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

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623976 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Blooding at Great Meadows: Young George Washington and the Battle That Shaped the Man Author: Alan Axelrod Narrator: David Drummond Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 51 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: History celebrates George Washington as the leader of the American Revolution and the father of his country. But what has gone previously unexamined is Washington’s life as a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel; he led four hundred American militiamen against a bigger, more experienced French army and paid a high price. Not only did Washington lose over a third of his men, but the Battle of Great Meadows was also the spark that ignited the French and Indian War. Yet in the midst of this bitter battle, Washington forged the intellectual, visceral, and spiritual aspects that enabled him to achieve all that he did in the years that followed. In this never-before-told account, historian Alan Axelrod examines the geopolitical, financial, and intensely personal issues that shaped the leader Washington would become.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624006 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The English Governess at the Siamese Court: Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok Author: Anna Harriette Leonowens Narrator: Wanda Mccaddon Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 16 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: This 1870 memoir, which was the basis for the musical The King and I, vividly recounts the experiences of Anna Harriette Leonowens, who served as a governess for the sixty-plus children of King Mongkut of Siam and as translator and scribe for the King himself. Bright, young, and energetic, Leonowens was well-suited to her role, and her writings convey a heartfelt interest in the lives, legends, and languages of Siam’s rich and poor. She also tells of how she and the king often disagreed on matters domestic—this was the first time King Mongkut had met a woman who dared to contradict him, and the governess found the very idea of male domination intolerable. Her exchanges with His Majesty on topics like grammar, charity, slavery, politics, and religion add much to her diary’s rich, cross-cultural spirit and its East-meets-West appeal.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624048 to listen full audiobooks. Title: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Author: Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird Narrator: Jeff Cummings Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 26 hours 30 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.15 of Total 67 Ratings of Narrator: 4.33 of Total 15 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The inspiration for the major motion picture Oppenheimer, this is the definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, J. Robert Oppenheimer became the most famous scientist of his generation—one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress. He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials, an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force’s plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, superbomb advocate Edward Teller, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets. American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer’s life and times in revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in America and abroad, on massive FBI files, and on close to a hundred interviews with Oppenheimer’s friends, relatives, and colleagues. The book follows him from his earliest education at the turn of the twentieth century at New York City’s Ethical Culture School through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world’s most accomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of theoretical physics and where he became deeply involved with social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were communists. The book follows him to Los Alamos, New Mexico, he transformed a bleak mesa into the world’s most potent nuclear weapons laboratory—and where he himself was transformed—and finally, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed from 1947 to 1966. American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex, and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events: the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It is at once biography and history and is essential to our understanding of our recent past—and of our choices for the future.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623883 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid: A Faithful and Interesting Narrative Author: Pat F. Garrett Narrator: Daniel Luna Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 30 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Of all firsthand accounts of lawlessness in the old Southwest, none is more fascinating than Pat F. Garrett's The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. It was first published in 1882, a year after Sheriff Garrett killed the Kid, 'the bravest and most feared' gunman of the cattle war in Lincoln County, New Mexico. This book is at once the most authoritative biography of William H. Bonney and the foundation of the Billy the Kid legend. Reputed to have killed his first man at the age of twelve, William Bonney went on to gun his way into Western legend as Billy the Kid. When he was killed at the age of twenty-one, the Kid was famous throughout the country as the boy who, so he boasted, had killed a man for every year of his life. This is the story of William Bonney as told by the lawman who ended his notorious career. While explaining the public sympathy that people often accorded Bonney, Garrett challenges the glorified legends of the Kid with the genuine story of a reckless cowhand who became a hired gun. Combining the best elements of eyewitness history with the dramatic flair of a Western novel, this is the clearest account available of the career of a man some thought of as a murdering fiend and others as an American Robin Hood.