Explore New Full Audiobooks in History, The Americas

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/575674 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul

Author: Aran Shetterly

Narrator: Leon Nixon

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 17 hours 49 minutes

Release date: October 15, 2024

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

An unflinching look at a shocking racial tragedy that divides a Southern city—comparable to the recent events in Charlottesville—and the activists who, in their tireless fight for justice, refuse to give up on America’s promised ideals, and pursue racial reconciliation with hope that their fractured city can heal. On November 3, 1979, as activist Nelson Johnson assembled people for a march adjacent to Morningside Homes in Greensboro, North Carolina, gunshots rang out. A caravan of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis sped from the scene, leaving behind five dead. Known as the “Greensboro Massacre,” the event and its aftermath encapsulate the racial conflict, economic anxiety, clash of ideologies, and toxic mix of corruption and conspiracy that roiled American democracy then—and threaten it today. In 88 seconds, one Southern city shattered over irreconcilable visions of America’s past and future. When the shooters are acquitted in the courts, Reverend Johnson, his wife Joyce, and their allies, at odds with the police and the Greensboro establishment, sought alternative forms of justice. As the Johnsons rebuilt their lives after 1979, they found inspiration in Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Martin Luther King Jr’s concept of Beloved Community and insist that only by facing history’s hardest truths can healing come to the city they refuse to give up on. This intimate, deeply researched, and heart-stopping account draws upon survivor interviews, court documents, and the files from one of the largest investigations in FBI history. The persistent mysteries of the case touch deep cultural insecurities and contradictions about race and class. A quintessentially American story, Morningside explores the courage required to make change and the evolving pursuit of a more inclusive and equal future.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/580560 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All

Author: Deborah G. Plant

Narrator: Emana Rachelle, Desmond Manny

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 32 minutes

Release date: January 9, 2024

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America’s obsession with continuing human bondage from the editor of the New York Times–bestselling Barracoon. Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American’s personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans—including author Deborah Plant’s brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America—are deprived of these basic freedoms every day. In her studies of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant became fascinated by Hurston’s explanation for the atrocities of the international slave trade. In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote: “But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory.” We look the other way when the basic human rights of marginalized and stigmatized groups are violated and desecrated, not realizing that only the practice of justice everywhere secures justice, for any of us, anywhere. An active vigilance is required of those who would be and remain free; with Of Greed and Glory, Deborah Plant reveals the many ways in which slavery continues in America today and charts our collective course toward personal sovereignty for all. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/601004 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: King: The Life of Martin Luther King

Author: Jonathan Eig

Narrator: Dion Graham

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 20 hours 2 minutes

Release date: May 16, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2

Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *SELECTED AS ONE OF  BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2023* Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. – and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.   In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.   He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death.   As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became its only modern-day founding father – as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/604279 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

Author: Alex Mar

Narrator: Alex Mar

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 4 minutes

Release date: March 28, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

“Alex Mar’s bold yet sensitive account of one of America’s youngest death row inmates—and the people whose lives she forever changed—is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road “An absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness. This is a book of awesome scope, and it deserves to be read with attention.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize–winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl’s shocking crime—and its extraordinary aftermath On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in. When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world—reaching as far away as the Vatican—as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula. As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula’s friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of. In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live—to survive, to grow, to change—and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/605370 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal

Author: Nathan Masters

Narrator: David H Lawrence Xvii

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

Release date: March 21, 2023

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

The riveting, forgotten narrative of the most corrupt attorney general in American history and the maverick senator who stopped at nothing to take him down Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era’s greatest political fiasco—one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film—has long been lost to the annals of history. In Crooked, Nathan Masters restores this story of murderers, con artists, secret lovers, spies, bootleggers, and corrupt politicians to its full, page-turning glory. Newly elected to the Senate on a promise to root out corruption, Burton "Boxcar Burt" Wheeler sets his sights on ousting Attorney General Harry Daugherty, puppet-master behind President Harding’s unlikely rise to power. Daugherty is famous for doing whatever it takes to keep his boss in power, and his cozy relations with bootleggers and other scofflaws have long spawned rumors of impropriety. But when his constant companion and trusted fixer, Jess Smith, is found dead of a gunshot wound in the apartment the two men share, Daugherty is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, exposing the rot consuming the Harding administration to a shocked public. Determined to uncover the truth in the ensuing investigation, Wheeler takes the prosecutorial reins and subpoenas a rogue’s gallery of witnesses—convicted felons, shady detectives, disgraced officials—to expose the attorney general’s treachery and solve the riddle of Jess Smith’s suspicious death. With the muckraking senator hot on his trail, Daugherty turns to his greatest weapon, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose eager second-in-command, J. Edgar Hoover, sees opportunity amidst the chaos. Packed with political intrigue, salacious scandal, and no shortage of lessons for our modern era of political discord, Nathan Masters’ thrilling historical narrative shows how this intricate web of inconceivable crookedness set the stage for the next century of American political scandals.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/601075 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite

Author: Dean King

Narrator: Samantha Desz

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

Release date: March 21, 2023

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography *“We see through this book the immense power of language…to change the minds of lawmakers and tourists alike.” —The New York Times Book Review *“A poignant portrait of an era when mere words could change the world.” —San Francisco Chronicle* The dramatic and uplifting story of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir’s journey to save Yosemite is “a rich, enjoyable excursion into a seminal period in environmental history” (The Wall Street Journal). In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life. Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is devastated, Johnson, an arbiter of the era’s pressing issues in the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement. “Comprehensively researched and compellingly readable” (Booklist, starred review), Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the towering environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/605349 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

