History Audiobooks

Chasing the Headless Horseman: The History, Hijinks, and Halloweens of the Real Sleepy Hollow

"A spirited look at Sleepy Hollow's haunted corners, local lore, and its connection to one of America's most famous ghost stories. National bestselling and Edgar Award–winning travel writer J. W. Ocker investigates the town that inspired Washington Irving's famous short story, 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' Ocker dives into the storied history of the Headless Horseman's stomping grounds, visiting the village's graveyard where Irving himself is buried and exploring all the present-day spookiness of one of the strangest towns in the country. Blending travelogue, cultural criticism, and behind-the-scenes reporting, Ocker uncovers the tensions between tourism and tradition, profit and preservation, fiction and fact. With wit and curiosity, Chasing the Headless Horseman tells the story of how one small town reinvented itself as America's Halloween capital, complete with statues, street signs, and an eighteen-foot-tall Headless Horseman. A must-listen for anyone who loves ghost stories, Halloween, or small-town drama, Ocker's new book does for Sleepy Hollow, New York, what his A Season with the Witch did for Salem, Massachusetts."

J.W. Ocker (Author), Dustin Naylor (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World

"In this compelling history, Peter Chapman shows how the United Fruit Company took bananas from the jungles of Costa Rica to the halls of power in Washington, D. C., with not just clever marketing, but covert CIA operations, bloody coups, and brutalized workforces. And how along the way they turned the banana into a blueprint for a new model of unfettered global capitalism: one that serves corporate power at any cost."

Peter Chapman (Author), Michael Langan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The FBI's War Against the Mafia: How a Band of FBI Gamechangers Defeated the Mob

"With never-before-revealed information, the first-ever insider’s account of how the FBI took down the Mafia’s Five Families once and for all using RICO law, from their investigation’s bold and brilliant inception to its epic, history-making endgame—revealed by the then-untested agent who controlled the investigation that ultimately led to the convictions of the top ranks of Cosa Nostra . . . For over 50 years, the families Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno, and Colombo controlled organized criminal activities throughout the country. Until 1981, when Joe Pistone emerged from his six-year undercover infiltration of the Bonanno family as Mob associate “Donnie Brasco.” It was then that Frank Storey, a newly assigned FBI agent spearheading Mafia investigations in New York, recognized the potential for wiping out the scourge of the Five Families once and for all. Directing a band of 140 young and relatively inexperienced agents who would become the FBI’s game changers, Storey implemented the RICO law—the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Under his directives, they created an effectively groundbreaking playbook in the fight against organized crime. For the first time, the full story of the dismantling of the Commission is told by the one man behind the unprecedented investigation that ended the criminal reign of the Five Families—and the Mafia’s bosses of all bosses—forever."

Frank Storey (Author), David Stifel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tidal Wave: The Pilots, the Princess, and the Enemy Ace - A True Story of Courage and Survival in WWII

"From the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Higher Call, Spearhead, and Devotion comes Tidal Wave, an astonishing true story set in an untold arena of World War II. It's summer 1943, and the world is on fire. Lieutenant Ernie Poulson, a twenty-two-year-old outdoorsman from Utah, finds himself at the controls of America's most advanced bomber, the B-24, brought to North Africa for a top-secret mission. On the far side of Europe, Lieutenant Constantin Cantacuzino, Romania's most daring ace, duels Soviet fighters on the Eastern Front while searching for purpose in an unwinnable war. In Nazi-aligned Romania, Princess Catherine Caradja walks a perilous line between loyalty to her country and quiet defiance, as German forces dig in around the oil refineries in her backyard. And in the royal palace, twenty-one-year-old King Michael of Romania-mocked and sidelined by a Nazi-backed dictator-quietly plots to seize his nation's destiny before it is lost forever. In Tidal Wave, Adam Makos brings these lives together in a sweeping saga of courage and survival, set against history's most audacious air raid: the treetop assault on "Hitler's gas station" at Ploesti, Romania. What begins in flames on August 1, 1943, sparks bonds no one could have foreseen-alliances between enemies-that will decide whether these men and women are consumed by war, or seize their chance at escape and redemption. Drawn from years of extensive research and told with Makos's signature cinematic intensity, Tidal Wave will remind you that even in war's darkest hours, humanity has a way of breaking through."

Adam Makos (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

To War with the All-American: A History of the 82nd Airborne Division

"A definitive history of one of the United States Army's most elite and enduring formations, this book traces the full evolution of the 82nd Airborne Division from its World War I origins to its current role as a rapid-response force. Drawing on rare archival sources and previously unpublished first-hand accounts, it offers a comprehensive portrait of the 'All American' Division across more than a century of service. While the division's exploits during World War II—from their first combat operation jumping into Sicily, their role in the airborne assaults in Normandy and at Arnhem, and their part in the Battle of the Bulge—are widely recognized, this book goes far beyond. It explores the 82nd's formation in 1917, its transformation into the Army's first airborne division in 1942, its adaptation to new strategic demands during the Cold War, and the fighting it has undertaken in conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not just a history of battles and campaigns—it is a story of the soldiers themselves. Through veterans' voices, after-action reports, and unit records, the book captures the lived experience of paratroopers, from the trenches of the Western Front to twenty-first-century deployments. The result is a richly detailed and authoritative account of the 82nd Airborne Division's combat legacy."

