Download Popular Titles Audiobooks in History, American

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Title: Eliot Ness

Subtitle: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero

Author: Douglas Perry

Narrator: Pete Bradbury

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-20-14

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 35 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The true story of Eliot Ness, the legendary lawman who led the Untouchables, took on Al Capone, and saved a citys soul.

Eliot Ness is famous for leading the Untouchables against the notorious mobster Al Capone. But it turns out that the legendary Prohibition Bureau squads daring raids were only the beginning. Nesss true legacy reaches far beyond Big Al and Chicago.

Eliot Ness follows the lawman through his days in Chicago and into his forgotten second act. As the public safety director of Cleveland, he achieved his greatest success: Purging the city of corruption so deep that the mob and the police were often one and the same. And it was here, too, that he faced one of his greatest challenges: A brutal, serial killer known as the Torso Murderer, who terrorized the city for years.

Eliot Ness presents the first complete picture of the real Eliot Ness. Both fearless and shockingly shy, he inspired courage and loyalty in men twice his age, forged law-enforcement innovations that are still with us today, and earned acclaim and scandal from both his professional and personal lives. Through it all, he believed unwaveringly in the integrity of law and the basic goodness of his fellow Americans.

Members Reviews:

Great read.

If you could sum up Eliot Ness in three words, what would they be?

Concise, illuminating, captivating.

What other book might you compare Eliot Ness to and why?

In Cold Blood, as both are well researched and written, and cover fascinating real characters.

Which character as performed by Pete Bradbury was your favorite?

Ness, of course.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

My strongest reaction was the deep admiration I gained for Ness, a flawed but sincere hero.

Any additional comments?

I liked this book so much that I plan to reread it soon.

DRY.....

Boring and goes no where. Reader is terrible. Hard to understand! This book will put you to sleep.

Too long and boring!

What did you like best about Eliot Ness? What did you like least?

It's hard to tell...too many details to even know what he's all about. The narrator was least likable.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Setting wire taps. The many details that weren't necessary.

How could the performance have been better?

Another narrator. He brought nothing at all to this book. No change in characters, hardly a change in voice at all.

Could you see Eliot Ness being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Think it has been many times.

Any additional comments?

I tried so hard to like this book. I was very interested in Ness, but this book just wasn't it for me. With a different narrator it may have been a whole different experience.

Learned about Elliot Ness

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Sure. There a few times I got a little bored, but overall I am glad I read it. I am from Cleveland so the parts of the book about his time in Cleveland were pretty interesting.

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Title: Smuggler Nation

Subtitle: How Illicit Trade Made America

Author: Peter Andreas

Narrator: Kevin Stillwell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-03-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 19 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism. Providing a sweeping narrative history from colonial times to the present, Smuggler Nation is the first book to retell the story of America--and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world--as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce. As Peter Andreas demonstrates in this provocative and fascinating account, smuggling has played a pivotal and too often overlooked role in America's birth, westward expansion, and economic development, while anti-smuggling campaigns have dramatically enhanced the federal government's policing powers. The great irony, Andreas tells us, is that a country that was born and grew up through smuggling is today the world's leading anti-smuggling crusader. In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of out-of-control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to regain control of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology, says Andreas. For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous. Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As Andreas shows, it goes back not just decades but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting U.S. laws but also helping to fuel America's evolution from a remote British colony to the world's pre-eminent superpower.

Members Reviews:

The Hidden Story of American History

Any additional comments?

A very solid book about an issue that is often just beneath the surface of American history from the colonial period through today.

There are parts of the story that could have been highlighted more, particularly the issues around smuggling on the frontier in 19th century, but this helps tie together a lot of issues. If you've read a lot of American history this will help you connect the dots to among a huge number of issues.

It fills a lot of little gaps. Also, I liked that Andreas was careful not to oversell his point. Smuggling has often been important, but, except perhaps for the run up to the American revolution, rarely the most important single issue, and he admits that. However, smuggling has been a constant secondary issue in many historical developments and this book fills a lot of those gaps.

Must read for anyone interested in homeland security

This is a crucial reading for anyone interested in homeland security, immigration, drug-smuggling and other illicit trade and travel. Everyone at the Department of Homeland Security and everyone on the office of the President should read it as well. I cannot say enough good things bout this book.

