Explore the Latest Full Audiobooks in History, World

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/671973 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science

Author: Dava Sobel

Narrator: Patricia Rodriguez

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 59 minutes

Release date: October 17, 2024

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science – and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory. ‘A fresh and feminist study of the pioneering Nobel laureate reveals her impact on the women she mentored and set on the path to prominence’ Observer ‘It is a novel lens through which to view Curie’s story, and Sobel paints her tale with characteristic deftness and eloquence’ Financial Times For decades Marie Curie was the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings, and despite constant illness she travelled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. She is still the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her ingenuity extended far beyond the laboratory walls; grieving the death of her husband, Pierre, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, devotedly raised two daughters, drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I, befriended Albert Einstein and inspired generations of young women to pursue science as a way of life. Approaching Marie Curie from a unique angle, Sobel navigates her remarkable discoveries and fame alongside the women who became her legacy – from Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch and France’s Marguerite Perry, who discovered the element francium, to her own daughter, Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in her own right. The Elements of Marie Curie deftly illuminates the trailblazing life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time. ‘A lucid, literate biography, celebrating a scientific exemplar who, for all her fame, deserves to be better known’ Kirkus ‘As expected from a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sobel writes beautifully and with clarity about the science that Curie specialised in, making clear the achievements that her lab brought about’ Daily Mail ‘This is an essential read, capturing both [Curie's] genius and her legacy’ New Scientist ‘Sobel’s book is a luminous and illuminating contribution to the cause’ Literary Review

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/671968 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Counting: Humans, History and the Infinite Lives of Numbers

Author: Benjamin Wardhaugh

Narrator: David Thorpe

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 47 minutes

Release date: July 18, 2024

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on things. Acclaimed historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh draws on stories from the Stone Age to cyberspace in pursuit of the elusive, fascinating, endlessly diverse history of human counting. Starting with the roots of counting in human brains, bodies and environments, Wardhaugh tours us around the world and through time while exploring the different flavours of counting that have developed over millennia. We meet the makers of bead necklaces in ancient South Africa, the inventors of writing in the world ’ s first metropolis, and the ‘counter culture’ of classical Athens. We see counting used – and changed – by Indian scholars, Chinese peasants and Papuan shopkeepers; we meet the distinctive numerate agendas of Mayan kings, US governments and Korean vloggers. Weaving these stories together, Wardhaugh shows how cultures have shaped counting, and how counting has shaped culture, in a rich tapestry spanning thousands of years. This is the vast story of human attempts to find some order in an unruly world; or, perhaps, to impose on a reluctant world the order that humans find within themselves. It is a history as wide, deep and tangled as that of humanity itself

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/672538 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics

Author: Hein De Haas

Narrator: Matthew Spencer

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 16 hours 13 minutes

Release date: December 19, 2023

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

An authoritative guide to global migration that corrects decades of misunderstanding and misguided policy, "defying orthodoxy on all sides of the debate" (Yascha Mounk, author of The Identity Trap​). As debates on immigration have reached fever pitch, so has political and media fearmongering. But what are the facts behind the headlines? Drawing on three decades of research, migration expert Hein de Haas destroys the myths that politicians, interest groups, and media spread about immigration. He reveals:    - Global migration is not at an all-time high  - Climate change will not lead to mass migration  - Immigration mainly benefits the wealthy, not workers  - Border restrictions have paradoxically produced more migration  Ultimately, de Haas shows migration not as a problem to be solved, nor as a solution to a problem, but as it really is.   This book is an essential guide to one of our most divisive political issues, showing how we can move beyond today’s deeply polarized debate and make migration work better for everyone.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/672445 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Strike of the Sailfish: Two Sister Submarines and the Sinking of a Japanese Aircraft Carrier

