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.
The thrilling true story of a pair of reporters swept up in the Civil War, captured, and thrown into jail, and their attempt to escape and return home to file their own extraordinary story. Learn More
How to survive the digital revolution without getting trampled: your guide to online mindfulness, digital self-empowerment, cybersecurity, creepy ads, trustworthy information, and more. Learn More
by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.; edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim; read by Ron Butler
These speeches and sermons, delivered both to the downtrodden and the powerful, from Senegal and Bangkok to Chicago, include the famous speeches Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., delivered at the Democratic Party conventions of 1984 and 1988 following his historic campaigns for the presidential nomination. Learn More
Howard Markel gives us the life and times of the Kellogg brothers of Battle Creek: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium medical center, spa, and grand hotel attracted thousands actively pursuing health and well-being. Learn More
A definitive history of the fatal clash between Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard, illuminating its causes and lasting consequences. Learn More
A thin, balding, and reclusive middle-aged Russian by the name of Rudolf Ivanovich Abel was one of the Soviet Union's most renowned spies during the Cold War of the 1950s . . . . until his cover was blown by an incompetent colleague who wanted to defect to the United States. This is the full account of Abel's espionage work, his dramatic apprehension, his eventual conviction and its affirmation by the United States Supreme Court, and finally, his surprising release back to Russia. Learn More
In Kid Food, nationally recognized writer and food advocate Bettina Elias Siegel explores one of the fundamental challenges of modern parenting: trying to raise healthy eaters in a society intent on pushing children in the opposite direction. Learn More
A New York Times Bestseller! AudioFile Editors’ Pick
Supported by classified documents and first-person interviews, this reexamination of American actions against Vietnamese civilians during the war suggests a dark, pervasive policy that belies the “isolated incidents” narrative used to explain away the most notorious of the atrocities. Learn More
An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using "the greatest deliberative body in the world" to hijack our democracy. Learn More
Nick Schou and Charles Bowden; read by Richard Ferrone
The explosive story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004, and its connection to the CIA. Learn More
Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern aims to highlight the very strangeness of contemporary experience when it is viewed against a long-term perspective. Atrocities regularly capture media attention—and just as quickly fade from public view. Deep down we expect no different. So Killing Strangers deliberately asks the very simplest of questions. How on earth did we get here? Learn More
New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall spins a remarkable tale of the American West and the desire of one couple to preserve paradise. Learn More
More than forty years ago, conservative Christianity emerged as a major force in American political life. Since then the movement has been analyzed and over-analyzed, declared triumphant and, more than once, given up for dead. But because outside observers have maintained a near-relentless focus on domestic politics, the most transformative development over the last several decades—the explosive growth of Christianity in the global south—has gone unrecognized by the wider public, even as it has transformed evangelical life, both in the US and abroad. Learn More
Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Learn More
In a landmark work of history, Nikolaus Wachsmann offers an unprecedented, integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933 through their demise, seventy years ago, in the spring of 1945. The Third Reich has been studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history, and yet until now there has been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the everyday experiences of its inhabitants, both perpetrators and victims, and all those living in what Primo Levi called the gray zone. Learn More
The "philosopher of truth" (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker) returns with a clear-eyed and timely critique of our culture's narcissistic obsession with thinking that "we" know and "they" don't. Learn More