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Title: The New Hate

Subtitle: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right

Author: Arthur Goldwag

Narrator: Robert Brown

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-19-13

Publisher: New Street Communications, LLC

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 24 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012

From the author of -Isms and -Ologies and Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, here is a deeply researched, fascinating history of the role that organized hatred has played in American politics. The New Hate takes listeners on a surprising, often shocking, sometimes bizarrely amusing tour through the swamps of nativism, racism, and paranoia that have long thrived on the American fringe. Arthur Goldwag shows us the parallels between the hysteria about the Illuminati that wracked the new American Republic in the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the 1950s, and he discusses the similarities between the anti-New Deal forces of the 1930s and the Tea Party movement today. He traces Henry Ford's anti-Semitism and the John Birch Society's "Insiders" back to the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he relates white supremacist nightmares about racial pollution to nineteenth-century fears of papal plots.

Written with verve and wit, this lively history is indispensable listening for anyone who wants to understand the recent re-ascendance of extremism in American politics.

Members Reviews:

Moderately interesting

What did you like best about The New Hate? What did you like least?

The book's title is a bit deceiving; it's not so much about 'new' hate, but much more a historical review of hate in the 19th and 20th centuries, concentrating somewhat heavily on the antisemitic roots of much hate. There is comparatively little about contemporary hate, which is what I would have expected.

How could the performance have been better?

The narration was not especially good, but to be completely fair, this is a book that doesn't lend itself well to an audible book. There are copious lengthy quotations, which were often hard to distinguish from the author's test, and it wasn't helped by the narrator's poor attempt to change the pitch of his voice to indicate a quotation. I suspect I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read the hardcopy.

an interesting genealogy of various kooky theories

it's interesting to dig to the roots of the long held conspiratorial views that have long infested American politics

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Title: Fire and Light

Subtitle: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World

Author: James MacGregor Burns

Narrator: Norman Dietz

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-29-13

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe.

Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil.

He discovers the origins of our domestic Enlightenment in men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality, and he highlights the role of thinkers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. After all, it was the American founders, alone among Enlightenment thinkers, who actually carried through with their ideas.

Today the same questions Enlightenment thinkers grappled with have taken on new urgency around the world: in the blossoming Arab Spring, in the former Soviet Union, China, and in the United States. What should a nation be? What should a citizenry expect from its government? Who should lead and decide?

How can citizens effect change? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns's exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our nation shines a new light on these ever-important questions.

Critic Reviews:

"A superb work of synthesis." (

Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

it was great very useful

it was great. very useful .would recommend to friends.kt was interesting from beginning to end. one of my favorites ever

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Title: Liberty in Eclipse

Author: William Norman Grigg

Narrator: Jeff Hays

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 09-24-13

Publisher: Listen and Think Audio

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Liberty in Eclipse is an expose and indictment of our nation's descent into the early stages of police state tyranny. Topics discussed include the militarization and federalization of law enforcement; the establishment of a quasi-dictatorial "war presidency"; the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, and due process guarantees going back to the Magna Carta; the increasingly commonplace surveillance of Americans; the institutionalization of torture; and the likely restoration of conscription, including a military draft.

Members Reviews:

Immensely well written and educational.

Well written for every liberty-loving individual. Also, very well researched! Quite timely for our generation.

One of the best writer's best books!

Will Grigg is without peer both in his command of the English language, and his knowledge and understanding of our current police state. On paper, we've reached the end result of totalitarian despotism; it just hasn't been carried out to its extremes yet. It can and likely will get far, far worse, but no more groundwork need be laid.

I HIGHLY recommended "Liberty in Eclipse."

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Title: Breach of Trust

Subtitle: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country

Author: Andrew Bacevich

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-10-13

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 82 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A blistering critique of the gulf between Americas soldiers and the society that sends them off to war, from the best-selling author of The Limits of Power and Washington Rules.

The United States has been "at war" for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between Americas soldiers and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do".

In Breach of Trust, best-selling author Andrew Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Among the collateral casualties are values once considered central to democratic practice, including the principle that responsibility for defending the country should rest with its citizens.

Citing figures as diverse as the martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the marine-turned-anti-warrior Smedley Butler, Breach of Trust summons Americans to restore that principle. Rather than something for "other people" to do, national defense should become the business of "we the people". Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So, too, does bankruptcy - moral as well as fiscal.

