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.
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
by Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker; read by Christina Delaine
F O R T H C O M I N G ! Available February
In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key "negative affects"—both eternal and emergent—associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change. 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
Here is the dramatic story of Scandinavia—from its earliest Germanic origins and Viking sea raids to its battles for independence and its involvement in World War II. Learn More
