History Audiobooks

The Windermere Children: A true Holocaust story

Audiobook

Guadalcanal's Forgotten Fight: The U.S. Army's Crucial Role

"When the name Guadalcanal is mentioned, most picture Marines desperately fighting in the dense jungles and the United States Navy in dramatic surface battles. That story, though true, tells only part of the campaign. Less well known is the role played by the United States Army. While the Marines landed and fought off several Japanese counterattacks it was the Army's soldiers who followed and bore a large share of the brutal ground fighting that stretched on for months. These fights were not 'mopping up' actions normally associated with the Army, but brutal battles against a determined enemy. Arriving under difficult conditions and often overshadowed by their naval brethren, the Army's contributions on Guadalcanal have too often been relegated to the footnotes of history. This account finally brings them out of the shadows, recounting their contribution through a blend of operational history with clear soldier perspectives. Drawing on official records, terrain analysis and firsthand testimonies, the book provides new accounts from multiple perspectives, including Japanese sources not previously published. Units such as the 25th Infantry Division, Americal Division and the 147th Infantry Regiment are covered in detail. Dave Holland, a former United States Marine and law enforcement investigator, spent three years on the ground, studying the battlefields through research, investigation, and documentation. Drawing on his military experience and investigative skills, Holland offers a detailed analysis of the campaign with attention to the role of terrain. Following on from his first work, Guadalcanal's Longest Fight, this book serves as a companion to tell the complete land campaign story."

Dave R. Holland (Author), Jonathan Todd Ross (Narrator)

Audiobook

From Frankism to Jacobinism

"In this audiobook, the world-renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) describes the three extraordinary lives of Moses Dobrushka. Beginning his life as a Bohemian Jew in the antinomian cult of Sabbatean Frankism, Dobrushka first re-invented himself as the Catholic Austrian nobleman Franz Thomas von Schönfeld before abandoning this identity to become the Jacobin “Junius Frey.” On the fifth of April 1794, Dobrushka met his fate at the guillotine alongside such luminaries of the French Revolution as Danton and Desmoulins. In the course of this biography, the author explains some critical historical links between revolutionary liberalism, Freemasonry, and Judaism."

Gershom Scholem (Author), George Spelvin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Forbidden Fruit: The Secret, Scandalous History of Contraception and Abortion

"From acclaimed historian and host of the Dirty Sexy History podcast Jessica Cale comes the gripping and untold history of contraception and abortion pre-Roe v. Wade that finally puts the intelligent, overlooked women who exercised unimaginable control over their fertility at the forefront. Anti-abortion groups have long used incorrect history to argue against reproductive care, promoting a false nostalgia for a past where women were only housewives and abortion was unthinkable. In truth, says acclaimed historian Jessica Cale, history is filled with courageous women who were not passive pawns, but active agents of change and masters of their sexual destinies-and it's time their stories were told. In Forbidden Fruit, Cale sheds light on the state of contraception and abortion pre-Roe v. Wade, unearthing the stories and practices of the real women who lived it-like St. Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval nun who preserved recipes for abortifacients that were used in routine healthcare with the support of the Church; Hannah Woolley, an iconic 17th century Martha Stewart whose cookbooks containing home "remedies" sold out of multiple printings; and Teresia Constantia Phillips, the British courtesan behind the first major internationally serviced condom store in London. Cale's painstaking research into historical theory, practice, and efficacy covers the surprising history and broader social impact of contraceptive methods such as ancient pessaries, herbal 'menstrual regulators,' douching, and coitus interruptus, as well as modern methods like the IUD, the Pill, and condoms. Following the story of fertility control from the first civilizations in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to today, she presents a stunning new perspective-that women in past eras had access to contraception and abortion with fewer restrictions and less social stigma than they face in the United States today. A fascinating history and a timely rallying cry, Forbidden Fruit stresses that, with the future of birth control uncertain, it is more important than ever to understand its past."

