Experience our world: as it was, as it is, as it might become with these audiobooks about history, the arts, culture, education, and politics. Don't miss Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, or Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Writers, or Gwen Ifill's The Breakthrough.
A magisterial account of how a tiny city-state in ancient Greece became history's most influential civilization, from the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian. Learn More
Lifelong comic-book fan and veteran journalist Peter Nowak meets with real-life superheroes in North America and around the world to get their stories and investigate what the movement means for the future of society. Learn More
Drawing on new sources and interviews with hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies, Thomas Rid's Rise of the Machines offers an unparalleled perspective into our anxious embrace of technology and today’s clash of digital privacy and security. Learn More
This collection of essays deals with the situated management of risk in a wide variety of organizational settings—aviation, mental health, railway project management, energy, toy manufacture, financial services, chemicals regulation, and NGOs. Learn More
An all-star lineup of rock-n-rollers—from Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell to Suzi Quatro and Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire—relay the uproariously wild, sentimental, and unexpected pre-stardom stories behind their favorite records. Learn More
Scrolls have always been shrouded by a kind of aura, a quality of somehow standing outside of time. They hold our attention with their age, beauty, and perplexing format. Beginning in the fourth century, the codex—or book—became the preferred medium for long texts. Why, then, did some people in the Middle Ages continue to make scrolls? Learn More
A Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Book of the Season The Millions Most Anticipated in May O Magazine's Best Books by Women of Summer 2019
Told with terrific suspense and style, Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of the world's longest, toughest horse race. Learn More
"Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash." This quotation, from Winston Churchill, is frequently dismissed as apocryphal or a jest, but, interestingly, all four of the areas of naval life singled out in it were ones that were subject to major reform initiatives while Churchill was in charge of the Royal Navy between October 1911 and May 1915. Learn More
Interweaving biography, absorbing literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words recontextualizes Faulkner, revealing a civil war within him, while examining the most plangent cultural issues facing American literature today. Learn More
A young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. Powerful, important, and timely, Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man's attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict. Learn More
In this powerful and passionate memoir—his final work—James H. Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those—like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas, in the era of lynching and Jim Crow—who had no voice. Learn More
by Aldo Leopold; introduction by Barbara Kingsolver; read by Cassandra Campbell
First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land. Learn More
In September 1873, Elizabeth Coughlin, a widow bankrupted by her husband's folly and death, embarks on a buffalo hunt with her estranged and mysterious brother-in-law, Michael. Learn More
In the proud tradition of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, Saving Tarboo Creek is both a timely tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect it. Learn More
A detailed argument of how our government has interfered in the direction of America's media landscape that traces major transformations in media since the printing press and charts a path for reform. Learn More
Savoring the World is Harold McGee's extraordinary exploration of what is perhaps the most vivid and mysterious of our five senses—the sense of smell. Learn More
It was the divorce that scandalized Georgian England . . . She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. Their marriage had the makings of a fairy tale but ended as one of the most salacious and highly publicized divorces in history. Learn More