World Audiobooks | History

Novel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton's sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess--the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine.

Charles Dickens (Author), Frank Muller (Narrator)

Audiobook

Library: An Unquiet History

For rare-books librarian Matthew Battles, libraries represent a compelling paradox. On the one hand, they exist to collect and preserve knowledge. On the other hand, they have been used to control, restrict, and sometimes obliterate knowledge. Battles takes us on a spirited foray from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the British Library, from socialist reading rooms and rural home libraries to the Information Age. At the same time, he gives due attention to both what has been found and what has been lost, from the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia to the storied Alexandrian libraries in Egypt, from the burned scrolls of China's Q'ing Dynasty to the book pyres of the Hitler Youth. This history speaks volumes about the care of the written word.

Matthew Battles (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

Audiobook

They Saw It Happen

Here are more than sixty eyewitness accounts from history. Many are notable events: the Battle of Thermopylae, the Black Death in 1341, the Great Fire of London, the execution of Louis XVI, the Death of Nelson and the American Civil War and the bombing of Hiroshima. But there are also snapshots of more ordinary life - no less memorable for that - including working conditions during the Industrial Revolution, views of slave owners and slaves, Paul Gaugin choosing a bride on Tahiti and the arrest of Dr Crippen. It is a fascinating and absorbing collection, bringing the past alive as only direct memories like these can do. A unique collection of accounts brought to life on audiobook with music of the period.

Various Authors (Author), Various, Various Narrators (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Real America

Glenn Beck has entertained, inspired, and informed millions with his self-effacing humor, heartfelt conviction, and down-to-earth approach to life. And in The Real America, a powerful collection of his early writings, he calls it as he sees it, cutting through the fog of those who have made it their mission to underestimate -- and undermine -- the greatness of America and the power of "We the People." Whether the topic is family, religion, personal responsibility, rampant political correctness, presidential elections, or out-of-control celebrities, Glenn Beck rails against the forces that keep us from uniting and fulfilling our potential and explains how to overcome them. His compelling, patriotic, and spiritually driven message will inspire you to connect with your own power and help lead us back to that place that is quickly being forgotten...THE REAL AMERICA.

Glenn Beck (Author), Glenn Beck (Narrator)

Audiobook

Great Explorers of the World

Here are the stories of nine great adventures and the lives of the men who took part in them. They pushed back the frontiers of man's knowledge of the world by their vision, courage and sheer doggedness. They were very different people - from bold adventurers facing the unknown with enjoyment to careful, more scientific individuals. Their journeys are placed within their historical context, but also contain the words of the men themselves. Written especially for Naxos Audiobooks.

David Angus (Author), Frances Jeater, Kerry Shale, Nicolas Soames, Sam Dastor (Narrator)

Audiobook

America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918

Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In America's First Dynasty, Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still greatest dynasty -- the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries. From John, the self-made, tough-minded lawyer who rose to the highest office in the government he helped create; to John Quincy, the child prodigy who grew up amid foreign royalty, followed his father to the White House, and later reinvented himself as a champion of liberty in Congress; to politician and writer Charles Francis, the only well-balanced Adams; to Henry, brilliant scholar and journalist -- the Adamses achieved longer-lasting greatness than any other American family. Brookhiser's canvass starts in colonial America, when John Adams had to teach himself the law and ride on horseback for miles to find clients. It does not end until after the Titanic sinks -- Henry had booked a room but changed his plans -- and World War I begins, with Henry near the action in France. The story of this single family offers a short course in the nation's history, because for nearly two hundred years Adams history was American history. The Adamses were accompanied by an impressive cast of characters, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, to Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, to Teddy Roosevelt. America's First Dynasty offers telling portraits of the great men of our past, and many of the women around them. John and Abigail's great love affair was destined to be repeated by their offspring and offspring's offspring. As with any family, there was a darker side to the Adams story: many of its members were abject failures. Alcoholism was a familiar specter, and suicide was not unknown. Only one of the four great Adamses was a kind man and father; the others set standards so impossibly high that few of their children could meet them. Yet despite more than a century of difference from John to Henry, certain Adams traits remained the same. In the story of our first and still-greatest family, we can all see something of our own struggles with family, fate, and history.