Martin King, Steve Mrozek (Author), Richard Trinder (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mussolini's Ghost: The Afterlife of a Dictator

"The Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini was killed in 1945, his body exhibited upside down in Milan before an angry crowd. The repudiation by the people of the dictator who had led them to disaster was complete. But his story did not end there. The Duce continued to live on thanks to a legacy that was multi-faceted and complex. In Mussolini's Ghost Stephen Gundle explores the many aspects of Mussolini's strange afterlife, be it through the fate of his statues and the places that Mussolini was most associated with, his impact on political life, his treatment in public history, and his place in popular culture. Gundle argues that the root causes of Il Duce's disturbing persistence lie in the way Italians negotiated the transition from war to peace and from Fascism to democracy. Instead of acknowledging the enthusiastic backing many had given to a criminal dictatorship, many Italians behaved as though Fascism had never really existed. The dictator was instead recast as a flawed but well-meaning family man. Thanks to this and other strange reconfigurations, the grip Mussolini established over the popular mind was never properly dismantled. Gundle uses psychoanalysis and collective psychology to explore a bold new interpretation of the causes of Mussolini's posthumous persistence, and compares his and Italy's fate to that of Germany."

Stephen Gundle (Author), Nigel Patterson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life Is a Cabaret: The Amazing Story of the Real Lives Who Inspired the Iconic Musical

"The untold story of the real, extraordinary people who inspired Christopher Isherwood's characters in Cabaret, the landmark Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film, and the vibrant Bohemia that escaped from Berlin or endured under the Nazi regime Even diehard fans of the movie remain unaware that Isherwood's Berlin Stories, celebrated as one of the best novels of the 20th Century, is based on a true story-and real people, from the larger-than-life landlady to the immortal, flighty, fantastical Sally Bowles, whose escapades in 1930s Weimar Berlin were comically exaggerated in one of the most memorable characters in Broadway history. In a novelistic style that captures the joyful art-making and wild final parties of a democratic Germany before Hitler, Life is a Cabaret is a group biography of these enigmatic and provocative muses. Thanks to exhaustive research, investigative reporter Brian Fairbanks recounts the weird and wondrous lives of Jean Ross (the real Sally, a brilliant writer, free-loving film critic secretly working for Stalin's communists), Wilfrid Israel (who saved more Jews than Oskar Schindler), Gerald Hamilton (a gay conman with questionable Nazi ties), and all of the others immortalized in the iconic, eternal Berlin Stories. Fairbanks unearths belief-defying details of survival, tragedy, sex, and brilliant art from these people and the world they inhabited--a world with illuminating, and at times disturbing, parallels to the one we live in today."

Brian Fairbanks (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Village in Britain: And Why Place Matters

"A sweeping history of the British village, both rural and urban, which makes a compelling case for why we need to protect our local communities, from bestselling author Simon Jenkins We are a nation of villages, from the rural, picturesque hamlets of Castle Combe and Clovelly, to the tight-knit urban communities of Leeds’ terraces and Cricklewood’s backyards. Villages link us with our past and are the stuff of art, poetry, folklore and song — and for many they offer a place of community and sanctuary. And yet Britain today is one of the most centralised political systems in Europe, with decisions on local matters made by national government and local communities feeling increasingly disempowered and disconnected. In The Village in Britain, Simon Jenkins, bestselling author and former chair of the National Trust, delves into the past, present and future of this powerful national symbol, and argues that we need to find a way of embedding the qualities of the village into our modern lives. Through a sweeping history of the village, from its rural, medieval origins to its downfall in the industrial era and then its rebirth in both urban and digital spaces, he shows us that the village offers answers to the challenges that face so many communities today. Using examples from literature, architecture, and culture, from the rural idylls of The Archers and Akenfield, to the campaigning work of Octavia Hill and Robert Owen, we see how the concept of the village has changed over time and why it continues to be an important part of the way we live, with benefits for people of all ages and interests. We see how the future of the village has been put at risk, including the closure of local pubs and shops, but also that a steady transformation is underway, as commuters and retirees bring villages a new sense of vitality. This is an expert and fascinating journey through the rise and fall and potential rise again of the British village. © Simon Jenkins 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Simon Jenkins (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

