Africa Audiobooks | History

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

"An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles vividly brings to life this lost empire-from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest seapower in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history of Carthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal-the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who also unwittingly led his people to catastrophe. The first full-scale history of Carthage in decades, Carthage Must Be Destroyed reintroduces modern listeners to the larger-than-life historical players and the ancient glory of this almost forgotten civilization."

Richard Miles (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hannibal: A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans Down to the Battle of Pydna

"Hannibal is often considered the finest general the world has ever known. Setting out from Carthaginian-dominated Spain with a small army of select troops, he fought his way over the Pyrenees and crossed the Alps with elephants and a full baggage train. Descending into Italy, he destroyed the main Roman army at Lake Trasimeno and came close to conquering Rome itself. At Cannae, Hannibal's brilliant cavalry tactics enabled him to destroy a reassembled Roman army, and his subsequent defeats over a fifteen-year stay in Italy were due more to lack of sufficient support from home than to any failings of generalship. Theodore Ayrault Dodge's classic history, first published in 1891, is equally perceptive of Hannibal's military prowess and his visionary character. Dodge followed Hannibal's route from Carthage to Italy, paying particular attention to the famous crossing of the Alps, exploring every pass in order to determine Hannibal's route. In this book, he wrote an entire history of the art of war among these two mighty armies. Hannibal remains unequaled as the most comprehensive and readable study of history's greatest general."

Theodore Ayrault Dodge (Author), Bill Wallace (Narrator)

Audiobook

David Livingstone

"Born in an overcrowded slum in Scotland in 1813, David Livingstone worked twelve-hour days in a cotton factory from age ten to twenty-four. But a pamphlet by Karl Gutzlaff changed his life. Resolved to become a missionary, he applied himself to medicine, self-educating and eventually qualifying as a doctor. In 1841, Livingstone left for Africa as a medical missionary, where he would stay for thirty years. In that time, he became a missionary geographer, ethnologist, chemist, botanist, astronomer, anthropologist, discoverer of Victoria Falls and the source of the Congo, and the first to cross the continent. Africans revered him as a virtual saint, while his academic accomplishments became Western legend."

Thomas Hughes (Author), Frederick Davidson (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and His Desert Command

"In the dark and uncertain days of 1941 and 1942, when Rommel's tanks were sweeping toward Suez, a handful of daring raiders were making history for the Allies. They operated deep behind the German lines, often driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa. They hid by day and struck by night, destroying aircraft, blowing up ammunition dumps, derailing trains, and killing many times their own number. These were the SAS—Stirling's desert raiders, the brainchild of a deceptively mild-mannered man with a brilliant idea. Small teams of resourceful, highly trained men would penetrate beyond the front lines of the opposing armies and wreak havoc where the Germans least expected it. The Phantom Major is the classic account of these desert raids, an amazing tale of courage, impudence, and daring, packed with action and high adventure. An intimate record based on eyewitness accounts, this book still stands as the definitive history of the early years of the SAS."

Virginia Cowles (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audiobook

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda

"Inspired by the award-winning film of the same name. If you were told that a murderer was to be released into your neighborhood, how would you feel? But what if it weren't only one, but thousands? Could there be a common roadmap to reconciliation? Could there be a shared future after unthinkable evil? If forgiveness is possible after the slaughter of nearly a million in a hundred days in Rwanda, then today, more than ever, we owe it to humanity to explore how one country is addressing perceptual, social-psychological, and spiritual dimensions to achieve a more lasting peace. If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. Based on personal interviews and thorough research, As We Forgive returns to the boundary lines of genocide's wounds and traces the route of reconciliation in the lives of Rwandans--victims, widows, orphans, and perpetrators--whose past and future intersect. We find in these stories how suffering, memory, and identity set up roadblocks to forgiveness, while mediation, truth-telling, restitution, and interdependence create bridges to healing. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation. The result is a narrative that breathes with humanity and is as haunting as it is hopeful."

Catherine Claire Larson (Author), Bahni Turpin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda

"We learn who we are as we walk together in the way of Jesus. So I want to invite you on a pilgrimage. Rwanda is often held up as a model of evangelization in Africa. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Thursday of Easter week, Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide. With a mother who was a Hutu and a father who was a Tutsi, author Emmanuel Katongole is uniquely qualified to point out that the tragedy in Rwanda is also a mirror reflecting the deep brokenness of the church in the West. Rwanda brings us to a cry of lament on our knees where together we learn that we must interrupt these patterns of brokenness But Rwanda also brings us to a place of hope. Indeed, the only hope for our world after Rwanda’s genocide is a new kind of Christian identity for the global body of Christ—a people on pilgrimage together, a mixed group, bearing witness to a new identity made possible by the Gospel."

Emmanuel M. Katongole, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Author), Jonathan Petersen, Jonathan Peterson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ivory's Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants

"“[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest.” —The Huffington Post Praised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker’s Ivory’s Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and gemstones held allure, ivory came to be prized in every culture of the world—from ancient Egypt to nineteenth-century America to modern Japan—for its beauty, rarity, and ability to be finely carved. But the beauty came at an unfathomable cost. Walker lays bare the ivory trade’s cruel connection with the slave trade and the increasing slaughter of elephants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1980s, elephant poaching reached levels that threatened the last great herds of the African continent, and led to a worldwide ban on the ancient international trade in tusks. But the ban has failed to stop poaching—or the emotional debate over what to do with the legitimate and growing stockpiles of ivory recovered from elephants that die of natural causes. “Ivory’s Ghost is essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation and with the tenuous future of one of the most magnificent creatures our earth has ever seen.” —George B. Schaller, author of A Naturalist and Other Beast"

John Frederick Walker (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962

"The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture. Nearly half a century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algeria's independence, and yet its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France but throughout the world. Indeed, from today's vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad-struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity. A Savage War of Peace is the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian's art."

Alistair Horne (Author), James Adams (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur

"The Devil Came on Horsebackis an intense, vivid autobiographical report from the heart of violent Darfur and a call to action by a former American marine who became a military observer for the African Union. The first extensive on-the-ground account of the genocide in Sudan, itleads us through the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens and the frustrating complexity of international inaction. At the same time, it is a powerful memoir of one soldier's awakening to conscience and his awkward, heroic transformation from marine to humanitarian. While bearing witness to unmentionable atrocities, this compelling story offers evidence that the actions of just one committed person have the power to transform the world."

Brian Steidle (Author), Jeff Cummings (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sufferings in Africa: Captain Riley’s Narrative

"In this classic true adventure story, a young American sea captain named James Riley, shipwrecked off the western coast of North Africa in 1815, is captured by a band of nomadic Arabs and sold into slavery. Thus begins an epic adventure of survival and a quest for freedom that takes him across the Sahara desert. This dramatic account of Captain Riley's trials and sufferings sold more than one million copies in his day and was even read by a young and impressionable Abraham Lincoln. The degradations of a slave existence and the courage to survive under the most harrowing conditions have rarely been recorded with such painful honesty. Sufferings in Africa is a classic travel-adventure narrative and a fascinating testament of white Americans enslaved abroad, during a time when slavery flourished throughout the United States."

Captain James Riley (Author), Brian Emerson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Africa Audiobooks in History