History & Culture Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

Lisa Hilton (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Paradise of the Damned: The True Story of an Obsessive Quest for El Dorado, the Legendary City of Go

From the bestselling author of Born to Be Hanged comes a transporting account of the obsessive quest to find El Dorado, set against the backdrop of Elizabethan England's political intrigues and the rival Spanish conquistadors vying for El Dorado's treasure. As early as 1530, rumors of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold, beckoned to European colonizers. Whether there was any truth to the story remained to be seen, but the allure of wealth alone was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory-hungry hopefuls. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic. Throughout his tenuous rise to prominence and fall from grace, the unwavering siren song of El Dorado hypnotized Raleigh. The glittering promise of its wealth appeared to be the solution to all Raleigh's troubles, from his long imprisonment in the Tower of London to his multitude of cutthroat enemies. Captivating, witty, and lush with historical detail, Keith Thomson's Paradise of the Damned charts Raleigh's quixotic search for El Dorado-as well as the many other doomed voyages that preceded and accompanied it.

Keith Thomson (Author), TBD, Timothy Andrés Pabon (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Walk in the Park

From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the epic adventure tale The Emerald Mile comes the most dramatic and deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek. The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park, author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom. Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries. Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors' camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park's remote wildness. An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America's National Parks: an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.

Kevin Fedarko (Author), Kevin Fedarko, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here: A Psychiatrist’s Life

Brought to you by Penguin. A woman with bipolar flies from America in a wedding dress to marry Harry Styles. A lorry driver with schizophrenia believes he’s got a cure for coronavirus. A depressed psychiatrist hides his profession from his GP due to stigma. Most of the characters in this book are his patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? Humane, hilarious and heart-breaking, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is an enlightening and darkly comic medical memoir - from both sides of the doctor’s desk. ©2024 Benji Waterhouse (P) 2024 Penguin Audio

Benji Waterhouse (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

White Terror: A True Story of Murders, Bombings and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrant

In a tour de force of investigative journalism, White Terror tells for the first time the story of the National Socialist Underground in Germany – in an engrossing global story that examines violence, modern racism and national trauma. Before the storming of the U.S. Capitol; before the mass shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Walmart in El Paso, or the mosque in Christchurch; before the mass-murders perpetrated by Dylann Roof in 2015 or Anders Breivik in 2011; before any of that, there was the National Socialist Underground in Germany, where the global rise of white terrorism began. Between 2000 and 2011, the NSU, a Neo-Nazi terrorist trio—one woman, two men—serially killed immigrants, funding their spree through robbing banks and aided by a vast network of like-minded extremists. Anders Breivik, whose writings are widely circulated among hate groups today, hailed the sole surviving member of the NSU as a “martyr.” In a tour de force of investigative journalism and novelistic storytelling in the vein of Say Nothing and Killers of the Flower Moon, White Terror tells the story of the NSU, taking readers back to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of East and West Germany, and the rise of Neo-Nazism. White Terror tells the story of the NSU trio, their radicalization from skinhead youths selling Nazi-themed Monopoly games and trading blows with left-wing punks to full-fledged on-the-run terrorists carrying out bombings and assassinations. But it’s also about something almost as terrifying: the German police and intelligence services that missed clues and overlooked leads, mishandled far-right informants, repeatedly tried to paint the Turkish and Greek murder victims as mafiosos, and, once the terror plot was revealed, covered-up their mistakes and refused to acknowledge their failings. Excellently put together and deeply researched, White Terror is an engrossing story first and foremost about Germany and its difficult history of racism, but also an international story that examines modern racism, an issue every country has to deal with in some form.

Jacob Kushner (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Made in Manchester: A people’s history of the city that shaped the modern world

A rich and vivid history of the city that made the modern world Made in Manchester is the tale of England’s second city; a metropolis that exported industry and commerce to all others and whose culture is celebrated globally. Like Brian Groom’s bestselling Northerners, this definitive history expertly combines pacey narrative with vividly drawn portraits. Manchester was the ‘shock city’ of the Industrial Revolution. Visitors arrived from foreign lands, who saw in it a foretaste of the world’s future. But no one knew whether the upheaval would lead to prosperity or starvation. ‘From this filthy sewer pure gold flows,’ wrote French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville. It was a hotbed of politics too. The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 is immortalised in British folklore. The city was a centre for radical movements such as Chartism, yet also spawned the employer-led Anti-Corn Law League, which made free trade Britain’s economic orthodoxy. It became the centre of the global cotton industry and a pioneer in engineering. But Made in Manchester will also tell the untold story of the pre-industrial age: Manchester’s Roman fort was manned by soldiers from across the empire, prefiguring the cosmopolitanism of the present day. Here can be found the scientists who produced the world’s first stored-program computer; industrialists who laid the foundation of modern mass production; campaigners like Emmeline Pankhurst; writers Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Burgess; composers like Peter Maxwell Davies; and artists such as L.S. Lowry. Manchester’s music scene produced iconic bands including Joy Division and Oasis. Made in Manchester will tackle the city’s sometimes spiky relations with its neighbours and its reputation for arrogance, asking whether the city’s inhabitants have a definable character. And it will ask whether Manchester, through economic decline and recent recovery, has lived up to its early promise, and whether it can still do so today.

Brian Groom (Author), David Judge, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Stars Will Still Be There

The heartbreaking but life-affirming memoir from Nicola Nuttall about her inspirational daughter Laura Laura Nuttall was in her first term at King’s College London in 2018 when she was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. She was given just one year to live. Laura decided to do something positive with every second she had left. She worked her way through the most incredible bucket list, from fishing with Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer to graduating from the University of Manchester, meeting Michelle Obama to dancing on stage with Peter Kay in front of 10,000 people. In the four years between Laura’s diagnosis and her death in May 2023, her mum, Nicola, documented every small moment of joy – and every bit of utter heartbreak. THE STARS WILL STILL BE THERE is Nicola’s gorgeous tribute to her incredibly special daughter and a life lived to the absolute fullest.

