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

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/633600 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Spare Author: Prince Harry, The Duke Of Sussex Narrator: Prince Harry, The Duke Of Sussex Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 39 minutes Release date: January 10, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.38 of Total 1401 Ratings of Narrator: 4.73 of Total 629 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the global phenomenon that tells an unforgettable story of love, loss, courage, and healing. “Compellingly artful . . . [a] blockbuster memoir.”—The New Yorker (Best Books of the Year) It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.  Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . . For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/618522 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Escape to the Tatras: A Boy, a War, and Life Interrupted Author: Oscar Sladek Narrator: Ramiz Monsef Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 53 minutes Release date: December 27, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A coming-of-age story set against the rise of fascism, the collapse of democracy in Slovakia and Hungary, the attempted genocide of the Jewish people, and the eventual conquest of the Allied Forces over Nazi Germany, ESCAPE TO THE TATRAS tells the story of one child’s remarkable journey encompassing the essence of life before and throughout World War II. During the terrifying years of deprivation, deportation, and imprisonment of Jews, many of whom were sent off to Nazi labor and extermination camps, the Štaub family (mother Irene, father Frici, and their young son Oskar), citizens of Prešov, Slovakia, fled for their lives in order to hide from the brutal Slovakian forces and their German operatives. Young Osi, who witnessed it all, found the courage and resiliency to cope with challenges far beyond his years. Written seven decades later with the precision of unfailing memory and the pain of personal experience, Oscar (Osi) (Staub) Sladek tells an unforgettable story of resilience and personal triumph.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/634546 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The World According to Proust Author: Joshua Landy Narrator: Stephen Bowlby Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 4 minutes Release date: December 27, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was arguably France's best-known literary writer. He was the author of stories, essays, translations, and a 3,000-page novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-27). This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the listener to view the novel as a single quest—a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging—through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find genuine connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself—how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629523 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Paramedic to the Prince: An American Paramedic's Account of Life Inside the Mysterious World of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Author: Patrick (tom) Notestine Narrator: Fajer Al-Kaisi Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 17 minutes Release date: December 27, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Drive-by shootings, drug overdoses, and multi-car accidents—as a paramedic, he thought he had seen it all, until he answered a small job advertisement that changed his life forever. Welcome to the mysterious world of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the most fundamentalist Islamic countries on the globe. Working as a paramedic at the only level one trauma center in the Middle East, he found his skills and knowledge tested to the limit on a daily basis. Later recruited to the medical team of Crown Prince Abdullah Ibin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the now reigning King of Saudi Arabia, he was drawn into a world of palaces and princes, limousines an Learjets. His adventure had only begun. This is a riveting, factual account of an American paramedic's extraordinary experience inside a country seldom seen by the outside world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629550 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Women Who Invented the Sixties: Ella Baker, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan Author: Steve Golin Narrator: Allyson Johnson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 12 minutes Release date: December 20, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Women Who Invented the Sixties tells the story of how four women helped define the 1960s and made a lasting impression for decades to follow. In 1960, Ella Baker played the key role in the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which became an essential organization for students during the civil rights movement and the model for the antiwar and women's movements. In 1961, Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, changing the shape of urban planning irrevocably. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, creating the modern environmental movement. And in 1963, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, which sparked second-wave feminism and created lasting changes for women. Their four separate interventions helped, together, to end the 1950s and invent the 1960s. Women Who Invented the Sixties situates each of these four women in the 1950s—Baker's early activism with the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jacobs's work with Architectural Forum and her growing involvement in neighborhood protest, Carson's conservation efforts and publications, and Friedan's work as a labor journalist and the discrimination she faced—before exploring their contributions to the 1960s and the movements they each helped shape.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/625203 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Banker's Journey: How Edmond J. Safra Built A Global Financial Empire Author: Daniel Gross Narrator: Joe Barrett Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 27 minutes Release date: December 13, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In A Banker's Journey, financial journalist and historian Daniel Gross, who, like Edmond Safra, traces his heritage to Aleppo, Syria, reconstructs the public life of an intensely private man. With exclusive access to Safra's personal archives, Gross tracks the banker's remarkable journey from Beirut to Milan, São Paulo, Geneva, and New York—to the pinnacle of global finance. Edmond Safra was fifteen in 1947, when his father sent him to establish a presence in Milan, Italy. Fluent in six languages, and with an eye for value, managing risk, and personal potential, Safra was in perpetual motion until his tragic death in 1999. The modern, global financial empire he built was based on timeless principles: a banker must protect his depositors and avoid excessive leverage and risk. In an age of busts and bailouts, Safra posted remarkable returns while rarely suffering a credit loss. From a young age, Safra assumed the mantle of leadership in the Syrian-Lebanese Jewish community, providing personal aid, supporting the communities that formed in exile, and championing Sephardic religious and educational efforts in Israel and around the world. Safra's life of achievement in the twentieth century offers enduring lessons for those seeking to make their way in the twenty-first century. He inspired generations to make the world a better place.