Members Reviews:

Volunteer Mil+Disengaged Pop = Perpetual War Baby

Andrew Bacevich follows up on the threads he started with 'The Limits of Power' and 'Washington Rules'. In this book he explores how the post-Vietnam transformation of the military from a citizen-soldier force to an all-volunteer force has come with many unintended (but not necessarily unseen) costs. Not the least of which is the expansion of long almost perpetual wars and a limited exposure of the real cost of wars to either the politicians or general population of our country.

The last letter I received from my older brother (an Army helicopter pilot who served twice in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan) dealt with the idea of reconstituting the draft. While Bacevich doesn't actually recommend the draft, he does think a conversation about national service and the draft would be useful. We have reached a point where our nation's imperial impulses have grown dangerous, while at the same time, we have relegated the cost to either future generations (the lat two major wars were all fought with debt) and a small cadre of professional warriors (less than 1% of our nation's population). If we have no skin (financial or physical) in the game, we are more likely to allow our leaders to continue to push us into perpetual war.

Do You 'Support The Troops'? Really?

I've long admired Bacevich since I read his The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Politically speaking, we are almost at opposite poles, but perhaps they are opposite poles of an honest, ethical conversation. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, has been a serving officer and holds a PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University.

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Title: Hear No Evil

Subtitle: Scientific Analysis of the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination

Author: Donald Byron Thomas

Narrator: David Rapkin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 26 hrs and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-03-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 34 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Groundbreaking scientific analysis that breaks the JFK assassination wide open! Did a shot from the "grassy knoll" kill President Kennedy? If so, was Oswald part of a conspiracy or an innocent patsy? Why have scientific experts who examined the evidence failed to put such questions to rest?

In 2001, scientist Dr. Donald Byron Thomas published a peer-reviewed article that revived the debate over the finding by the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there had indeed been a shot from the grassy knoll, caught on a police dictabelt recording. The Washington Post said, "The House Assassinations Committee may well have been right after all." In Hear No Evil, Thomas explains the acoustics evidence in detail, placing it in the context of an analysis of all the scientific evidence in the Kennedy assassination. Revering no sacred cows, he demolishes myths promulgated by both Warren Commission adherents and conspiracy advocates, and presents a novel and compelling reinterpretation of the "single bullet theory." More than a scientific tome, Hear No Evil is a searing indictment of the government's handpicked experts, who failed the public trust to be fair and impartial arbiters of the evidence.

Editorial Reviews:

David Rapkins audio talent brings gravitas to this detailed and extremely well-researched tome, Hear No Evil: Scientific Analysis of the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination, by Donald Byron Thomas. By carefully analyzing the acoustics evidence in the case, Thomas sheds light on the single-bullet theory and offers a fascinating and complex new take on that fateful day in Dallas. With Rapkins clear and dispassionate style, listeners will easily soak in the myriad forensic and scientific analyses that help unlock one of the most important mysteries in American history.

Members Reviews:

Most Comprehensive Assassination Book To Date

This is undoubtedly the most scientific, unbiased, comprehensive, and convincing account of the details surrounding the JFK assassination. The author approaches this book not by simply setting out to prove or disprove a specific theory, or to offer unsupported conjecture into a case that is already overwhelmingly clouded with opinions, but instead to give a thorough analyzation of the evidence surrounding the assassination.

This book takes the approach of essentially giving a legal approach to the evidence surrounding this case - analyzing what evidence would, and would not hold up in court if Oswald were to have been brought to court. It furthermore continues to follow where the evidence itself leads, to a degree that leaves the reader "beyond reasonable doubt," as would be required in the court of law. The author's words address the known evidence and accounts of the event, as well as addressing popular conjecture, and even facing the opposition to such facts head-on. Each and every statement is supported by scientific evidence, and all work is shown that leaves nothing to the readers assumption or imagination.

I appreciate that this author, as every good scientist would, assesses every 'unknown' about this case within probabilities.

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Title: The Esperanza Fire

Subtitle: Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57

Author: John N. Maclean

Narrator: Pete Larkin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-27-13

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 53 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.

