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

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624028 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Author: Benvenuto Cellini Narrator: Simon Vance Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 31 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography. In this work, which was begun in 1558 but not published until 1730, Cellini beautifully chronicles his own flamboyant times. He tells of his adventures in Italy and France and his relations with popes, kings, and fellow artists. From Florence and Pisa to Siena and Rome, Cellini portrays a tumultuous period—the age of Galileo, Michelangelo, and de Medicis—with an artist’s eye for detail and a curmudgeon’s propensity for criticism. Cellini, according to himself, seems to have lived a very full life, and his account of his exploits, though grandiloquent and somewhat suspect, are always entertaining. Historians have considered this work as a prime example of the emergence of modern individualism during the Renaissance.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628360 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Compleated Autobiography Author: Benjamin Franklin Narrator: Richard Ferrone Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 48 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated autobiography, published after his death, is one of the greatest autobiographies of all time—but it was incomplete. Franklin ended his life’s story in 1757, when he was only fifty-one. He lived another thirty-three full, eventful, and dramatic years, some of the most dramatic years in American history—years in which Franklin was America’s advocate in London, represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress, and was America’s wartime ambassador to France. During these years Franklin also helped write our nation’s Constitution and planned an American Empire that would displace the British Empire. Franklin is one of the most fascinating of the Founding Fathers—a polymath like Jefferson, a practical statesman like Washington, and a cynic and wit beyond parallel. Now, at last, in The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, we finally get the rest of the story, in Franklin’s own words. Faithfully compiled and edited from Franklin’s papers by Dr. Mark Skousen—Franklin’s descendant, acting as his devoted secretary—this is the closest we will ever get to Franklin sitting down in his study in Philadelphia, dipping quill into ink, and finishing his autobiography.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628182 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Author: David J. Garrow Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 34 hours 19 minutes Release date: January 1, 2006 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. David J. Garrow had unrestricted access to Martin Luther King's personal papers, to thousands of pages of newly released FBI documents, and to more than seven hundred interviews with King's closest friends and enemies. Garrow traces King's transformation from the young pastor of a modest church into the foremost spokesperson of the civil rights movement. The book's unifying theme is King's growing awareness of the symbolic meaning of the cross, as his sense of personal mission deepened into an acceptance of a life that would demand the ultimate sacrifice. This is a powerful portrait of a man at the epicenter of one of the most dramatic periods in our history—and of his metamorphosis into a legend.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628322 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Kabloona: Among the Inuit Author: Gontran De Poncins Narrator: Grover Gardner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 33 minutes Release date: June 27, 2005 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: This extraordinary classic has been variously acclaimed as one of the great books of adventure, travel, anthropology, and spiritual awakening. In 1938 and 1939, a French nobleman spent fifteen months living among the Inuit people of the Arctic. He was at first appalled by their way of life: eating rotten raw fish, sleeping with each others' wives, ignoring schedules, and helping themselves to his possessions. Indeed, most Europeans would be overwhelmed merely by the smells Poncins encountered in the igloos. But as de Poncins's odyssey continues, he is transformed from Kabloona, the White Man, an uncomprehending outsider, to someone who finds himself living, for a few short months, as Inuk: a man, preeminently. He opens his eyes to the world around him, a harsh but beautiful world unlike any other, and allows himself to be fully immersed in its culture.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628218 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Edison: A Life of Invention Author: Paul Israel Narrator: Raymond Todd Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 21 hours 49 minutes Release date: June 22, 2005 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The definitive biography of the century's godfather of invention—from the preeminent Edison scholar The conventional story of Thomas Edison reads more like myth than history: with only three months of formal education, a hardworking young man overcomes the odds to become one of the greatest inventors in history. But the portrait that emerges from Edison: A Life of Inventionreveals a man of genius and astonishing foresight whose career was actually a product of his fast-changing era.In this peerless biography, Paul Israel exposes the man behind the inventions, expertly situating his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. For the first time, much attention is devoted to Edison's early family life, where the young man honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as the editor of a weekly newspaper. Armed with unprecedented access to Edison's workshop diaries, notebooks, letters, and more than five million pages of archives, Israel brings fresh insight into how the inventor's creative mind worked, brightening the unexamined corners of his singularly influential and triumphant career in science.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628244 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Personal Odyssey Author: Thomas Sowell Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 55 minutes Release date: June 22, 2005 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 1 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell’s life-long education in the school of hard knocks, as the journey took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place. The vignettes of the people and places that made an impression on Thomas Sowell at various stages of his life range from the poor and powerless to the mighty and the wealthy, from a home for homeless boys to the White House, as well as ranging across the United States and around the world. It also includes Sowell’s startling discovery of his own origins during his teenage years. More than a story of the life of Sowell himself, this is also about the people who gave him their help, their support, and their loyalty, as well as those who demonized him and knifed him in the back. It is a study not just of one life but also of life in general, with all its exhilaration and pain of constant striving and deserved success.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/628131 to listen full audiobooks. Title: In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War Author: Alice Rains Trulock Narrator: Grover Gardner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 56 minutes Release date: June 22, 2005 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Joshua Chamberlain of Maine forged an incredible career during the Civil War. An academic and theologian by training, this modest young professor left Bowdoin College to accept a commission as lieutenant colonel of the Twentieth Maine. He fought at Antietam and Fredericksburg, then led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the brilliant charge that saved Little Round Top. Promoted to brigade command, Chamberlain won a battlefield promotion to brigadier general from Ulysses S. Grant for his distinguished conduct in the assaults against Petersburg. He was held in such high esteem by his superior officers that Grant accorded him the honor of receiving the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox. There Chamberlain endeared himself to succeeding generations with his unforgettable salute to Robert E. Lee's defeated army. After the war, he went on to serve four terms as governor of his home state and later became president of Bowdoin College. He wrote prolifically about the war, including The Passing of the Armies, a classic account of the final campaign of the Army of the Potomac. This remarkable biography traces his life and times.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/627534 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Anton Chekhov: A Life Author: Donald Rayfield Narrator: Fred Williams Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 28 hours 30 minutes Release date: April 1, 2000 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Anton Chekhov’s life was short, intense, and dominated by battles, both with his dependents and with the tuberculosis that killed him at age forty-four. The traditional image of Chekhov is that of the restrained artist torn between medicine and literature, but Donald Rayfield’s biography reveals the life long hidden behind the noble facade. Here is a man capable of both great generosity toward needy peasants and harsh callousness toward lovers and family, a man who craved with equal passion the company of others and the solitude necessary to create his art. Based on information from Chekhov archives throughout Russia, Rayfield’s work has been hailed as a groundbreaking examination of the life of a literary master.