Biography & Memoir audiobooks

Howard Hughes

By: Peter Harry Brown & Pat H. Broeske

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 18 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from a young girl with simple beginnings in Puerto Rico to Hollywood legend—and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and two Emmys.

Born Rosita Dolores Alverio in the idyll of Puerto Rico, Moreno, at age five, embarked on a harrowing sea... Read more

Herman Melville

By: Elizabeth Hardwick

Narrated by: Karen White

Length: 4 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, and the challenging shape of his life . . . a story of the creative... Read more

Rosa Parks

By: Douglas Brinkley

Narrated by: Karen White

Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, had no idea she was changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus in segregated Alabama. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into the... Read more

Dalai Lama

By: Diki Tsering

Narrated by: Arabella Hong

Length: 4 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Born to humble but prosperous peasants in 1901, the Year of the Ox, Diki Tsering grew up a simple girl with a simple life and the ordinary ambition to be a good wife and mother. When faith and fate led her son Lhamo Dhondup to be recognized as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, her world altered completely.
In Dalai Lama, My Son she recounts her own... Read more

The Camino - Abridged

By: Shirley MacLaine

Narrated by: Shirley MacLaine

Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

It has been nearly five decades since Shirley MacLaine commenced her brave and public commitment to chronicling her personal quest for spiritual understanding. Now Shirley is back -- with her most breathtakingly powerful and unique book yet.

The Camino is the story of a riveting odyssey that began with a pair of anonymous handwritten letters... Read more

This House of Sky - Abridged

By: Ivan Doig

Narrated by: Ivan Doig

Length: 3 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Masterfully crafted with lyrical and haunting language, Doig’s memoir remains an enduring classic, a story to be savored by anyone who has ever loved a parent or been shaped by the land around them. Read more

Anton Chekhov

By: Donald Rayfield

Narrated by: Fred Williams

Length: 28 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Anton Chekhov’s life was short, intense, and dominated by battles, both with his dependents and with the tuberculosis that killed him at age forty-four. The traditional image of Chekhov is that of the restrained artist torn between medicine and literature, but Donald Rayfield’s biography reveals the life long hidden behind the noble facade. Here... Read more

A Beautiful Mind

By: Sylvia Nasar

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 18 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win the Nobel Prize. This book is the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly and directed by Ron Howard.“How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials... Read more

Woodrow Wilson

By: Louis Auchincloss

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 3 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Woodrow Wilson sheds new light on Wilson’s upbringing and career and shows the grim determination that carried him to the presidency just before World War I. From the dynamic figure whose ringing speeches hypnotized vast crowds, to the gentle voice reading poetry to his children, to the rising academic and president of Princeton who made the... Read more

Joan of Arc

By: Mary Gordon

Narrated by: Mari Devon

Length: 5 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Celebrated novelist Mary Gordon brings Joan of Arc alive as a complex figure full of contradictions and desires, as well as spiritual devotion. A humble peasant girl, Joan transformed herself into the legendary Maid of Orléans, knight, martyr, and saint. Following the voice of God, she led an army to victory and crowned the king of France, only... Read more

Papa Bravo Romeo - Abridged

By: Wynn Goldsmith

Narrated by: Eric Conger

Length: 1 hour 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

"Our mission was independent, no-holds-barred combat against a stubborn enemy in the enemy's backyard."                

In Vietnam, river warfare was often conducted in the dark. It was always dangerous, sometimes fatal--especially in the eastern end of the Cong-plagued Mekong Delta. In 1967, U.S. Navy Lt. Wynn Goldsmith was the "river rat" who... 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

Mao Zedong

By: Jonathan Spence

Narrated by: Alexander Adams

Length: 5 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Born in rural China in 1893, Mao Zedong led his country through "a long-drawn-out adventure in upheaval." In the process, he became one of the monumental figures of the twentieth century. He died in 1976, just as China was entering a détente with the United States. This excellent biography illuminates Mao's family life, his early years as a... Read more

