High-Quality Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, History & Culture

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628640 to listen full audiobooks. Title: County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital Author: David A. Ansell Narrator: Bronson Pinchot Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 6 minutes Release date: October 11, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The amazing tale of “County” is the story of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the health-care provider of last resort for the city’s uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of its history, from the late 1970s, when the author began his internship, to the “final rounds,” when the enormous, iconic Victorian hospital building was replaced and hundreds of former trainees gathered to bid it an emotional farewell. Ansell writes of the hundreds of doctors who went through the rigorous training process with him, sharing his vision of saving the world and of resurrecting a hospital on the verge of closing. County is about people, from Ansell’s mentors, including the legendary social justice activist Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients he and County’s medical staff labored to diagnose and heal. It is a story about politics, from contentious union strikes to battles against “patient dumping,” and about public health, depicting the AIDS crisis and the opening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic, the first in the city. Finally, it is about a young man’s medical education in urban America, a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation, and poverty.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628096 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus Author: Samuel Eliot Morison Narrator: Frederick Davidson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 25 hours 57 minutes Release date: October 10, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Admiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed in Columbus’ path to the New World could muster. Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus’ Santa Maria and Niña. The result is this vivid and definitive biography that accurately details the voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624195 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Abraham Lincoln Author: Lord Charnwood Narrator: Simon Vance Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 45 minutes Release date: April 21, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: For nearly ninety years, Lord Charnwood’s Abraham Lincoln has been the standard life history of the Great Emancipator. It has become one of the great classics of modern biography and has been read by millions. Charnwood describes the frontier life and continual self-education that developed Lincoln’s rare character and helped him to adapt to great events and demands such as few other men have experienced. Lincoln the man is analyzed against the dramatic historical background of the Colonial days, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise, secession, and an exciting history of the Civil War. Lincoln’s administrative genius, his war strategy, and his neglect of the lesser for the greater are all treated in this masterly portrait.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624182 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Plutarch’s Lives, Vol. 1 Author: Plutarch Narrator: Bernard Mayes Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 42 hours 26 minutes Release date: April 13, 2011 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: One of the world’s most profoundly influential literary works and the basis for Shakespeare’s Roman plays (Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra), Plutarch’s Lives have been entertaining and arousing the spirit of emulation in countless readers since their creation at the beginning of the second century. Originally named Parallel Lives, the work pairs eminent Romans with famous Greek counterparts—like the orators Cicero and Demosthenes—giving illuminating treatments of each separately and then comparing the two in a pithy essay. The first of the two volumes in this translation by John Dryden presents Theseus and Romulus, Pericles and Fabius, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Aristides and Marcus Cato, and Lysander and Sylla, among others. This is a brilliant social history of the ancient world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624181 to listen full audiobooks. Title: C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography, Vol. 1: The Early Years, 1834–1859 Author: Charles H. Spurgeon Narrator: Simon Vance Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 21 hours 53 minutes Release date: April 13, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: At the age of seventeen, Spurgeon became pastor to a handful of believers at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire, meeting in what had been a dovecote. Within five years, he had become the best-known minister in London. Two years later, following the Sepoy Mutiny, he conducted a service of national humiliation in the Crystal Palace that was attended by twenty-four thousand people. But this volume is far from being a record of human fame and success. From his first years of childhood in rural Essex to the first years of revival in London, Spurgeon pours out his story with an enthralling fullness and color that emphasizes the center and passion of his life. Whatever Spurgeon did, he did it for Christ; and therefore, even his autobiography leads our eyes from his own works of service to the Savior behind them.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624183 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Plutarch’s Lives, Vol. 2 Author: Plutarch Narrator: Bernard Mayes Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 41 hours 7 minutes Release date: April 13, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: One of the world’s most profoundly influential literary works and the basis for Shakespeare’s Roman plays (Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra), Plutarch’s Lives have been entertaining and arousing the spirit of emulation in countless readers since their creation at the beginning of the second century. Originally named Parallel Lives, the work pairs eminent Romans with famous Greek counterparts—like the orators Cicero and Demosthenes—giving illuminating treatments of each separately and then comparing the two in a pithy essay. This second and final volume includes Alexander and Caesar, Demetrius and Antony, Dion and Marcus Brutus, the aforementioned Demosthenes and Cicero, as well as biographies of Alexander, Caesar, Cato the Younger, and others.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624179 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Life of Stonewall Jackson Author: Mary L. Williamson Narrator: Lloyd James Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 14 minutes Release date: April 13, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Known for his military prowess and Christian character, Thomas Jackson was one of the Confederacy’s greatest commanders—and one of God’s most devoted warriors. Williamson’s biography traces the general’s life from orphaned child, West Point cadet, and Sunday school teacher to military institute professor, Mexican War officer, and Civil War legend. “In this brief sketch of our great Southern hero, I have endeavored to portray, amid the blaze of his matchless military genius, the unchanging rectitude of his conduct, the stern willpower by which he conquered all difficulties, his firm belief in an overruling Providence, and his entire submission to the Divine Will. These traits of character were the cornerstones upon which he reared the edifice of his greatness and upon which the young people of our day will do well to build.”—Mary L. Williamson

