Essays audiobooks

I Rant, Therefore I Am - Abridged

By: Dennis Miller

Narrated by: Dennis Miller

Length: 2 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Once again there's good news for those of us who rage at the evening news, shake our heads at Washington's business-as-usual, or watch as politicians carom helplessly between political crises and sex scandals: Dennis Miller is back with his third installment of hilarious observations, I Rant, Therefore I Am.

Dennis Miller first gained national... Read more

On Mexican Time - Abridged

By: Tony Cohan

Narrated by: Tony Cohan

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: Yes

An American writer and his wife find a new home—and a new lease on life—in the charming sixteenth-century hill town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

When Los Angeles novelist Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, visited central Mexico one winter they fell under the spell of a place where the pace of life is leisurely, the cobblestone streets... Read more

Neither Here Nor There - Abridged

By: Bill Bryson

Narrated by: Bill Bryson

Length: 5 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to travel writing as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet and heads for Europe.  Travelling with Stephen Katz--also his wonderful sidekick in A Walk in the Woods--he wanders from Hammerfest in the far north, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.  As he makes his way round this incredibly... Read more

Confederates in the Attic - Abridged

By: Tony Horwitz

Narrated by: Michael Beck

Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: Yes

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to... Read more

Life Stories

By: David Remnick

Narrated by: Amy Irving, Philip Bosco & Alton Fitzgerald White

Length: 9 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the... Read more

River Horse - Abridged

By: William Heat-Moon & William Least heat-moon

Narrated by: Jay O. Sanders

Length: 6 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In this abridgement of River-Horse, the pre-eminent chronicler of American back roads -- who has given us the classics Blue Highways and Prairyerth -- recounts his singular voyage through American waters from sea to sea. Along the route, he offers a lyrical and ceaselessly fascinating shipboard perspective on the country and its rivers, lakes,... Read more

How Paul Robeson Saved My Life

By: Carl Reiner

Narrated by: Carl Reiner

Length: 3 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Eleven-time Emmy Award winner and icon of American comedy, Carl Reiner, performs a sweet, wry, and whimsical collection of two dozen multi-dimensional short stories— some true and others merely tales. Included in this collection are stories about a man too handsome for his personality, a lifetime bond that is created by a football... Read more

Towards A New World Culture: The Synthesis Dialogues: Part 4

By: Dalai Lama

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

In the fall of 1999, forty innovative thinkers from around the world gathered with H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet at his home in Dharamsala, northern India, for a special invitation-only dialogue about the future of humanity and the planet. In this the conclusion of the four part special series we join the participants for a private audience with... Read more

Comrades - Abridged

By: Stephen E. Ambrose

Narrated by: Stephen E. Ambrose

Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the author of Undaunted Courage and D-Day comes this celebration of male friendship, taken both from the pages of history and from Ambrose’s own life.

Acclaimed historian Stephen Ambrose begins his examination with a glance inward—he starts this book with his brothers, his first and forever friends, and the shared experiences that join them... Read more

More Charles Kuralt's American Moments - Abridged

By: Charles Kuralt

Narrated by: Charles Kuralt

Length: 1 hour 7 minutes

Abridged: Yes

More Charles Kuralt's American Moments takes us on a wonderful, joyous exploration of Americana with this second volume of never-before-available spoken-word accounts of what makes the United States so special.
An American Moment with Charles Kuralt -- a timeless series of television essays about uniquely American people, places, and ideas --... Read more

The Fabric of the Future

By: MJ Ryan, Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, Marianne Will...

Narrated by: Gayle Madeline Randall, Andrea Thompson, Tracy ...

Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Provocative and enlightening essays about transforming our future by such visionaries as Shakti Gawain, Gloria Steinem, Angeles Arrien, Sylvia Boorstein, Joan Borysenko, Z Budapest, Flor Fernandez, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Luisah Teish, Rama Vernon, and Marianne Williamson.Where do we go from here, and in practical terms, what must we do to get... Read more

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

By: Jean Kerr

Narrated by: Marni Webb

Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

This collection of essays observes the perils of motherhood, wifehood, selfhood, and other assorted challenges. Since its publication in 1957, it has sold millions of copies and has been adapted into a Broadway play, a film, a TV series, and now an audiobook. Jean Kerr’s parodies of the clichéd 1950s prescription for glamorous or maternal... Read more

The Power of Character - Abridged

By: Michael Josephson, Wes Hanson, Warren Bennis, S...

Narrated by: David Ackroyd

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

There is no higher praise we can give people than to say they have good character. But what does this mean, really? What makes this quality so essential to achieving personal success and fulfillment? More importantly, how can we build our own character and live more satisfying lives? Reflecting society's diversity, the contributors to this... Read more

Mother Father Uncle Aunt

By: Garrison Keillor

Length: 3 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

"...where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." There's a reason all those children in Lake Wobegon are above average. It might be the clean prairie air. It might be the wholesome wheat that's grown by the Norwegian bachelor farmers. And it just might be their strong, good-looking... Read more

Wait Till Next Year - Abridged

By: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Narrated by: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Length: 2 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: Yes

By the award-winning author of Team of Rivals and The Bully Pulpit, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball.

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were... Read more

My Most Unforgettable Character

By: Reader's Digest

Narrated by: Mason Adams

Length: 1 hour 37 minutes

Abridged: No

From Reader's Digest magazine's popular series, “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met” comes a collection of stories about people who made a big impact on the lives of these contributors. Each individual shares something in common: They struck home in the memory of the storyteller. These figures enriched lives through humor, wisdom,... Read more

Thoreau & Emerson

By: Henry David Thoreau & Ralph Waldo Emerson

Narrated by: Russ Barnett

Length: 2 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

The timeless wisdom of two of America's most celebrated philosophers is captured in this anthology containing selections from Thoreau's Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience and Emerson's Introduction to Thoreau, Self-Reliance, Nature, The American Scholar, Education, and Politics. The distinguished voice of Russ Barnett brings the great... Read more

Charles Kuralt's Summer - Abridged

By: Charles Kuralt

Narrated by: Charles Kuralt

Length: 1 hour 10 minutes

Abridged: Yes

After almost four decades of life on the road, Charles Kuralt has visited every corner of the country, sharing with us his fascinating encounters with the people he's met along the way. Now in Charles Kuralt's Summer, he douses the heat with breezy tales of our most extraordinary summer celebrations.

Drawing on pieces from his years at CBS News... Read more

Apocalypse Wow - Abridged

By: James Finn Garner

Narrated by: James Finn Garner

Length: 1 hour 25 minutes

Abridged: Yes

As the year 2000 bears down, the best-selling author of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner, confronts a series of monumental questions: Will we remember to order new checks from the bank? Did our invitation to the Kennedy New Year's party get lost in the mail again? Are we all poised on the brink of worldwide enlightenment or... Read more

Roger Kahn: Memories of Summer

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Interview between David Gergen and Roger Kahn, author of the book Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art and Writing About It a Game. Read more

Charles Kuralt's Spring - Abridged

By: Charles Kuralt

Narrated by: Charles Kuralt

Length: 1 hour 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

GRAMMY AWARD-WINNER FOR BEST SPOKEN WORD ALBUM!

Throughout his almost four decades of life on the road, Charles Kuralt has introduced us to people and places that have warmed our hearts. Now in Charles Kuralt's Spring, he disposes with winter's chill by recounting some of the most miraculous rites of spring he has witnessed over the years.

... Read more

The Naturalists

By: Diane Ackerman, Gerald Lordhal, Sharon Matola, ...

Narrated by: Diane Ackerman

Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Abridged: No

This collection of nine performance pieces reflects the inspirational words of Margaret Mead, who said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Together, these performances memorialize the diversity, beauty, and fragility of our planet. Poet Terry Tempest... Read more

Exploded

By: Tom Bodett

Length: 1 hour 55 minutes

Abridged: No

There are certain defining events that occur to people— the sort of things we use as markers in the timetables of our lives: Birth and Deaths. Marriages and Divorces. Windfalls and Calamities. For Tom Bodett, it was the day he got electrocuted. On May 27, 1975, about seven o'clock in the morning, Tom Bodett was “ ... Read more

Political Incorrections - Abridged

By: Bill Maher

Narrated by: Bill Maher

Length: 1 hour 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The Best Opening Monologues from Politically Incorrect starring Bill Maher
Featuring an introduction by Penn Jillette
For everyone who's had their fill of politicians, TV trials and the daily events seen on the evening news, Simon & Schuster Audio offers some relief with POLITICAL INCORRECTIONS-a collection of the funniest opening monologues... Read more