Nicola Nuttall (Author), Melanie Crawley, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life in the Centre of the Universe

From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, BC, which burned to the ground in 2021, offer a meditation on hometown―when hometown is gone. Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heat wave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest place on Earth, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, "It was a dark and stormy night," Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, organized-crime journalist and author of over a dozen books, spent his childhood. Although only about 500 people lived in Lytton, Peter liked to joke that he was only the second-best writer to come from his tiny hometown. His grade-school classmate's nephew Kevin Loring, a member of the Nlaka'pamux Nation at Lytton First Nation, had grown up to be a Governor General's Award-winning playwright. The Nlaka'pamux called Lytton "The Centre of the World," a view Buddhists would share in the late twentieth century, as they set up a temple just outside town. In modern times, many outsiders would seek shelter there, often people who just didn't fit anywhere else and were hoping for a little anonymity in the mountains. You'll meet a whole cast of them in this book. A gold rush in 1858 saw conflict with a wave of Californians come to a head with the Canyon War at the junction of the mighty Fraser and Thompson rivers, one that would have changed the map of what was soon to become Canada had the locals lost. The Nlaka'pamux lost over thirty lives in that conflict, as did the American gold seekers. A century later, Lytton hadn't changed much. It was always a place where the troubles of the world seemed to land, even if very few people knew where it was. This book is the story of Lytton, told from a shared perspective, of an Indigenous playwright and the journalist son of a settler doctor who quietly but sternly pushed back against the divisions that existed between populations (Dr. Edwards gladly took a lot of salmon as payment for his services back in the 1960s). Portrayed with all the warmth, humour and sincerity of small-town life, the colourful little town that burned to the ground could be every town's warning if we don't take seriously what this unique place has to teach us.

Kevin Loring, Peter Edwards (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness

Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what they saw (and what they missed) reflects how we perceive and understand the natural world. Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating great art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible, obsessed with trying to outdo his rival, Alexander Wilson. George Ord, a fan and protégé of Wilson, held a bitter grudge against Audubon for years, claiming he had faked much of his information and his scientific claims. A few of Audubon's birds were pure fiction, and some of his writing was invented or plagiarized. Other naturalists of the era, including Charles Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon), John Townsend, and Thomas Nuttall, also became entangled in the scientific derby, as they stumbled toward an understanding of the natural world—an endeavor that continues to this day. Despite this intense competition, a few species—including some surprisingly common songbirds, hawks, sandpipers, and more—managed to evade discovery for years. Here, renowned bird expert and artist Kenn Kaufman explores this period in history from a new angle, by considering the birds these people discovered and, especially, the ones they missed. Kaufman has created portraits of the birds that Audubon never saw, attempting to paint them in that artist's own stunning style, as a way of examining the history of natural sciences and nature art. He shows how our understanding of birds continues to gain clarity, even as some mysteries persist from Audubon's time until ours.

Kenn Kaufman (Author), Mack Sanderson, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Alcatraz: The Last Escape

When Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin boldly escaped from Alcatraz prison on June 11, 1962, it is widely believed that they succumbed to the waters of San Francisco Bay, though no trace of the men has ever been found, only their makeshift raft. In this reexamination of the escape and its aftermath, the Anglin brothers' nephew presents compelling evidence that his uncles did in fact survive and eventually made their way to Brazil, where they married and had children. Using official, government documents the authors show how mobster Mickey Cohen may have been involved in the escape, some revealing letters from fellow inmate Whitey Bulger, and recorded testimony from the person who facilitated their escape to Brazil, the authors make a strong case for the Anglin brothers' survival. In addition, a 1975 photograph of the brothers in Brazil has overcome all challenges to its authenticity by skeptics. This book provides a plausible outcome to one of America's enduring mysteries.

Ken Widner, Mike Lynch (Author), Christopher Grove (Narrator)

Audiobook

Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants Edda L. Fields-Black shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats. In a matter of hours, they torched eight rice plantations and liberated 730 people. Using previously unexamined documents, Fields-Black brings to life intergenerational, extended enslaved families, neighbors, praise-house members, and sweethearts forced to work in South Carolina's deadly tidal rice swamps, sold, and separated during the antebellum period. When Tubman and the gunboats arrived and blew their steam whistles, many of those people clambered aboard, sailed to freedom, and were eventually reunited with their families. The able-bodied Black men freed in the Combahee River Raid enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought behind Confederate lines for the freedom of others still enslaved not just in South Carolina but Georgia and Florida.

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black (Author), Machelle Williams (Narrator)

Audiobook

Thorns, Lust and Glory: The betrayal of Anne Boleyn

Brought to you by Penguin. A queen on the edge. Anne Boleyn has mesmerised the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn's downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate. In Thorns and Glory, Estelle Paranque takes us back to where it all started: to France, where Anne learned the lessons that would set her on the path to becoming one of England's most infamous queens. At the court of the French king as a resourceful teenage girl, Anne's journey to infamy began, and this landmark biography explores the world that shaped her, and how these loyalties would leave her vulnerable, leading to her ruin at the court of Henry VIII. A fascinating new perspective on Tudor history's most enduring story, Thorns and Glory is an unmissable account of a queen on the edge. ©2024 Estelle Paranque (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Estelle Paranque (Author), Anna Wilson-Jones, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

History & Culture Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir