Barack Obama's Favorites of 2023

Poverty, by America

By: Matthew Desmond
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

“This is an incredibly well written book that I think anyone who is living comfortably in America should read. It is heavy and sad, but even though hearing hard things is hard, it can be necessary. Some sections have a lot of stats, but it doesn’t get too bogged down with numbers. The final few chapters are more inspiring with a call-to-action... Read more

How to Say Babylon

A Memoir

By: Safiya Sinclair
Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
Length: 16 hours 46 minutes

“The author's growing understanding of her childhood isolation and the world around her helped turn her pain into poetry as she broke free. After reading this memoir I am now interested in reading some of her award winning poetry. Read more

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

A Novel

By: James McBride
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 12 hours 21 minutes

“This is a novel about the power of compassion to stir communities of characters to act as their best selves. The beautiful performance of narrator Dominic Hoffman amplifies the warmth in James McBride's memorable story. I'm grateful to have experienced this story through an audiobook. Read more

The MANIAC

By: Benjamin Labatut
Narrated by: Gergo Danka & Eva Magyar
Length: 9 hours 50 minutes

“After reading When We Cease To Understand The World, I was immediately anticipating whatever Benjamin Labatut would release next. With The MANIAC, Labatut strikes gold again. This time he takes his truth based fictional approach and hones in on one man, John von Neumann, whose range of expertise includes mathematics, quantum physics, nuclear... Read more

The Wager

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

By: David Grann
Narrated by: Dion Graham & David Grann
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

“Few authors are able to write nonfiction history that reads like a page turning adventure novel, but David Grann is one of them. The gripping story of The Wager’s shipwreck and the survivors’ divergent tales of the events that followed kept me on the edge of my seat as I devoured this book. Martin Scorsese has already acquired the film rights. Read more

The Vaster Wilds

A Novel

By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

“A riveting, rich testament of a novel. I loved every page of this pilgrim's tale of survival (both before and after her entrance into the New England wilderness) and found the heroine a delightful sort of 17th century Mary Oliver. The Vaster Wilds is harrowing in its descriptions of paupers' life in Elizabethan England and an exile's life in the... Read more

The Covenant of Water

By: Abraham Verghese
Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
Length: 31 hours 16 minutes

“Seven decades (in book time!) and more than 700 pages later, I closed The Covenant of Water, the story of a family haunted by drownings. Abraham Verghese has written a spellbinding novel set in a Christian community in India. Verghese draws, as he did in the other two books, on his vast knowledge of medicine, and exhibits his ability to delve... Read more

All the Sinners Bleed

A Novel

By: S. A. Cosby
Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 13 hours 42 minutes

“What appears at the start to be a story about a Black boy being killed by police turns into a layered tale of sustained abuse, systemic neglect, and deranged evangelical serial killers set in a small Appalachian town. At no point reading this powerful and suspenseful mystery did I have any guess where it was going and it was such a wonderful... Read more

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

By: Tim Alberta
Narrated by: Tim Alberta
Length: 18 hours 15 minutes

Instant New York Times BestsellerOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the YearAn Economist and Air Mail Best Book of the Year""Brave and absorbing."" -- New York Times“Alberta is not just a thorough and responsible reporter but a vibrant writer, capable of rendering a farcical scene in vivid hues.” -- Washington Post“An astonishingly... Read more

The Best Minds

A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

By: Jonathan Rosen
Narrated by: Jonathan Rosen
Length: 16 hours 43 minutes

“The best book I have ever read about schizophrenia. Rosen weaves the story of a close friend into the intellectual, social, and cultural fabric that has defined mental illness and schizophrenia in our time. Among other insights, he places the collapse of psychiatric treatment options within the post structural intellectual paradigm. Above all... Read more

King: A Life

By: Jonathan Eig
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 20 hours 45 minutes

Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narrator!

This program is narrated by Dion Graham, narrator of over 300 audiobooks and an AudioFile Golden Voice. Dion has won multiple Earphones and Audie Awards.

"Dion Graham superbly narrates this riveting audiobook, emulating the majestic cadence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, speeches. He... Read more

Humanly Possible

Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

By: Sarah Bakewell
Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 14 hours 26 minutes

The New York Times bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 • A New York Times Notable Book

“A book of big and bold ideas, Humanly Possible is humane in approach and, more important, readable and worth reading. . . Bakewell is wide-ranging, witty and compassionate.” –Wall Street Journal

“Sweeping . . . linking philosophical... Read more

Chip War

The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology

By: Chris Miller
Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

The Financial Times Business Book of the Year, this epic account of the decades-long battle to control one of the world’s most critical resources—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in fierce competition is “pulse quickening…a nonfiction thriller” (The New York Times).

You may be surprised to learn that microchips... Read more

This Other Eden

By: Paul Harding
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 6 hours 8 minutes

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together.... Read more