Author: Stephen L. Moore

Narrator: Johnny Heller

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

Release date: December 5, 2023

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

A gripping true-life thriller about the first US submarine to sink a Japanese aircraft carrier—and the sub’s tragic twist of fate In 1939 off the New England coast, the submarine USS Squalus accidentally sinks to the bottom of the sea during a training exercise, killing half her crew. Coming to the rescue is the USS Sculpin, in many ways the Squalus’s twin. As their oxygen supply dwindles, the remaining crew aboard the Squalus are saved in a time-consuming, white-knuckle operation. Eventually the sunken submarine is raised, repaired, and returned to duty, with a new name: the Sailfish. Four years later, on patrol during the darkest days of the Pacific War, the Sailfish’s radarman picks up the tell-tale signs of a Japanese convoy, known by U.S. intelligence to include aircraft carriers, the most formidable of all enemy ships. Never before has an American submarine taken down a carrier—much less in the middle of a typhoon. Immediately, the crewmen swing into action, embarking on a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as this once-dead boat evades enemy cruisers to stalk closer and closer to their prized target. Little do they know that aboard the Japanese carrier are survivors of an attack on the USS Sculpin, the very boat that saved the Squalis-turned-Sailfish back in ’39. Author Stephen L. Moore takes readers inside the nine-hour duel, narrating the action aboard both the Sailfish and the doomed carrier, where the American POWs fight against all odds to save their own lives before the ship goes down. Employing a wealth of new information, including long-lost survivors' accounts, fresh interviews with the last of the sub's crew, and official patrol reports, Strike of the Sailfish is the thrilling story of this strange chapter of naval history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/659008 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: A Brilliant Life: My Mother’s Inspiring True Story of Surviving the Holocaust

Author: Rachelle Unreich

Narrator: Rachel Griffiths

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 6 minutes

Release date: November 28, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

The powerful, true story of a Holocaust survivor told by her daughter—a tale that reminds us of the resilience of the soul and the ability of the heart to heal. As Mira is nearing the end of her life, her daughter Rachelle wants to find out how her mother had lived through four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and a Death March. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed—which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. And, incredibly, when giving testimony later in life, she says that it was during this time—despite witnessing the depths of man’s cruelty—that she learned about “the goodness of people.” Born in Czechoslovakia, Mira was only 12 years old when World War II broke out. At 88, living in Australia, she is diagnosed with cancer, and her journalist daughter decides to interview her to distract her from her illness. What Rachelle discovers about her mother helps her fit together the jigsaw pieces of her own life. A Brilliant Life portrays not only how remote a prospect it was to live through the Holocaust, but what it is like to be the child of a survivor.  A story of love, loss, wonder and the deepest kind of faith, A Brilliant Life questions the role that fate, chance and destiny play in one's life. It is a tribute to family, a story of incredible resilience and a chronicle of the deep connection between mother and child that not even death can destroy.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/672857 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Sailing the Graveyard Sea: The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy's Only Mutiny, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation

Author: Richard Snow

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

Release date: November 21, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 1 of Total 1

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

A “compelling” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the only mutiny in the history of the United States Navy—a little-known but once notorious event that cost three young men their lives—part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and as propulsive and dramatic as the bestselling novels of Patrick O’Brian. On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in the New York Harbor at the end of a voyage intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this routine exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore claiming he had prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had already been hanged at sea: Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell, Seaman Elisha Small, and Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, whose father was the secretary of war, John Spencer. Eighteen-year-old Philip Spencer, according to his commander, had been the ringleader who encouraged the crew to seize the ship and become pirates so that they might rape and pillage their way through the northern coast of South America and the Caribbean. While the young man might have been fascinated by stories of pirates, it soon became clear the order that condemned the three men had no legal basis. And, worse, it appeared possible that no mutiny had actually occurred, and that the ship might instead have been seized by a creeping hysteria that ended in the sacrifice of three innocents. Months of accusations and counteraccusations were followed by a highly public court-martial that put Mackenzie on trial for his life, and a storm of anti-Navy sentiment drew the attention of such leading writers of the day as Herman Melville and James Fenimore Cooper. But some good did come out of it: public disgust with Mackenzie’s hapless “training” gave birth to Annapolis, the distinguished naval academ that within a century would produce the mightiest navy the world had ever known. Vividly told and filled with tense shown directly in court-martial transcripts, Richard Snow’s masterly account of this all-but-forgotten episode is “a hell of a yarn” (Kirkus Reviews) and naval history at its finest.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/671948 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War II

Author: Peter Englund

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 18 hours 41 minutes

Release date: November 21, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 2

Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • An intimate history of the most important month of World War II, completely based on the diaries, letters and memoirs of the people who lived through it At the beginning of November 1942, it looked as if the Axis powers could still win the Second World War; at the end of that month, it was obviously just a matter of time before they would lose. In between were el-Alamein, Guadalcanal, the French North Africa landings, the Japanese retreat in New Guinea and the Soviet encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. It may have been the most important thirty days of the twentieth century. In this hugely innovative and riveting history, Peter Englund has reduced an epoch-making event to its basic component: the individual experience. Englund’s narrative is based solely on what he learned from the writings of soldiers and ordinary citizens alike. They comprise a remarkable, deeply personal resource. In thirty memorable days, among those we meet are: a Soviet infantryman at Stalingrad; an American pilot on Guadalcanal; an Italian truck driver in the North African desert; a partisan in the Belarussian forests; a machine gunner in a British bomber; a twelve-year-old girl in Shanghai; a university student in Paris; a housewife on Long Island; a shipwrecked Chinese sailor; a prisoner in Treblinka; a Korean “comfort woman” in Mandalay; Albert Camus, Vasily Grossman and Vera Brittain—forty characters in all. In addition, we experience the construction and launching of SS James Oglethorpe, a Liberty ship built in Savannah; the fate of U-604, a German submarine; the building of the first nuclear reactor in Chicago; and the making of Casablanca. Not since the publication of the author’s last book, The Beauty and the Sorrow, which similarly looked at the First World War, have we had such a mesmerizing work of history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/666836 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I

Author: Steven Ujifusa

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

Release date: November 21, 2023

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

A propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible. Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg. This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) trust, who tried to monopolize the lucrative steamship business. Though their goals were often contradictory, together they made possible a migration that spared millions from persecution. Descendants of these immigrants included Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Estée Lauder, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Lauren Bacall, the Marx Brothers, David Sarnoff, Al Jolson, Sam Goldwyn, Ben Shahn, Hank Greenberg, Felix Frankfurter, Moses Annenberg, and many more—including Ujifusa’s great grandparents. That is their legacy. Moving from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York’s Upper East Side and the picket lines outside of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, The Last Ships from Hamburg is a history that unfolds on both an intimate and epic scale. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, Ujifusa’s story offers original insight into the American experience, connecting banking, shipping, politics, immigration, nativism, and war—and delivers crucial insight into the burgeoning refugee crisis of our own time.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/671937 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Eyeliner: A Cultural History

Author: Zahra Hankir

Narrator: Soneela Nankani

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Release date: November 14, 2023

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick “Cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier: Eyeliner has been all these and more. Moving through millenniums and across civilizations, Hankir gives the makeup its eye-opening due.” —The New York Times Book Review “An impressive, rigorously researched, winding path through centuries and over continents.” —NPR.org “I loved Eyeliner. Hankir approaches her subject with dedicated curiosity, humility, and humor, blending anthropology, travel writing, memoir and history. A treat.” —Kassia St. Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Color From the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power. It is undeniably fun—yet it is also far from frivolous. Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word. Delightful, surprising, and utterly absorbing, Eyeliner is a fascinating tour through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/669397 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Charles Wheeler - Witness to the Twentieth Century: A Life in News. Foreword by Christiane Amanpour

Author: Shirin Wheeler

Narrator: Shirin Wheeler

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

Release date: November 9, 2023

Genres: World

Publisher's Summary:

A look at the major events of the twentieth century through the eyes of the man who witnessed it all: celebrated BBC foreign correspondent Charles Wheeler. This audiobook is narrated by his daughter, Shirin Wheeler, and features original audio from Charles' broadcasting days. Charles Wheeler, the BBC's longest-serving foreign correspondent, was one of Britain's greatest news reporters. For more than four decades, he reported for radio and television from most of the world's trouble spots. Present at many of the key episodes of the twentieth century, he had - as a BBC manager noted after the shooting of George Wallace, Presidential candidate and Governor of Alabama, on 15 May 1972, 'a knack of being in the right place at the right time'. It was typical of Charles that he ran towards the sound of the gunshot while the crowd was running in the opposite direction. Wheeler's investigative skill and sense of judgement made him one of the most authoritative reporters of his generation. But what was it like to have been witness to the events that shaped our modern world? In this book - part memoir, part history, part reflection - his daughter, Shirin Wheeler, examines her father's journalistic legacy and brings her personal knowledge to bear on the project. She will tell the story of her father: a patient listener and forensic interrogator who was driven by curiosity and passion to report and expose injustice, and above all to give a voice to people ignored or unheard by many.