The deadly blaze was quickly determined to be no accident. Within a week, serial arsonist Raymond Lee Oyler was arrested and charged with almost two dozen counts of arson - and five counts of first degree murder. The Esperanza Fire recounts with drama and precision the gripping details of the fire and of Oyler's precedent-shattering trial and its stunning conclusion.

John Maclean spent more than five years researching the Esperanza Fire and covering the trial of Raymond Oyler. The result is a thrilling, moment-to-moment insider's chronicle of that devastating and tragic inferno and the pursuit, capture, and prosecution of the man who intentionally set it.

Critic Reviews:

"Maclean is a fine storyteller...he writes a chiseled prose that does justice to the action." (The Washington Post)

"Poetic and impeccably reported." (Wildfire magazine)

"It reads like a taut murder mystery, a whodunit novel you cant put down." (The Forestry Source)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: The Constitution: The Essential User's Guide

Author: Editors of Time magazine

Narrator: Dennis Holland

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-19-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Americans have debated the Constitution since the day it was signed, but rarely in its 223-year history have so many disagreed so fiercely about so much. Everywhere there seems to be debate about the Constitution's meaning and message. The Tea Party, with its almost fanatical focus on the founding document, contends that its primary purpose is to restrain the federal government - but does it really say that? Among scholars, some believe the Constitution should be interpreted exactly as the framers wrote it, while others analyze the text just as closely to find the elasticity they believe the framers had in mind. But how could the founding fathers know about the world today, with DNA, sexting, airplanes, TV, Medicare, computers and Lady Gaga? In this probing and accessible book, Time's editors bring the founding document to life, showing how it was written in a spirit of change and revolution and turbulence. With an introduction by one of America's top jurists, an essay by Time managing editor Richard Stengel (former president of the National Constitution Center), and the full text of the 8,000-word Constitution, annotated to show its most controversial passages and little-known quirks, Time's concise audio volume is an indispensable guide for the well-informed citizen.

Members Reviews:

Would like simple explanation

Would like a simple explanation of each article and amendment to wrap it up and reinforce memory at the end of the book

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Title: The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess

Subtitle: Race, Religion, and DNA

Author: Jeff Wheelwright

Narrator: Eve Bianco

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-08-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 26 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A brilliant and emotionally resonant exploration of science and family history.

A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations.

Set in the isolated San Luis Valley of Colorado, this beautiful and harrowing book tells of the Medina familys 500-year passage from medieval Spain to the American Southwest and of their surprising conversion from Catholicism to the Jehovahs Witnesses in the 1980s. Rejecting conventional therapies in her struggle against cancer, Shonnie Medina died in 1999. Her life embodies a story that could change the way we think about race and faith.

Members Reviews:

The Wandering story...

Jeff Wheelwright covers a lot of ground here - from the Hispano communities in NE New Mexico to Ashkenazi Jewish history - modern and ancient. He zeros in on the story of the life and death of Shonnie Medina and segues gracefully into larger story of the history of genetic testing and the rather bitter sounding debate among New Mexico's anthropologists about whether a form of covert Judaism was practiced there by settlers arrived from Mexico. And more.

If all of this sounds chaotic, it isn't. It's the skillful handing of the backstory a reader needs to understand how a 28 year-old Jehovah's Witness in New Mexico died from a mutation in the DNA of a Semitic woman about twenty-four hundred years ago, how the mutation traveled and what can (or can't) be done by and for those carrying it.

The book was fascinating. Recommend.

Intersection of DNA, History & Human Interest

This is a fascinating journalistic account of how the deadly, and usually rare BRCA gene occurs among populations who don't know they have Jewish ancestry. The story is told unflinchingly, with numerous digressions into history, science, and religious belief that add dimension and context. It is also (unwittingly) a pretty chilling indictment of the poor quality of our science education in K-12, and the consequences that can have on insular or marginalized populations. Although the author attributes the failure of the young woman to seek any conventional treatment for her disease to stubbornness and religious conviction, the major underpinning is a lack of adequate science education. The narrator gets mixed reviews from me. While her voice was wonderful, her many mispronunciations of Spanish and Indian words and names was distracting. Overall, the book was well worth the credit!

Not really true about the people of the Valley

We are from this area and it's hard to believe what was said about the people who live there. Not everyone is ignorant as the family in this story.