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

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/630961 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions Author: Mattie Kahn Narrator: Eunice Wong Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 34 minutes Release date: June 13, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: NPR's Books We Love 2023 Glamour's 'The 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023, So Far' Vogue's 'Best Books of 2023 (So Far)' Town & Country's 'The Best Books of 2023' A 'heartening inspiration'(The New York Times), the untold story of the people who have helped spark America’s most transformative social movements throughout history: teenage girls Nine months before Rosa Parks kicked off the bus boycotts, Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was fifteen. In 1912, women’s rights activists organized a massive march in support of women’s suffrage. Leading them up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was not one of the mothers of the movement, but a teenage Chinese immigrant named Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. Half a century before the better-known movements for workers’ rights began, over 1,500 girls—some as young as ten—walked out of factories in Lowell, Massachusetts, demanding safer working conditions and higher wages in one of the nation’s first-ever labor strikes. Young women have been disenfranchised and discounted, but the true retelling of major social movements in America reveals their might: they have ignited almost every single one. Young and Restless recounts one of the most foundational and underappreciated forces in moments of American revolution: teenage girls. From the American Revolution itself to the Civil Rights Movement to nuclear disarmament protests and the women’s liberation movement, through Black Lives Matter and school strikes for climate, Mattie Kahn uncovers how girls have leveraged their unique strengths, from fandom to intimate friendships, to organize and lay serious political groundwork for movements that often sidelined them. Their stories illuminate how much we owe to girls throughout the generations, what skills young women use to mobilize and find their voices, and, crucially, what we can all stand to learn from them.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/631090 to listen full audiobooks. Title: To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories Author: Sarah Viren Narrator: Natalie Naudus Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 51 minutes Release date: June 13, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: “Has the page-turning quality of a thriller.” —NPR “Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.” —The New York Times Book Review “Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) This unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of lies that threaten to derail the author’s life—exploring the line between fact and fiction, reality and conspiracy. In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion” (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she’s being investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach. To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it challenges everything Sarah thought she knew about truth, testimony, and the difference between the two. She knows the claims made against Marta must be lies, and as she attempts to uncover the identity of the person behind them and prove her wife’s innocence, she’s drawn back into the questions that her teacher inspired all those years ago: about the nature of truth, the value of skepticism, and the stakes we all have in getting the story right. An incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. An “ouroboros of a book” (The New York Times) and a “bold new approach to the genre of memoir” (The Millions), To Name the Bigger Lie also reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622640 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds Author: Hannah Pick-Goslar Narrator: Alix Dunmore Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 27 minutes Release date: June 8, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. THE LONG-AWAITED, MOVING MEMOIR OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR HANNAH PICK-GOSLAR, WHO SHARES AN INTIMATE LOOK INTO HER LIFE AND FRIENDSHIP WITH ANNE FRANK. 'As a girl I witnessed the world I loved crumble and vanish, destroyed by senseless hatred, and with it, my best friend Anne' Two best friends' lives were about to change for ever, neither would ever be forgotten... When Hannah's family flee from the Nazis to Amsterdam, she soon strikes up a friendship with a girl just like her freshly arrived from Germany. Precocious and outspoken, the girl's name is Anne Frank and for seven blissful years the inseparable pair navigate school, boys and coming of age. Then one day in 1942, as the Nazi occupation intensifies, they are separated without warning. Hannah calls on Anne and can't find a trace of her, breakfast dishes still in the sink, beds unmade. Anne and her family have seemingly vanished. They are told the Franks have fled to Switzerland. As Hannah is tormented by the fate of her friend, hoping she is alive and well elsewhere, her own family's fate unfolds. After attempts to flee themselves, the SS finally come for them and they are taken to the transit camp Westerbork. Eventually Hannah, her father and younger sister Gabi are transported to Bergen-Belsen. Amid horrific conditions with death all around, it is during Hannah's darkest point at the concentration camp that she hears astonishing of news of Anne. Desperate to save her friend who is weak and struggling to survive, Hannah risks her life to help her. In an incredible memoir of hope, strength and defiance, Hannah shares the intimate, loving portrait of her friendship with the young diarist who would go on to capture the hearts of millions around the world. ©2023 Hannah Pick-Goslar (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622043 to listen full audiobooks. Title: First Family Author: Cassandra A. Good Narrator: Courtney Patterson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 35 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Award-winning historian Cassandra A. Good shows how the outspoken stepgrandchildren of George Washington played an overlooked but important role in the development of American society and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War. While it’s widely known in America that George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, few are aware that they raised numerous children together. