The Americas Audiobooks | History

Imperialism and Its Legacy: The Long-Term Effects of Empire Building on Modern Nations

"Imperialism, a term that evokes both grandeur and controversy, refers to the practice of extending a nation's power and dominion over foreign territories, often through conquest, colonization, or economic and political influence. At its core, imperialism involves the domination of one country over another, typically to exploit resources, expand markets, or spread cultural and political ideologies. While the history of imperialism stretches back to ancient civilizations, the modern form of imperialism emerged during the Age of Exploration, when European powers began to seek new trade routes and expand their influence across the globe. The roots of imperialism are deeply entwined with the economic, political, and cultural motivations of the imperial powers. From an economic perspective, nations sought to secure access to valuable resources, such as gold, silver, spices, and agricultural products, which were crucial for their economic growth. The industrial revolution further fueled this desire for resources, as new technologies created an insatiable demand for raw materials and new markets to sell finished goods. Politically, imperialism was driven by the need for strategic dominance, with nations eager to expand their influence and prevent rivals from gaining power. Cultural and ideological motives, such as the belief in the superiority of one’s own civilization and the desire to “civilize” and Christianize indigenous peoples, were also significant driving forces behind imperial expansion. The rise of modern imperialism coincided with the emergence of powerful European states, including Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and later Germany and Italy, who sought to expand their empires across Africa, Asia, and the Americas."

Arlo Holders (Author), Juliette Fanser (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Last Comanche: Quanah Parker's Journey and the Epic Saga of the Mighty Comanche Nation: Quanah P

"Discover the riveting story of Quanah Parker, the last great chief of the Comanche Indians, in this extraordinary exploration of Native American history. The Last Comanche takes you deep into the Comanche Wars, revealing the cultural resilience, tactical brilliance, and unyielding spirit of the Comanche people. This audiobook provides an in-depth look at the life of Quanah Parker, blending the personal journey of a leader with the broader history of the Comanche Empire. Perfect for fans of Quanah Parker books, Indian books, and books about Native Americans, this narrative traces the rise and fall of the Comanche Nation through moments of triumph and tragedy. From the untamed Comanche Territory to the epic battles that defined the era, this is a story of survival and transformation. Richly researched, The Last Comanche is essential for readers of books about Amerindians, Native American history books, and anyone captivated by the legacy of the Native Americans and their fight to preserve their heritage."

Richard L. Hammond (Author), Richard L. Hammond (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

"Explore the life and legacy of one of America’s most reserved and impactful presidents in The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge. This insightful audiobook takes listeners on a journey through Coolidge’s early years, his time as governor of Massachusetts, and his presidency during a period of economic prosperity and political stability. In his own words, Coolidge reflects on his philosophy of governance, his belief in limited government, personal responsibility, and his commitment to traditional values. From his upbringing in Vermont to his role in shaping the Roaring Twenties, Coolidge’s narrative provides a unique perspective on American history and leadership. Expert narration brings Coolidge’s voice and perspective to life, offering listeners a clear and concise view of his leadership style and personal values. Whether you’re a history enthusiast or seeking a deeper understanding of Coolidge’s influence on modern American politics, this audiobook offers a compelling look at a president who valued quiet strength and decisiveness. Start listening to The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge today and gain insight into the life and leadership of one of America’s most understated leaders!"

Calvin Coolidge (Author), Oliver Thompson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Laboratories against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics

"Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them."

Jacob M. Grumbach (Author), Todd McLaren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins

"Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the 'Saxophone Colossus,' he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called 'the only jazz recluse' has gone largely untold—until now. Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' extensive personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist. Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959, Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing. In 1968, he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012. The story of Sonny Rollins is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny's own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians' own words, part chronicle of one man's quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history."

Aidan Levy (Author), William Andrew Quinn (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Order

"Soon to be a major motion picture! Originally published as The Silent Brotherhood, uncover the chilling depths of America's racist underground with this investigative true crime masterpiece exposing the inner workings of white supremacist militias and domestic terror groups. Two courageous investigative journalists deliver an insider's account of the "silent brotherhood"—the most dangerous radical-right hate group to surface since the Ku Klux Klan. They claim to be patriots, as American as apple pie, but they are this nation's deadly brotherhood—hate groups that package their alienation against the federal government under such names as the Aryan Nation, the Order, and other white supremacist militias. The group attracts seemingly average citizens with their call for pride in race, family, and religion and their mission to save white Christian America. They spout anti-Black, antisemitic, neo-Nazi rhetoric, and their grievances have festered into full-blown paranoia and a call for an all-out race war. The Order reveals in terrifying detail how the group became criminals and assassins in their effort to establish an Aryan homeland."

