, he takes us back to the Obama years – and charts a path forward in the age of Trump.More than any other presidency, Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House were defined by young... Read more

Merkel's Law

By: Melissa Eddy

Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan

Length: 5 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

In the vein of Notorious RBG, a fun and inspiring biography filled with lessons from the most powerful woman in the world, based on more than a decade’s worth of coverage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel from New York Times Berlin correspondent Melissa Eddy.

Angela Merkel is a boss. A trailblazer. An icon of colorful suits. Formerly the new... Read more

The Wives

By: Simone Gorrindo

Narrated by: Simone Gorrindo

Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

“[Simone] Gorrindo’s prose is inviting and fluid, and her storytelling is intimate and vivid...[an] engaging, evocative memoir.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A hopeful, unifying memoir.” —People

This profoundly intimate memoir about marriage, friendship, and the power of human connection tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a... Read more

Birding to Change the World

By: Trish O'Kane

Narrated by: Cheryl Smith

Length: 13 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.Trish O’Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New... Read more

When McKinsey Comes to Town

By: Walt Bogdanich & Michael Forsythe

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos

Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm that advises corporations and governments, that highlights the often drastic impact of its work on employees and citizens around the world

"Meticulously reported, and ultimately devastating, this is an important... Read more

No Escape

By: Nury Turkel

Narrated by: Stewart Lang

Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China’s repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has rounded up as many as three million Uyghurs, placing... Read more

Proof of Life

By: Daniel Levin

Narrated by: Will Collyer

Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

​“Truly thrilling. Daniel Levin brilliantly conveys both the menace and the evil of Middle Eastern intrigue, and some victories of human kindness over cruelty and despair.”
—Daniel Kahneman, New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow 
  
“In laying bare the raw human toll of the ferocious and cruel Syrian conflict, Proof of... Read more

Every Day Is a Gift

By: Tammy Duckworth

Narrated by: Tammy Duckworth

Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

In this New York Times bestselling book, learn the incredible story of Illinois senator and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth and see what inspired her to follow the path that made her who she is today.​

In Every Day Is a Gift, Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing—and amazingly true—stories from her incomparable life. In November of... Read more

Protocol

By: Capricia Penavic Marshall

Narrated by: Capricia Penavic Marshall & Courtney Patterson

Length: 16 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

President Obama’s former United States chief of protocol looks at why diplomacy and etiquette matter—from the international stage to everyday life.

History often appears to consist of big gestures and dramatic shifts. But for every peace treaty signed, someone set the stage, using hidden influence to effect the outcome. In her roles as chief of... Read more

Author in Chief

By: Craig Fehrman

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Length: 15 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

“One of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years” (The Wall Street Journal) and based on a decade of research and reporting—a delightful new window into the public and private lives America’s presidents as authors.

Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in the Gettysburg Address and the... Read more

The Poison Squad

By: Deborah Blum

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 11 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times Notable Book 

The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad.

From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change

By the end... Read more

Rising Out of Hatred

By: Eli Saslow

Narrated by: Scott Brick & Eli Saslow

Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

The powerful story of how a prominent white supremacist changed his heart and mind. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, this is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another. 

“Rising Out of Hatred proclaims if the successor to the white nationalist movement can forsake his ideological... Read more

The Road to Unfreedom

By: Timothy Snyder

Narrated by: Timothy Snyder

Length: 10 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be absolute. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. But we now know this to be premature. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system dedicated solely to the consolidation and exercise of... Read more

Travel as a Political Act

By: Rick Steves

Narrated by: Rick Steves

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Change the world one trip at a time. In this illuminating collection of stories and lessons from the road, acclaimed travel writer Rick Steves shares a powerful message that resonates now more than ever.

With the world facing divisive and often frightening events, from Trump, Brexit, and Erdogan, to climate change, nativism, and populism, there's... Read more

When They Call You a Terrorist

By: Patrisse Cullors & asha bandele

Narrated by: Angela Davis & Patrisse Cullors

Length: 6 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrating her own work, Patrisse Khan-Cullors shares the salient moments of her life that led her to become a founder of Black Lives Matter...pain, frustration, and joy [emblazon] each word she utters." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by Patrisse Cullors and includes a bonus conversation.

The emotional and powerful story of one of the... Read more

Secondhand Time

By: Svetlana Alexievich

Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbel...

Length: 22 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

The magnum opus and latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—a symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,”... Read more

Valley So Low

By: Jared Sullivan

Narrated by: Lee Osorio & Jared Sullivan

Length: 12 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history—and the country lawyer determined to challenge the notion that, in America, justice can be bought

For more than fifty years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee,  burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually... Read more

Mississippi Swindle

By: Shad White

Narrated by: Eric Burgher

Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

How America’s youngest state auditor uncovered the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the nation’s poorest state

“A must read” with all the thrills of a John Grisham novel — for fans of shocking true crime exposés like Black Edge and Bad Blood (Peter Schweizer, author of Secret Empires)

This riveting exposé details how a small... Read more

1974

By: Francine Prose

Narrated by: Francine Prose

Length: 8 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

“In this remarkable memoir, the qualities that have long distinguished Francine Prose’s fiction and criticism—uncompromising intelligence, a gratifying aversion to sentiment, the citrus bite of irony—give rigor and, finally, an unexpected poignancy to an emotional, artistic, and political coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s—the decade, as she... Read more

The Future of Geography

By: Tim Marshall

Narrated by: Tim Marshall

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography and leading geopolitics expert comes an “insightful, hopeful, and endlessly fascinating” (Daily Express) book on today’s space race—including the increasingly tense power struggle between the US, China, and Russia and what it means for all of us here on Earth.

Spy satellites... Read more

The Meth Lunches

By: Kim Foster

Narrated by: Sara Sheckells

Length: 12 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table—eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the... Read more

The Forgotten Girls

By: Monica Potts

Narrated by: Monica Potts

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Talented and ambitious, Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both determined to make something of themselves. How did their lives turn out so different?

“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth... Read more