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, as well as meet the children he helped raise and trace their complicated roles in American history. The children of Martha Washington’s son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye. Raised in the country’s first “first family,” they remained well-known as Washington’s family and keepers of his legacy throughout their lives. By turns petty and powerful, glamorous and cruel, the Custises used Washington as a means to enhance their own power and status. As enslavers committed to the American empire, the Custis family embodied the failures of the American experiment that finally exploded into civil war—all the while being celebrities in a soap opera of their own making. First Family brings new focus and attention to this surprisingly neglected aspect of George Washington’s life and legacy. As the country grapples with concerns about political dynasties and the public role of presidential families, the saga of Washington’s family offers a human story of historical precedent. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/624941 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Lone Stars Rising: The Fifty People Who Turned Texas Into the Fastest-Growing, Most Exciting, and, Sometimes, Most Exasperating State in the Country Author: Editors Of Texas Monthly Narrator: Roxanne Hernandez Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 3 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Texas Monthly, a collection of original essays and portraits of fifty groundbreaking Texans who have shaped the Lone Star State—and the nation—over the past half century. With a population of twenty-nine million, Texas has birthed some of America’s most innovative, culture-altering politicians, entertainers, athletes, and activists of the last five decades. In Lone Stars Rising, the editors of Texas Monthly select fifty of the most trailblazing Texans who have shaped the Lone Star State and America today. Organized by decade and featuring essays from the magazine’s legendary roster of contributors, accompanied by drawings and fifty photographs throughout, this collection includes incisive commentary on the stars whose rise from Texas to the world stage has been meteoric, as well as the lesser-known individuals who have been toiling on the sidelines, quietly and intentionally shaping the way we think and talk about the Texas that exists today. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Texas Monthly, Lone Stars Rising is the quintessential ode to the Lone Star State in all its complexity. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629601 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West Author: Will Grant Narrator: Kevin Stillwell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 34 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: "Spellbinding" (Douglas Preston) and "completely fascinating" (Elizabeth Letts), cowboy and journalist Will Grant takes us on an epic and authentic horseback journey into the modern West on an adventure of a lifetime.  The Last Ride of the Pony Express boldly illuminates both our mythic fascination with the Pony Express, and how its spirit continues to this day. ​      The Pony Express was a fast-horse frontier mail service that spanned the American West— the high, dry, and undeniably lonesome part of North America. While in operation during the 1860s, it carried letter mail on a blistering ten-day schedule between Missouri and San Francisco, running through a vast and mostly uninhabited wilderness. It covered a massive distance—akin to running horses between Madrid and Moscow— and to this day, the Pony Express is irrefutably the greatest display of American horsemanship to ever color the pages of a history book.   Though the Pony Express has enjoyed a lot of traction over the years, among the authors that have attempted to encapsulate it, none have ever ridden it themselves. While most scholars would look for answers inside a library, Will Grant looks for his between the ears of a horse. Inspired by the likes of Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom traveled throughout the developing West, Will Grant returned to his roots: he would ride the trail himself with his two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, from one end to the other.   Will Grant captures the spirit of the west in a way that few writers have.  Along with rich encounters with the ranchers, farmers, historians, and businessmen who populate the trail, his exploits on horseback offer an intimate portrait of how the West has evolved from the rough and tumble 19th century to the present, and it’s written with such intimacy that you’ll feel as though you’re riding right alongside of him. Along the way, he fights off wild mustangs wanting to steal his horses in Utah, camps with Peruvian sheepherders in the mountains, and even spends three days riding under the Top Gun aviator school in Nevada, which are just a handful of extraordinary tales Will Grant unveils as he makes his way across the treacherous and, at times, thrilling landscape of the known and unknown American West.   The Last Ride of the Pony Express is a uniquely tenacious tale of adventure by a native son of the West who defies most modern conveniences to compass some two thousand miles on horseback. The result is an unforgettable narrative that will forever change how you see the West, the Pony Express, and America as a whole.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/632388 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark Author: Sarafina El-Badry Nance Narrator: Sarafina El-Badry Nance Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 45 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In a beautifully written, science-packed, and inspirational memoir, Egyptian-American astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance shares how she boldly carved out a place in the field of astrophysics, grounding herself in a lifelong love of the stars to face life’s inevitable challenges and embrace the unknown. As a child, Sarafina El-Badry Nance spent nearly every evening with her father gazing up at the flickering stars and pondering what secrets the night sky held. The daughter of an American father and Egyptian mother who both pushed her toward academic excellence, Sarafina dreamed of becoming an astronomer and untangling the mysteries of the stars overhead. But it wasn’t long before she was told, both explicitly and implicitly, that girls just weren’t cut out for math and science. In Starstruck, Sarafina invites us to consider the cosmos through fascinating science lessons to open each chapter. But she also traces more earthbound obstacles—of misogyny and racism, abuse and intergenerational trauma, anxiety and self-doubt, cancer diagnoses and recovery—she faced along the way. As her career and passion for space brought her from UT Austin to UC Berkeley, and even to a Mars astronaut simulation in Hawai’i, Sarafina learned how to survive—and ultimately thrive—in a space that was seldom welcoming to women, and especially not to women of color.   