Les plus belles Histoires de Haim - Vol 1

By: Yossef Brami & Haim Nisenbaum

Narrated by: Yossef Brami

Length: 1 hour

Abridged: No

Vivez comme si vous y étiez de merveilleuses histoires juives jouées pour vous par des comédiens professionnels.Onkelos - Le miroir aux richesses - Les héritiers - Le Cadi de Mogador - Le petit grand-père Read more

Life Is So Good - Abridged

By: George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Narrated by: LeVar Burton

Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: Yes

George Dawson was a slave's grandson who learned to read at age 98 and lived to the age of 103. In this remarkable memoir, he reflects on his life and shares valuable lessons in living, as well as a fresh, firsthand view of America during the entire sweep of the twentieth century. Dawson's irresistible voice and view of the world are captured... Read more

Selznick - Abridged

By: Bob Thomas

Narrated by: Carl Reiner

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

It was the triumph and the tragedy of his life. As a producer, he had reached the pinnacle of success; there was nowhere else to go. In this biography, noted Hollywood chronicler Bob Thomas reveals the stormy career of a shrewd, self-confident intellectual whiz kid who today personifies the image of a studio head during the Golden Age of movies.... Read more

The Greatest Generation Speaks

By: Tom Brokaw

Narrated by: Tom Brokaw

Length: 7 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful selection of the letters Tom Brokaw received in response to his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation.
 
“When I wrote about the men and women who came out of the Depression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices in World War II and then returned home to begin building the world we have... Read more

Life of Samuel Johnson (Unabridged)

By: James Boswell

Narrated by: Jonathan Oliver

Length: 66 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered James Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the... Read more

WWII Airmen

By: Multiple Authors

Narrated by: Various

Length: 2 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

These amazing accounts of airmen recorded during the war include stories of air combat, music of the time, and recordings made on bomb runs over Europe and Japan.

Eagles over Europe: (1) Introduction; (2) AAF Intro; (3) Bomb run over Germany, A-26; (4) Lt. Gilman, AT-9 Trainer; (5) Lt. Anderson, AT-7 Trainer; (6) Jack the Ripper air raid; (7)... Read more

King of Hearts

By: G. Wayne Miller

Narrated by: John Lescault

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Few of the great stories of medicine are as palpably dramatic as the advent of open heart surgery, yet, until now, no one has brought to life all of the thrilling specifics of this triumph. G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed the amazing true story of how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt... Read more

Endurance - Abridged

By: Alfred Lansing

Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith

Length: 6 hours

Abridged: Yes

In August 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew set sail from England for Antarctica, where Shackleton hoped to be the first man to cross the uncharted continent on foot. Five months later, the Endurance—just a day's sail short of its destination—became locked in an island of ice, and its destiny and men became locked in history. For ten... Read more

Mozart

By: Peter Gay

Narrated by: Alexander Adams

Length: 4 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

The greatest mind in Western music is examined by a National Book Award–winning writer on culture and psychology in this concise account of the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The composer’s unshakable hold on the public’s fascination can only be strengthened by the historian and biographer Peter Gay’s bold new perspective.  

His passionate and... Read more

James Joyce

By: Edna O'Brien

Narrated by: Donada Peters

Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

One of Ireland's best current novelists provides a thumbnail sketch of Ireland's greatest writer. A passionate and sensuous portrait, James Joyce is a return to the land of politics, history, saints, and scholars that shaped the creator of the twentieth century's groundbreaking novel Ulysses. O'Brien traces Joyce's early days as a rambunctious... Read more

Saint Augustine

By: Garry Wills

Narrated by: Alexander Adams

Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

For centuries, Augustine's writings have moved and fascinated readers. With the keen eye of a writer whose own intellectual analysis won him a Pulitzer Prize, Gary Wills examines this famed fourth-century bishop and seminal thinker whose grounding in classical philosophy informed his interpretation of Christian doctrine. Saint Augustine explores... Read more