Kevin Flynn (Author), Gibson Frazier (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Apathy of Empire: Cambodia in American Geopolitics

"The Apathy of Empire reveals just how significant Cambodia was to U.S. policy in Indochina during the Vietnam War, broadening the lens to include more than the often-cited incursion in 1970 or the illegal bombing after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This theoretically informed and thoroughly documented case study argues that U.S. military intervention in Cambodia revealed America's efforts to construct a hegemonic spatial world order. James Tyner documents the shift of America's post-1945 focus from national defense to national security. He demonstrates that America's expansionist policies abroad, often bolstered by military power, were not so much about occupying territory but instead constituted the construction of a new normal for the exercise of state power. And yet America's grand strategy was one of contradiction: to build a sovereign state (South Vietnam) based on democratic liberalism, it was necessary to protect its boundaries—in effect, to isolate it—through both covert and overt operations in violation of Cambodia's sovereignty. Questioning reductionist geopolitical understandings of states as central or peripheral, Tyner explores this paradox to rethink the formulation of the Cambodian war as sideshow, revealing it instead as a crucial site for the formation of this new normal."

James A. Tyner (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Backcountry Democracy and the Whiskey Insurrection: The Legal Culture and Trials, 1794-1795

"Backcountry Democracy and the Whiskey Insurrection treats the legal culture that informed the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 and its trials. Linda Myrsiades examines conflicts between state and federal courts and the judicial philosophy of Federalist judges, as well as grand jury charges, law reports, judges' bench notes, and defense notes for the trials, to develop a portrait of the hegemony of official interpretations of the law. At the same time, the book illuminates popular attitudes about the courts and the law and explores the nature of extralegal courts operated by the people. Myrsiades captures the agitation-propaganda efforts mounted by rebel communities and groups together with petitions and speeches in the rebel assemblies in demonstrating that popular culture offered a clear politico-legal justification within the rebel movement on the unofficial side of legal culture. Myrsiades thus presents a holistic picture of the legal culture of the rebellion. Her examination denies the common perception that the rebel movement was incoherent and chaotic and presents an alternative view that its perceptions are a necessary correlative to understanding how treason law functioned and what its critical elements were in the late-eighteenth century, serving as a lesson for democracy in the present era."

Linda Myrsiades (Author), Wendy Tremont King (Narrator)

Audiobook

Radical Volunteers: Dissent, Desegregation, and Student Power in Tennessee

"Radical Volunteers tells the largely unknown story of southern student activism in Tennessee between the Brown decision in 1954 and the national backlash against the Kent State University shootings in May 1970. As one of the first statewide studies of student activism—and one of the few examinations of southern student activism—it broadens scholarly understanding of New Left and Black student radicalism from its traditionally defined hotbeds in the Northeast and on the West Coast. By incorporating accounts of students from both historically Black and predominantly white colleges and universities across Tennessee, Radical Volunteers places events that might otherwise appear random and intermittent into conversation with one another. This methodological approach reveals that students joined organizations and became activists in an effort to assert their autonomy and, as a result, student power became a rallying cry across the state. Importantly, Ballantyne does not confine her analysis to just campuses. Indeed, Radical Volunteers also situates campus activism within their broader communities. While outnumbered, Tennessee student activists secured significant campus reforms, pursued ambitious community initiatives, and articulated a powerful countervision for the South and the United States."

Katherine J. Ballantyne (Author), Elizabeth Wiley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Belle Starr—The Bandit Queen

"Legendary outlaw Belle Starr has been written about and portrayed in various media for well over one hundred years. Born Myra Maybelle Shirley in Missouri in 1848, Belle lived most of her life in Texas. She became notorious after living and hanging out with members of the James and Younger gangs. Belle was a crack shot who rode side saddle while engaging in horse thievery, cattle rustling, and holdups. In between these activities, Belle bore two children and was involved with (though not necessarily married to) several men, including Sam Starr. Belle was murdered in 1889 just 2 days before her 41st birthday. The case is officially considered unsolved. This book was the first of many about Belle and was originally published the same year she died."

William Yancey Shackleford (Author), Lee Ann Howlett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

"Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility."

Orisanmi Burton (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers beyond their Control

"New evidence in Dynamite Nashville uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950's and early 1960s. Award winning historian Betsy Phillips not only paints a detailed picture of the social dynamic of the times, but details how a violent fringe of racists came to national prominence. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips unmasks the KKK, reveals a racist terrorist network, names its principle leader, and shines a much needed historical spotlight on unsung civil rights hero Z. Alexander Looby. Just as Nashville was where Civil Rights icons began, Nashville is where one of the country's most prominent organizations of racist terrorists formed. Members of The Confederate Underground would participate in least twenty bombings between 1957 and 1963. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips revisits three unsolved Nashville bombings. Additionally, her research shows how the differing agendas of local police and the FBI allowed these bombers to escape prosecution until decades later, if at all. Dynamite Nashville is a prequel to the racist violence of the 1960s, the story of how these bombers came together to learn how to terrorize communities, and to escape any meaningful justice. It is also the story of how communities and heroes like Z. Alexander Looby pushed back."

Betsy T. Phillips (Author), Hannah Cabell (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Americas Audiobooks in History