Honest and empowering, Starstruck sits at the intersection of the study of our cosmos—itself constantly changing—and the transformative experience of embracing resilience to pursue one’s passion.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/630987 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education Author: Sola Mahfouz, Malaina Kapoor Narrator: Ariana Delawari Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 0 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life.   “Stories like this inspire me. Seeing the way people like Sola Mahfouz think about the world reinforces my optimism about the future.”―BILL GATES Sola Mahfouz was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1996, the year the Taliban took over her country for the first time. They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backward on women’s rights, practically imprisoning women within their own homes and forcing them to wear all-concealing burqas. At age eleven, Sola was forced to stop attending school after a group of men threatened to throw acid in her face if she continued. After that she was confined to her home, required to cook and clean and prepare for an arranged marriage. She saw the outside world only a handful of times each year. As time passed, Sola began to understand that she was condemned to the same existence as millions of women in Afghanistan. Her future was empty. The rest of her life would be controlled entirely by men: fathers and husbands and sons who would never allow her to study, to earn money, or even to dream. Driven by this devastating realization, Sola began a years-long fight to change the trajectory of her life, deciding that education would be her way out. At age sixteen, without even the basic ability to add or subtract, she began to teach herself math and English in secret. She progressed rapidly., Within just two years she was already studying subjects such as philosophy and physics. Faced with obstacles at every turn, Sola still managed to sneak into Pakistan to take the SAT. In 2016, she escaped to the United States, where she is now a quantum-computing researcher at Tufts University. An engrossing, dramatic memoir, co-written with young Indian American human rights activist Malaina Kapoor, Defiant Dreams is the story of one girl, but it’s also the untold story of a generation of women brimming with potential and longing for freedom.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629604 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World Author: Anna Lekas Miller Narrator: Anna Lekas Miller Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 27 minutes Release date: June 6, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: With deep empathy, rigorous reporting, and the irresistible perspective of a true romantic, journalist Anna Lekas Miller spotlights couples around the world who confront frustrating immigration systems to be together—as she did to be with her husband. ​ We are told that love conquers all, but what happens when you don’t have the right passport? Love  Across  Borders  takes  readers  through  contentious  frontiers  around  the  world,  from Turkey to Iraq, Syria to Greece, Mexico to the United States, to reveal the wide-spread  prejudicial  laws  intent  on  dividing  us.  Lekas  Miller  tells  her  own  gripping  story  of  meeting  Salem  Rizk,  in  Istanbul,  where  they were  both  reporting  on  the  Syrian  civil war. But when Turkey started cracking down on refugees, Salem, who is Syrian, wasn’t allowed to stay there, nor could he safely return to Syria. He was a man without a country. So Lekas Miller had to decide her next move: she had an American passport but deep personal ties to the Middle East, and she knew it was unfair that Salem couldn’t travel freely the way she could. More important, she loved him.  Over  the  next  few  years,  as  they  navigated  Salem’s  asylum  claims,  the  United  States’  Muslim  ban,  and  labyrinthine  regulations  in  several  different countries,  Lekas  Miller learned about—and naturally bonded with—other people whose spouses had been deported,  who  found  love  in  refugee  camps, whose  differing  immigration  statuses  caused  complicated  power  dynamics  and  financial  hardship  in  their  relationships  or  threatened  the  wellbeing  of their  children.  Here,  offering  a  uniquely  diverse,  international, and intimate look at the global immigration crisis, she collects and interweaves these  rich  love stories  with  a  fascinating  look  at  the  history  of  passports  (a  shockingly  recent institution), the legacy of colonialism, and the discriminatory laws shaping how people move through the world every day.   Ultimately, she builds a powerful, moving case for a borderless society—one where she and Salem could move freely to be near family or back to the city that first let them fall in love, and where a border patrol agent can’t keep anyone’s love story from its happy ending.  “A book designed to change minds and hearts. What are we fighting for, after all, if not a world where love can be truly free?” —Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back and Necessary Trouble

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/620364 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives Author: Naoíse Mac Sweeney Narrator: Shaheen Khan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 8 minutes Release date: May 23, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: “A bold, sweeping bird’s eye view of thousands of years of history that provides a truly global perspective of the past. A fantastic achievement.”—Peter Frankopan, internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals.   In this groundbreaking, story-driven retelling of Western history, Naoíse Mac Sweeney debunks the myths and origin stories that underpin the history we thought we knew. Told through fourteen figures who each played a role in the creation of the Western idea—from Herodotus, a mixed-race migrant, to Phylis Wheatley, an enslaved African American who became a literary sensation; and from Gladstone, with a private passion for epic poetry, to the medieval Arab scholar Al-Kindi—the subjects are a mind-expanding blend of unsung heroes and familiar faces viewed afresh. These characters span the millennia and the continents, representing different religions, varying levels of wealth and education, diverse traditions and nationalities. Each life tells us something unexpected about the age in which it was lived and offers us a piece of the puzzle of how the modern idea of the West developed—and why we've misunderstood it for too long.   The concept of “the West” is present in every daily interaction you have, from entertainment and politics to world markets and world history. This engagingly intimate history will reshape the way you see the world around you. At this moment of civilizational redefinition, if we are to chart a future for the West, we must properly understand its past.