Jessica Cale (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Secret Inquisition: The Untold Story of Mussolini, the Vatican, and Fascist Italy's War on the Jews

"Based on never-before-examined Fascist and Vatican archives, a shocking, groundbreaking history of Italy's 1938 racial laws and the desperate measures thousands of Jewish families took to save themselves before and during World War II, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and bestselling author of The Pope at War "[Kertzer is] the most effective excavator of the Vatican's hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II."-The New York Times "Draws on previously unseen Vatican records to spotlight Jewish Italians who underwent a bureaucratic struggle to be reclassified as Aryan to avoid Mussolini's race laws."-Publishers Weekly One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Books of the Year In 1938, Benito Mussolini shocked Italy and the world by announcing a campaign against the country's small but ancient Jewish minority. As an ally of Hitler and the Nazi regime, Mussolini implemented strict 'race laws,' requiring Jews to register their existence, while throwing all Jewish children out of the country's school and many of the adults out of their jobs. What followed, David I. Kertzer argues, was nothing short of a twentieth century inquisition as the Fascist authorities, often aided by the Vatican, determined who was and was not subject to persecution and, ultimately, arrest and deportation to Europe's death camps. These designations, however, were often arbitrary, bureaucratic, and contradictory, leading many Jews to apply to change their identities and claim Christian, "Aryan" status in a desperate attempt to save their families and themselves. Based on thousands of previously unexamined archival files, The Secret Inquisition focuses on eleven stunning, dramatic cases, including Mussolini's longtime Jewish lover, Margherita Sarfatti; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi and his Jewish wife; a young man who befriends Primo Levi at Auschwitz; and the pope's dentist, who misguidedly believed his closeness to the Vatican and Mussolini's inner circle would protect him. In this unprecedented work, Kertzer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his history of the rise of fascism in Italy, brings his subjects' untold stories to life, shining a light on their hopes, fears, and human dignity, while reminding us of the dangers of fascism and the inevitable debasement of life under dictatorship, lessons all too relevant for today."

David I. Kertzer (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Who We Are: Our Buried History of Anti-Black Racism

"A blistering exposé of how anti-Black racism has influenced the most essential cornerstones of American life - from where we live and where we go to school to our opportunities to vote and our relationship with law enforcement- from the founder of the Who We Are Project and former director of the ACLU and the Trone Center for Justice and Equality Featuring a foreword by Tom Hanks One of America's darkest myths is that the abolition of slavery and the 1960s' dismantling of legalized racial segregation created a racially equitable and just society. But in this illuminating work, Jeffery Robinson uncovers just how deeply anti-Black racism is still woven into the fabric of our nation. White supremacy fueled the country for over a century after the Civil War and is still deeply ingrained in our culture, and racist laws that were banned and deemed unconstitutional have been replaced by more covert ones. Robinson argues that if our country is to change for the better, we must confront this truth. Robinson takes us on a dramatic journey through America's past, from the first group of people captured in Africa and enslaved on American soil to the racist policies and practices still impacting our country today. He argues that anti-Black racism is not just a series of isolated acts but a highly sophisticated system, in which centuries of racial segregation have resulted in flagrant disparities in public school funding, voter turnout, policing, and criminal sentencing. Clear-eyed, explosive, and stirring, Who We Are is a powerful correction of American history that shines a light on our country's darkest stain, revealing who we are in an effort to heal our country and improve who we become."

Jeffrey Robinson (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Shadow and the Flame: Loss, Survival, and the Making of Holocaust Memory

James McAuley (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-1976

"Brazen, incisive, and outrageous as ever, Hunter S. Thompson is back with another astonishing volume of private correspondence, the highly anticipated follow-up to THE PROUD HIGHWAY. Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend: running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado, creating the seminal road book FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, twisting political reporting to new heights for ROLLING STONE and making sense of it all in the landmark FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72. To read Thompson's dispatches from these years addressed to authors and friends, enemies, editors and creditors, and such notables as Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe and Kurt Vonnegut - is to read a raw, revolutionary eyewitness account of one of the most exciting and pivotal eras in American history."