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623968 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Sufferings in Africa: Captain Riley’s Narrative Author: James Riley Narrator: Brian Emerson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 55 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In this classic true adventure story, a young American sea captain named James Riley, shipwrecked off the western coast of North Africa in 1815, is captured by a band of nomadic Arabs and sold into slavery. Thus begins an epic adventure of survival and a quest for freedom that takes him across the Sahara desert. This dramatic account of Captain Riley’s trials and sufferings sold more than one million copies in his day and was even read by a young and impressionable Abraham Lincoln. The degradations of a slave existence and the courage to survive under the most harrowing conditions have rarely been recorded with such painful honesty. Sufferings in Africa is a classic travel-adventure narrative and a fascinating testament of white Americans enslaved abroad, during a time when slavery flourished throughout the United States.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624003 to listen full audiobooks. Title: South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage Author: Ernest Shackleton Narrator: Geoffrey Howard Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 31 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In 1911, veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to lead the first expedition across Antarctica, the last unknown continent. Instead, his ship, the Endurance, became locked in sea ice, and for nine months, Shackleton fought a losing battle with the elements before the drifting ship was crushed, marooning him and his crew. This gripping first-hand account follows Shackleton and his men on their harrowing journey back to civilization: over 600 miles of unstable ice floes on foot, 850 miles of the worst seas in an open 22-foot boat, and then 20 miles of mountainous terrain to reach the nearest outpost of civilization. An astonishing story that explores the limits of human courage, Shackleton’s South ranks among history’s greatest adventures.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623929 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Story of My Life Author: Helen Keller Narrator: Mary Woods Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 14 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A serious illness destroyed Helen Keller’s sight and hearing before she reached the age of two. At seven, she was introduced to Ann Sullivan, the beloved teacher and friend who helped Helen to make contact with her world. Through sheer determination and resolve, Helen learned to speak, read, and write, and prepared herself for entry into prep school by the age of sixteen. She later enrolled at Radcliffe and graduated with honors. Her motto: “There are no handicaps, only challenges.”

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623910 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Author: Benjamin Franklin Narrator: Michael Edwards Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 59 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Among other things, Benjamin Franklin was a printer, philosopher, inventor, statesman, and not least, a writer. Franklin's writings span a long and distinguished career of literary, scientific, and political inquiry—the work of a man whose life lasted for nearly all of the eighteenth century and whose achievements ranged from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanac to signing the Declaration of Independence.His autobiography captures the essence of his spirit, and in it we can see him as a product of the eighteenth-century enlightenment, a type of Yankee statesman who could use the language of Addison, Steele, Swift, and Defoe. In his autobiography, Franklin asks himself, 'Who am I, how did I come to be, and why am I a human being as I am?' and he answers with the honesty, wit, and charm that have made this possibly the most famous of all autobiographies. This isan intimate look at the life of one of American history's most notable figures.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/623865 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Story of the Red Cross Author: Clara Barton Narrator: S. Patricia Bailey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 16 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Clara Barton was one of those diminutive New England women of the nineteenth century who was determined to make the world a better place. In 1881, she founded the American Red Cross to help the unfortunate victims of war and disaster, and served as its president from 1882 to 1904. The Red Cross of today stands as a living memorial to the lifelong efforts of this valiant lady. Here Miss Barton tells the story of the first twenty-five years of the historic organization she founded. She shares details about the relief the Red Cross brought during the Texas Famine, the Mount Vernon Cyclone, the Johnstown Flood, the Sea Island Hurricane, and the Galveston Tidal Wave. The stories become all the more dramatic as a living eyewitness account told in Clara Barton's own words.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624016 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Passages from the Diary of Samuel Pepys Author: Samuel Pepys Narrator: Fred Williams Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 2 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: 'The diary which Samuel Pepys kept from January 1660 to May 1669…is one of our greatest historical records and…a major work of English literature,' writes the renowned historian Paul Johnson. A witness to the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666, Pepys chronicled the events of his day. His diary provides an astonishingly frank and diverting account of political intrigues, naval, church, and cultural affairs, as well as a quotidian journal of daily life in London during the Restoration. Pepys' vivid, unconscious style, originally written in a cryptic shorthand, reveals an ideal witness: honest, unpretentious, and true.