Audiobooks for Nonfiction November

Master Slave Husband Wife

An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

By: Ilyon Woo
Narrated by: Janina Edwards & Leon Nixon
Length: 12 hours 54 minutes

“Ellen and William Craft, married slaves from Georgia, pulled off one of the most daring escapes from slavery in recorded history. Ellen, who was able to pass for white because she had a white father, dressed as a very ill young man. The couple convinced people that they were master and slave bound for the North to seek medical care. After four... Read more

The Country of the Blind

A Memoir at the End of Sight

By: Andrew Leland
Narrated by: Andrew Leland
Length: 7 hours 47 minutes

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE 

Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORKER • THE WASHINGTON POST • THE ATLANTIC • NPR • PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LITHUB

"Fascinating...The great strength of this memoir is its voracious, humble curiosity." - The Atlantic, The 10 Best Books of the Year

A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of... Read more

Men Have Called Her Crazy

A Memoir

By: Anna Marie Tendler
Narrated by: Anna Marie Tendler
Length: 8 hours 39 minutes

“Tendler flays with loving care the scabs of our childhood & young adult years. Exposing the raw underbelly with a grace and poetry befitting an artist of her caliber, while maintaining a level of relatability many fail to achieve. Read more

The Greatest Nobodies of History

Minor Characters from Major Moments

By: Adrian Bliss
Narrated by: Adrian Bliss, Beth Rylance, Sebastian Humphreys & Kristin Atherton
Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

“All at once funny, touching, dazzlingly informative and fascinating, brilliantly imaginative and altogether wonderful. Capable of switching between divine silliness and genuinely tender sweetness, tragedy, and wonder.”—STEPHEN FRY

History belongs to the heroes. But to get the full story, sometimes you have to ask the side characters.
 
The lives... Read more

When Crack Was King

A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

By: Donovan X. Ramsey
Narrated by: Donovan X. Ramsey
Length: 11 hours 33 minutes

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic
 
“A master class in disrupting a stubborn narrative, a monumental feat for the fraught subject of addiction... Read more

Mother Island

A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico

By: Jamie Figueroa
Narrated by: Jamie Figueroa & Kelle Rae Oien
Length: 10 hours 25 minutes

A searing memoir that explores the institutions that defined a Puerto Rican woman and what she unlearned to rediscover herself • "A lushly written, deeply felt investigation into the meanings of home, lineage and selfhood." —Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Body Work and Girlhood

Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who... Read more

Revenge of the Tipping Point

Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

By: Malcolm Gladwell
Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
Length: 8 hours 25 minutes

“Fun return to the Tipping Point. The audio version is great and includes some interesting interviews. Read more

Dinner on Monster Island

Essays

By: Tania De Rozario
Narrated by: Tania De Rozario
Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.Tania De... Read more

Biting the Hand

Growing Up Asian in Black and White America

By: Julia Lee
Narrated by: Julia Lee
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

"Lee's narration of her brilliant memoir is penetrating with insight, raw with confessions, radiant with fury. Her meticulous writing is already stupendous, but the unguarded emotions that flow through her candid voice are a remarkable enhancement. Her tears of frustration and gratitude will surely prove contagious." - Booklist (starred... Read more

They Called Us Exceptional

And Other Lies That Raised Us

By: Prachi Gupta
Narrated by: Prachi Gupta
Length: 9 hours 30 minutes

“In this vulnerable and courageous memoir, Prachi Gupta takes the myth of the exceptional Indian American family to task.”—The Washington Post

“I read it in one sitting. Wow. It aims right at the tender spot where racism, sexism, and family dynamics collide, and somehow manages to be both searingly honest and deeply compassionate.”—Celeste Ng,... Read more

LatinoLand

A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority

By: Marie Arana
Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
Length: 18 hours 3 minutes

“A perfect representation of Latino diversity” (The Washington Post), LatinoLand draws from hundreds of interviews and prodigious research to give us both a vibrant portrait and the little-known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority, in “a work of prophecy, sympathy, and courage” (Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning... Read more

The Message

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

“Through lived experiences Ta-Nehisi learns about the world and how to put it into words. Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

A Living Remedy

A Memoir

By: Nicole Chung
Narrated by: Jennifer Kim
Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKWinner, Tillie Olsen Award for Creative WritingNamed a Best Book of the Year by: Time * Harper’s Bazaar * Esquire * Booklist * USA Today * Elle * Good Housekeeping * New York Times * Electric Literature * TodayFrom the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of family, class and grief—a... Read more

Light in Gaza

Writings Born of Fire

By: Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing & Mike Merryman-Lotze
Narrated by: Amin El Gamal & Hanne Rickert
Length: 8 hours 45 minutes

“This is such a powerful book. It will make you cry and it will make you angry, but I implore you to read it anyway. It took me a few months to finish because it is a painful read, but I know I am more informed as well as heartbroken. Read more

How to Say Babylon

A Memoir

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

“Jamaican-born poet Safiya Sinclair’s memoir about growing up in a strict Rastafarian household is one of the most powerful stories I have experienced in a long time. I learned so much about Jamaica, Rastafarianism, and this extraordinary woman listening to How to Say Babylon. Sinclair’s exquisite prose, heard in her own voice is ravishing. Her... Read more

Poverty, by America

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

“A succinct discussion of the causes, effects, and potential changes required to eradicate poverty in the United States. Read more

Code Dependent

Living in the Shadow of AI

By: Madhumita Murgia
Narrated by: Madhumita Murgia
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

“As someone who doesn't really care for new technologies, listening to this book has been very enlightening for me, as it shows that not only AI is now more and more infused in our everyday lives, but also how it's not all black or white and how it can sometimes be really useful and sometimes frankly frightening and threatening to our very... Read more

What I Ate in One Year

(and related thoughts)

By: Stanley Tucci
Narrated by: Stanley Tucci
Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

“I absolutely loved having Stanley Tucci walk me through a year of his life and the meals he ate. I’ve never heard someone talk about a love of pasta in a way that makes me feel seen. His brief discussion on buttered pasta with cheese was like he reached into my soul to perfectly describe my go to comfort food. Additionally, his dry sense of... Read more

Bibliotherapy

Books to Guide You Through Every Chapter of Life

By: Molly Masters
Narrated by: Molly Masters
Length: 4 hours 12 minutes

A beautiful, thoughtful guide to finding your perfect next read, no matter what life’s throwing at you, from the founder of Aphra a.k.a. ‘your inclusive AF feminist book club’ Through turbulent times, stories keep us afloat. Books, particularly, console and guide us, feed our souls, and open our eyes... Read more