In Rome's Long Shadow: How the Classical Tradition Shaped the Modern World

"Julius Caesar, Lucretia, Cincinnatus, Augustus, the Gracchi brothers: Roman figures have had an extraordinary influence on modern republics from America to France. Here historian Jamie Gianoutsos traces the Roman republic and its afterlives through the revolutionary birth of modern republics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to reveal how ancient ideas of liberty, virtue, and corruption shaped the political imagination of a new age. Moving from stories of tyranny and collapse in ancient Rome to moments of crisis in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world, Gianoutsos uncovers recurring patterns in the rise – and fall – of republics. Through vivid portraits of figures from Cato to the Brutuses, and via the revolutionaries of America, Britain, France and Haiti who consciously cast themselves as modern Romans, she offers a fresh and critical assessment of the strategies citizens pursued in their struggle to build lasting republican institutions. As Gianoutsos shows, modern activists in this long republican tradition defended new freedoms – of the press, expression, conscience, and equality before the law – as a renewed bulwark against corruption, decline and tyranny. With verve and deep historical insight, Gianoutsos argues that by revisiting the past, we gain a clearer view of ourselves – and of the challenges republics continue to face today. © Jamie Gianoutsos 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Jamie Gianoutsos (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Killing the Pope: John Paul II and the Last Battle of the Cold War

"Brought to you by Penguin. On a warm, sunny afternoon in May 1981, more than 10,000 pilgrims from all over the world gather on St. Peter’s Square for the start of Pope John Paul’s general audience. Out of nowhere, a gunshot is heard. John Paul collapses. A gunman is apprehended. After the attempted assassination, John Paul II said that ‘one hand pulled the trigger, another guided the bullet’. But in this electrifying account of one of the most iconic events of the Cold War, historian Serhii Plokhy invites us to ask: what if there were far more than just two hands present that day? Drawing on new archival research, Plokhy accompanies the assassin as he travels across Europe in preparation for his strike, following the threads of the story into the corridors of the Kremlin and the Vatican, and through the inner circles of Turkish ultra-nationalists, KGB functionaries, Sicilian mafiosi and Catholic cardinals. Both riveting and illuminating, Killing the Pope goes right to the heart of the Cold War in its final decade – an era of extreme paranoia, in which our own age of disinformation was slowly being born – and sheds new light on one of its most troubling and enduring mysteries. © Serhii Plokhy 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Serhii Plokhy (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The China Whisperers: The Voices That Have Shaped America's Views of Its Chief Geopolitical Rival

"From one of the most prominent post-Cold War geopolitics experts, an “illuminating, insightful, and essential” (Chris Miller, bestselling author of Chip War) look at US-China relations and the China experts who have influenced—and continue to influence—America’s policy toward its greatest rival. Few countries or civilizations are as big or as old as China. In the minds of Americans whose job it is to contemplate international affairs, the present-day superpower has always been more than just the “ultimate place”: quite simply, it is the essential foreign policy challenge—one frequently thought incapable of being solved. Enter the China Whisperers—those of the past and the present. A hundred years ago, they were American missionaries, travelers, journalists, linguists, and foreign service officers who were on the ground, fluent in Mandarin, and enamored of the culture. They were the true China experts, and over a period of a few transformative decades they had front-row seats to the formation of both the Nationalist and Communist parties; crossed the Gobi Desert; searched out the young Mao Zedong in the wilds of Yen'an province; provided visionary analysis on the American predicament in Asia; bore witness to China’s World War II; and made invaluable contributions to journalism, diplomacy, and American foreign policy in East Asia. The China Whisperers’ ranks have been filled more recently not so much by nomadic journalists and explorers as by multi-lingual policy experts who’ve had the ear of the person occupying the Oval Office. Often, their voices have proved critical, counseling engagement over precipitous moves. Across the decades, China Whisperers is the story of how Americans interpreting China have both succeeded and failed—for while some proved prophetic others were shown to be dupes. The book paints a full-bodied portrait of the drama of trying to understand a radically different and age-old culture—and of the US-China rivalry that constitutes the most dangerous element of geopolitics."

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), TBA (Narrator)

Audiobook

Renaissance Men: Agents of Medical and Cultural Modernity

"The gripping, untold stories of three unsung Black physicians and their critical contributions to the field of medicine and American culture, from the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Medical Apartheid Between 1847 and 1952, three New York City doctors transformed medicine, catalyzed racial equity, elevated American culture, then were all but lost to history—until now. James McCune Smith, MD., Rudolph Fisher, MD., and Louis T. Wright, MD each helped shape our nation and advance medicine while sharing overlapping passions—an uncompromising, even militant opposition to racial fetters; medical research that refused racial denigration; and literary acumen. While not strictly contemporaries, they were bound across time through obstacles that parallel those we confront today. Medical exclusion and disparagement, rampant healthcare inequities paired with housing segregation, racial abuse and police violence, lynching, the suppression of Black history —and even racial bars to higher medical education—that mirrored today’s challenges to affirmative action. In this comprehensive slice of previously unrevealed history, renowned writer and scholar Harriet Washington sheds light on Black physicians who pioneered important medical achievements that benefit the health of all Americans. Renaissance Men draws parallels between contemporary and historical medical exclusion and healthcare inequities and reveals a powerful argument for supporting current medical aspirants of color. Surfacing this long-buried history shows us what genius we stand to lose if medicine doesn’t rectify its current course of racial exclusion."

Harriet A. Washington (Author), Curtis Michael Holland (Narrator)

Audiobook

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