Hunter S. Thompson (Author), Malcolm Hillgartner (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Infectious Mind: How Social Contagion Makes Us Ill

"THE INFECTIOUS MIND is a gripping investigation into one of the strangest frontiers of human behaviour: how physical and psychological symptoms can spread socially – like viruses. From the dancing plagues of medieval Europe to the Pokémon episode that reportedly hospitalised several hundred, social contagion has shaped collective health and hysteria for centuries. Today, platforms like TikTok and YouTube are driving a new wave – from functional tics to dissociative identities – with symptoms that mimic those of others and spread at startling speed. Drawing on history, neurology, psychology and culture, social scientist Matilda Gosling shows how our brains and bodies absorb the emotional currents around us, and how distress finds new forms of expression in each era. This is a book about why symptoms spread, why some become epidemics, and how we can protect ourselves in an age of mass connectedness."

Matilda Gosling (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blood Gold: The Shocking True Story of the Amazon Gold Rush

"A shocking exposé of the dirty trade of gold and how it is pushing the world’s biggest rainforest to the brink of collapse. Gold has a powerful hold over our civilization. The precious metal first attracted the Spanish conquistadors to the new world. For the Incas, only royalty could wear gold. Louis XIV covered Versailles from floor to ceiling in gold. It is excess, wealth, domination and power. In this gripping investigation into the murky origins of gold, journalist Dan Collyns explores the world of gold mining in South America. From the Inca palaces stripped of their riches and the craters of illegal mining in the Amazon, to the Indigenous peoples fighting for survival to the firms laundering gold via the Swiss refineries, jewellery makers and bank vaults of the world - Collyns shows how the extraction and sale of ‘blood gold’ in South America grew from a colonial history of plunder and oppression. More urgently, he will show how we can stem its flow. Travelling to the illegal mining operations deep in the Amazon, Collyns reveals the extraordinary levels of toxic mercury which are being spilled into the world's largest biome, the shocking sister trade of the many underage girls trafficked into sex slavery and the corruption the western hunger for gold has unleashed across South America - for criminal mafias, gold is an even bigger business than cocaine."

Dan Collyns (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Say It Like You Mean It: The Science of Apologies and How They Might Just Save Us

"A surprising dive into the history and science of apologies, showing how our instinct to say 'I'm sorry' might just be our salvation as a species. We’re taught from an early age that a good apology is an essential element of repair, a way of making and keeping friends, and helpful in moving on from conflicts, both small and large. But without regular use, that muscle grows weak, and our lives today are awash with half-hearted and insincere apologies. Whether it’s a celebrity posting an apology online for past racist remarks, a CEO issuing a televised apology for corporate malfeasance, or just a friend cancelling dinner at the last minute, most of us have abandoned the earnest shows of reconciliation we learned on the playground. We all apologize—we have to if we want to get through life. But what makes a “good” apology? When is one necessary, and when is it overkill? Why do members of some cultures seem to apologize more than others? And why does the average apology so often ring hollow? With fascinating case studies and original research, Say It Like You Mean It shows us why apologies have been, and continue to be, the key to our survival as a species. In an ever more polarized world, it is essential to understand the role of remorse and the way that genuine reconciliation can fuel a brighter, more human future. Say It Like You Mean It is the perfect guide to understanding this human instinct and how to deploy it to make a better world for us all."

Judy Eaton (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Spies, Scientists, and Cold War Fictions

"During the Cold War, science and spy fiction moved from the cultural margins to reach new heights of popularity. Spies, Scientists, and Cold War Fictions explores how these genres didn’t just reflect the era – they shaped the diplomatic, military, and scientific realities of the day. Joshua A. Sanborn traces the relationship between adventure narratives, the emerging roles of scientists and spies, and the superpower rivalry. Drawing on works like Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, and the Soviet classic Andromeda Nebula, Sanborn shows how real events, from the rise of Soviet 'science cities' to the development of the U-2 spy plane, often felt torn from the very pages of these novels. Blending cultural history with literary analysis, this book offers a guided tour through the Cold War imagination, revealing how fiction and fact intertwined in shaping a world on the brink of annihilation."

Joshua A. Sanborn (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

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