Author: Theresa Runstedtler

Narrator: Xenia Willacey

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 0 minutes

Release date: March 7, 2023

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBA Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league then, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything. Enter Black Ball, a gripping history and corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.” Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA. Black players introduced an improvisational style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods. They also challenged the team owners’ autocratic power, garnering higher salaries and increased agency. Their skills, style, and savvy laid the foundation for the global popularity and profitability of the league we know today.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/599862 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist

Author: Jennifer Wright

Narrator: Mara Wilson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 1 minute

Release date: February 28, 2023

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

Discover the true story of a self-taught surgeon and trailblazing figure in medical history—Madame Restsell, a revolutionary surgeon who fought for women's rights and healthcare in Gilded Age New York. Madame Restell is a sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history which introduces us to an iconic, yet tragically overlooked, feminist heroine: a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, known to the world as Madame Restell. A celebrity in her day with a flair for high fashion and public, petty beefs, Restell was a self-made woman and single mother who used her wit, her compassion, and her knowledge of family medicine to become one of the most in-demand medical workers in New York. Not only that, she used her vast resources to care for the most vulnerable women of the city: unmarried women in need of abortions, birth control, and other medical assistance. In defiance of increasing persecution from powerful men, Restell saved the lives of thousands of young women and, in fact, as author Jennifer Wright says in own words, “despite having no formal training and a near-constant steam of women knocking at her door, she never lost a patient.” Restell was a revolutionary who opened the door to the future of reproductive choice for women, and Wright brings Restell and her circle to life in this dazzling, sometimes dark, and thoroughly entertaining tale.   In addition to uncovering the forgotten history of Restell herself, the book also doubles as an eye-opening look into the “greatest American scam you’ve never heard about”: the campaign to curtail women’s power by restricting their access to healthcare. Before the 19th century, abortion and birth control were not only legal in the United States, but fairly common, and public healthcare needs (for women and men alike) were largely handled by midwives and female healers. However, after the Birth of the Clinic, newly-minted male MDs wanted to push women out of their space—by forcing women back into the home and turning medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. At the same time, a group of powerful, secular men—threatened by women’s burgeoning independence in other fields—persuaded the Christian leadership to declare abortion a sin, rewriting the meaning of “Christian morality” to protect their own interests. As Wright explains, “their campaign to do so was so insidious—and successful—that it remains largely unrecognized to this day, a century and a half later.” By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women’s health in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty, fractured reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the “pro-life” movement.   Thought-provoking, character-driven, funny, and feminist as hell, Madame Restell is required reading for anyone and everyone who believes that when it comes to women’s rights, women’s bodies, and women’s history, women should have the last word. Audiobook features an exclusive conversation between author and narrator.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/603521 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: [Spanish] - La gran gripe: La pandemia más mortal de la historia

Author: John M. Barry

Narrator: Bern Hoffman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 22 hours 35 minutes

Release date: February 21, 2023

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

El arma más fuerte contra la pandemia es la verdad. He aquí el relato definitivo de la epidemia de gripe de 1918. Magistral en su amplitud de perspectiva y profundidad de investigación, La gran gripe nos proporciona un modelo preciso y esclarecedor ahora que nos enfrentamos a nuevas pandemias. Como concluye Barry: «La última lección de 1918, una simple pero la más difícil de ejecutar, es que los que tienen autoridad deben conservar la confianza del público. La forma de hacerlo es no distorsionar nada, no tratar de poner la mejor cara, tratar de no manipular a nadie. Lincoln lo dijo el primero y lo dijo mejor. Un líder debe hacer concreto cualquier horror que exista. Solo entonces la gente podrá desarmarlo». En el apogeo de la Primera Guerra Mundial, el virus de la gripe más letal de la historia estalló en un campamento del Ejército estadounidense en Kansas, se trasladó al este con las tropas, luego explotó y mató a unos cien millones de personas en todo el mundo. Mató a más personas en veinticuatro meses que lo que el sida ha asesinado en veinticuatro años, más en un año que la gente muerta por la peste negra en un siglo. Pero esto no era la Edad Media, y 1918 marcó la primera colisión de la ciencia y la enfermedad epidémica. La gran gripe es, en última instancia, una historia de triunfo en medio de la tragedia. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, THE GREAT INFLUENZA weaves together multiple narratives, with characters ranging from William Welch, founder of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, to John D. Rockefeller and Woodrow Wilson. Ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, this crisis provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/595310 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears

Author: Michael Schulman

Narrator: Charlie Thurston

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 21 hours 0 minutes

Release date: February 21, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.6 of Total 5

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: The Americas

Publisher's Summary:

The author of the New York Times bestseller Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep returns with a lively history of the Academy Awards, focusing on the brutal battles, the starry rivalries, and the colorful behind-the-scenes drama. America does not have royalty. It has the Academy Awards. For nine decades, perfectly coiffed starlets, debonair leading men, and producers with gold in their eyes have chased the elusive Oscar. What began as an industry banquet in 1929 has now exploded into a hallowed ceremony, complete with red carpets, envelopes, and little gold men. But don’t be fooled by the pomp: the Oscars, more than anything, are a battlefield, where the history of Hollywood—and of America itself—unfolds in dramas large and small. The road to the Oscars may be golden, but it’s paved in blood, sweat, and broken hearts. In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes. Caught in the crossfire are people: their thwarted ambitions, their artistic epiphanies, their messy collaborations, their dreams fulfilled or dashed. Featuring a star-studded cast of some of the most powerful Hollywood players of today and yesterday, as well as outsiders who stormed the palace gates, this captivating history is a collection of revelatory tales, each representing a turning point for the Academy, for the movies, or for the culture at large. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.