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 monumental work of scholarship, Sex and the Constitution illuminates how the clash between sex and religion has defined our nation's history. Learn More
More than a history of renewable energy policy in modern America, Short Circuiting Policy offers a bold new argument about how the policy process works, and why seeming victories can turn into losses when the opposition has enough resources to roll back laws. Learn More
The police are constantly under scrutiny. They are criticized for failings, praised for successes, and hailed as heroes for their sacrifices. Starting from the premise that every society has norms and ways of dealing with transgressors, A Short History of Police and Policing traces the evolution of the multiple forms of "policing" that existed in the past. Learn More
The Show That Never Ends is the behind-the-scenes story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive (“prog”) rock, epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, and their successors Rush, Styx, and Asia. Learn More
by Jeff Abraham & Burt Kearns; read by Michael Butler Murray
There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. Learn More
Spanning seven decades, the notorious loss of Super Bowl III, and an historic undefeated season with the Dolphins, Shula is the definitive biography of a coaching legend. Learn More
New York Times reporter John Branch's riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch's work, featuring twenty of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper. Learn More
Who hasn't wished they could ask a departed loved one for advice, or heal an unresolved rift, or even just ask where they hid their grandmother's strand of pearls? While mediums sometimes resist the flow of communications they receive from the "other side," the best of them—like Bill Philipps—know what solace such messages can provide. Learn More
If you've been watching the news of late, you've noticed a subtle shift in the world order. Our political landscape remains bitterly divided, while a new administration seeks to obliterate wide swaths of the government. In an era where civic trust is quickly eroding away, it's easy to imagine this gap being filled by the large, international businesses many consumers have come to trust, as they begin to encroach upon all aspects of our lives. Learn More
It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures, and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century, this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. Learn More
Kathy Hepinstall and Becky Hepinstall; read by Xe Sands
Joseph and his cousin Thomas are struggling to survive in the Confederate Army. But even as they face the horrors of war, they have a secret which could free them: they?re sisters, Josephine and Libby. Learn More
The Sit Room brings you inside the secretive Situation Room of the White House, the most important deliberative room in the world, during the early 1990s when the author was one of the policymakers who framed the Clinton Administration's policy towards the bloody Balkans War. Learn More
Acclaimed historical novelist Max Byrd delivers a riveting account of America's secret mission to track down the conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. The Sixth Conspirator is both a fascinating spy story and irresistible love story. Learn More