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628231 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President Author: Allen C. Guelzo Narrator: Edward Lewis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 26 minutes Release date: February 10, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Despite tremendous interest in Abraham Lincoln and his place in one of America's most tumultuous historical periods, little has been written about his religious life. This truly fresh look at the nation's sixteenth president relates the outward events of Lincoln's life to his inner spiritual struggles and sets them both against the intellectual backdrop of his age. This unique intellectual portrait explores the role of ideas in Lincoln's life. Guelzo presents Lincoln as a serious thinker deeply involved in the problems of nineteenth-century thought, including those of classical liberalism, the Lockean enlightenment, Victorian unbelief, and Calvinist spirituality. Lincoln emerges as a philosophical man who appropriates certain religious values without adhering to any religion, who insists on the pre-eminence of self-interest in spite of becoming the Great Emancipator, and who appeals to natural law and natural theology in politics while remaining a classical nineteenth-century liberal in principle. Based on primary materials from a wide variety of archives, this insightful work sheds light on the intellectual conflicts that led to civil war and that still influence today's 'culture wars.'

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628034 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War Author: Burke Davis Narrator: Christopher Hurt Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 48 minutes Release date: January 14, 2011 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Robert E. Lee, a Christian and a gentleman, was the most remarkable man to emerge from the Civil War and is one of the greatest tragic figures of American history. Reserved and unflappable, savvy and fearless, shrewd and tenacious, fatherly and kind are but a few of the adjectives commonly used to describe this noble hero. By using a dramatic form of narrative and relying on numerous eyewitness accounts, Burke Davis brings Lee to life. Listening to this powerful work gives you the feeling you are there, with Lee, Jackson, and the rest. It is a rare blend of history and emotion, a book that speaks to both the mind and the heart.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624490 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Life on the Mississippi Author: Mark Twain Narrator: Grover Gardner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 37 minutes Release date: December 14, 2010 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The Mississippi River, known as “America’s river,” and Mark Twain are practically synonymous in American culture. The popularity of Twain’s steamboat and steamboat pilot on the ever-changing Mississippi has endured for over a century. A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author. Written between the publication of his two greatest novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s rich portrait of the Mississippi marks a distinctive transition in the life of the river and the nation, from the boom years preceding the Civil War to the sober times that followed it. Samuel Clemens became a licensed river pilot at the age of twenty-four under the apprenticeship of Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones. His name, Mark Twain, was derived from the river pilot term describing safe navigating conditions, or “mark two fathoms.” This term was shortened to “mark twain” by the leadsmen whose job it was to monitor the water’s depth and report it to the pilot. Although Mark Twain used his childhood experiences growing up along the Mississippi in numerous works, nowhere is the river and the pilot’s life more thoroughly described than in Life on the Mississippi.