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/625200 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love, Luck, and Survival Author: Judith Kashti, Alexandra Littauer, Eva Heymann, Celia Clement Narrator: Christa Lewis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 6 minutes Release date: December 13, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Three young Jewish sisters from Leipzig, Germany huddle together in the cold darkness of night waiting for their smugglers to rescue them and bring them to freedom in Belgium. Their mother, in a state of shock following Kristallnacht, is left behind, sedated in a psychiatric hospital. November 1938 begins the four year ordeal of the seven member Kroch family who endure unfathomable conditions in their fight for survival: imprisonment in French internment camps, hiding in a tiny tool shed, and adapting to the deplorable conditions of a Nazi prison. The memoirs of Alexandra, age eleven, and her sisters, fifteen year old Eva and fourteen year old Judith, interweave as they recount the true story of their escape from the Nazis. Leaving behind their life of luxury, the girls describe unimaginable hunger, deprivation, and fear. Family love, music, and the close friendship of strangers are the essential ingredients that sustain them through the hardships they face. A narrative backdrop threads through the story, providing the socio-political context. From a historical perspective and from the three sisters' witness accounts, the listener will come to understand the progression of antisemitism in Germany and France, the course by which Hitler dismantled democracy, the role France adopted as Nazi collaborators, and how the Swiss policies towards Jews were executed. This audiobook includes supplemental material in printable PDF format.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629539 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hot Spot: A Doctor's Diary From the Pandemic Author: Dr. Alex Jahangir Narrator: Shawn K. Jain Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 36 minutes Release date: December 13, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: When Nashville identified its first case of coronavirus in March 2020, the city was between Public Health Department directors and as unprepared as the rest of the world for what was to come. Dr. Alex Jahangir, a trauma surgeon acting at that time as chair of the Metro Nashville Board of Health, unexpectedly found himself head of the city's COVID-19 Task Force and responsible for leading it through uncharted waters. What followed was a year of unprecedented challenge and scrutiny. Jahangir, who immigrated to the United States from Iran at age six, grew up in Nashville. He thought he knew the city well. But the pandemic laid bare ethnic, racial, and cultural tensions that daily threatened to derail what should have been a collective effort to keep residents healthy and safe. Hot Spot is Jahangir's narrative of the first year of COVID, derived from his op notes (the journal-like entries surgeons often keep following operations) and expanded to include his personal reflections and a glimpse into the inner sanctums of city and state governance in crisis.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/629203 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty Author: Andrew Meier Narrator: Mark Deakins Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 38 hours 44 minutes Release date: December 13, 2022 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: An “epic and intimate” (David M. Kennedy) portrait of four generations of the Morgenthau family, a dynasty of power brokers and public officials with an outsize—and previously unmapped—influence extending from daily life in New York City to the shaping of the American Century “Magisterial . . . a vivid retelling of critical domestic and world events over two centuries.”—Dr. Fiona Hill After coming to America from Germany in 1866, the Morgenthaus made history in international diplomacy, in domestic politics, and in America’s criminal justice system. With unprecedented, exclusive access to family archives, award-winning journalist and biographer Andrew Meier vividly chronicles how the Morgenthaus amassed a fortune in Manhattan real estate, advised presidents, advanced the New Deal, exposed the Armenian genocide, rescued victims of the Holocaust, waged war in the Mediterranean and Pacific, and, from a foundation of private wealth, built a dynasty of public service. In the words of former mayor Ed Koch, they were “the closest we’ve got to royalty in New York City.”  Lazarus Morgenthau arrived in America dreaming of rebuilding the fortune he had lost in his homeland. He ultimately died destitute, but the family would rise again with the ascendance of Henry, who became a wealthy and powerful real estate baron. From there, the Morgenthaus went on to influence the most consequential presidency of the twentieth century, as Henry’s son Henry Jr. became FDR’s longest-serving aide, his Treasury secretary during the war, and his confidant of thirty years. Finally, there was Robert Morgenthau, a decorated World War II hero who would become the longest-tenured district attorney in the history of New York City. Known as the “DA for life,” he oversaw the most consequential and controversial prosecutions in New York of the last fifty years, from the war on the Mafia to the infamous Central Park Jogger case.  The saga of the Morgenthaus has lain half hidden in the shadows for too long. At heart a family history, Morgenthau is also an American epic, as sprawling and surprising as the country itself.  * This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF that contains images from the book.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/627502 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Elizabeth: An intimate portrait from the writer who knew her and her family for over fifty years Author: Gyles Brandreth Narrator: Gyles Brandreth Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 19 hours 53 minutes Release date: December 8, 2022 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.06 of Total 16 Ratings of Narrator: 2 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. THE NO 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER NOW FEATURING EXCLUSIVE MATERIAL ABOUT CHARLES III's CORONATION WITH ADDED PHOTOGRAPHS A personal account of the life and character of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, from the writer who knew her family best 'Compelling . . . Fascinating' DAILY MAIL 'The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals' THE TIMES 'The book overflows with nuggets of insider knowledge' TELEGRAPH Paints a unique picture of the remarkable woman who reigned for seven decades. Fascinating insights' HELLO! Gyles Brandreth first met the Queen in 1968, when he was twenty. Over the next fifty years he met her many times, both at public and at private events. Through his friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh, he was given privileged access to Elizabeth II. He kept a record of all those encounters, and his conversations with the Queen over the years, his meetings with her family and friends, and his observations of her at close quarters are what make this very personal account of her extraordinary life uniquely fascinating. From her childhood in the 1920s to the era of Harry and Meghan in the 2020s, from her war years at Windsor Castle to her death at Balmoral, this is both a record of a tumultuous century of royal history and a truly intimate portrait of a remarkable woman. Enjoy this special edition now featuring an exclusive postscript about King Charles III's Coronation with photographs. Praise for Gyles Brandreth's bestselling royal writing: 'Beautifully written book. I have read many other books about Philip but this is the best' DAILY EXPRESS 'Brilliant, totally inspiring . . . It's a joy to read a book that comes from a perspective of fondness' KIRSTIE ALLSOPP, THE TIMES 'As a sparkling celebration of Prince Philip, the book will be hard to beat' TELEGRAPH 'So readable and refreshing even after the millions of words that have been written about Prince Philip in the past couple of weeks' THE TIMES 'Brilliant . . . There is so much in this book you won't find anywhere else' LORRAINE ©2022 Gyles Brandreth (P)2022 Penguin Audio