Richard Brookhiser (Author), Dan Cashman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Age of Extremes: Book 8 (1880-1917)

For the captains of industry-men like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford-the Gilded Age is a time of big money. Technology boomed with the invention of trains, telephones, electric lights, harvesters, vacuum cleaners, and more. But for millions of immigrant workers, it is a time of big struggles, with adults and children alike working 12 to 14 hour a day under extreme, dangerous conditions. The disparity between the rich and the poor was dismaying, which prompted some of the people to action. In An Age of Extremes, you will meet Mother Jones, Ida Tarbell, Big Bill Haywood, Sam Gompers, and other movers and shakers, and get swept up in the enthusiasm of Teddy Roosevelt. You'll also watch the United States tae its greatest role on the world stage since the Revolution, as it enters the bloody battlefields of Europe in World War I.

Joy Hakim (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

All the People: Book 10 (1945-2001)

People call it "post-war," but All the People covers a period in U.S. history that features battles of another kind-from Cold War combat overseas to struggles for equality at home to learning to live with the threat of terrorism on U.S. soil. During these years, the United States began to be a nation for all its people, outlawing school segregation, protesting war in Vietnam, and campaigning for equal rights for women. From Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to seamstress Rosa Parks, extraordinary individuals led us back to the ideals espoused by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. But mostly-as it always has been in the United States-it was ordinary citizens who marched and voted and hoped and dreamed and made things happen. All the People included the events of September 11, 2001, and a discussion of how many aspects of the terrorist attacks have brought to the forefront the qualities that keep America strong: representative democracy, freedom of speech and press, and, especially in the face of religious totalitarianism, the basic freedom of religious tolerance.

Joy Hakim (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

War, Peace, & All That Jazz: Book 9 (1918-1945)

From woman's suffrage to Babe Ruth's home runs, from Louis Armstrong's jazz to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential terms, from the finale of one world war to the dramatic close of the second, War, Peace, and All That Jazz presents the story of some of the most exciting years in U.S. history. With the end of World War I, many Americans decided to live it up, going to movies, driving cars, and cheering baseball games aplenty. But alongside this post-WWI spree was high unemployment, hard times for farmers, ever-present racism, and, finally, the Depression, the worst economic disaster in U.S. history, flip-flopping the nation from prosperity to scarcity. Along came one of our country's greatest leaders, F.D.R., who promised a New Deal, gave Americans hope, and then saw them through the horrors and victories of World War II. These three decades-full of optimism and despair, progress and Depression, and, of course, War, Peace, and All That Jazz--forever changed the United States.

Joy Hakim (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

War, Terrible War: Book 6 (1855-1865)

Riveting and moving, War, Terrible War takes us into the heart of the Civil War, from the battle of Manassas to the battle of Gettysburg and on to the South's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Follow the common soldiers in blue and gray as they endure long marches, freezing winter camps, and the bloodiest battles ever fought on American soil. Off the ware fields, War, Terrible War captures the passion and commitment of abolitionists and slave owners alike in their fiery debates throughout the land. With profiles of Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Jefferson Davis, soldiers on both sides, slave owners, abolitionists, average citizens, and others, War, Terrible War is the compelling story of a people affected by the horrors of war during this tragic and dramatic period in A History of US.

Joy Hakim (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

Reconstructing America: Book 7 (1865-1890)

Covering a time of great hope and incredible change, Reconstructing America is a dramatic look at life after the Civil War in the newly re-United States. Railroad tycoons were roaming across the country. New cities sprang up across the plains, and a new and different American West came into being: a land of farmers, ranchers, miners, and city dwellers. Back east, large-scale immigration was also going on, but not all Americans wanted newcomers in the country. Technology moved forward: Thomas Edison lit up the world with his electric light. And social justice was on everyone's mind with Carry Nation wielding a hatchet in her battle against drunkenness and Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois counseling newly freed African Americans to behave in very different ways. Through it all, the reunited nation struggles to keep the promises of freedom in this exciting chapter of A History of US -- from the audiobook cover

Joy Hakim (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sailing the Wine Dark Sea

In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore "the hinges of history," Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining—and historically unassailable—journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago. In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.

Thomas Cahill (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

World Audiobooks in History