Listen to Top 100 Audiobooks in History, American

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: When Books Went to War

Subtitle: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II

Author: Molly Guptill Manning

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-02-14

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 60 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks for troops to carry in their pockets and their rucksacks in every theater of war.

Comprising 1,200 different titles of every imaginable type, these paperbacks were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is an inspiring story for history buffs and book lovers alike.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Footprints in the Dust

Subtitle: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975

Author: Colin Burgess, Richard F. Gordon Jr

Narrator: Jerry Longe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-21-14

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 69 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Following the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11, as NASA prepares to return astronauts to the moon, Footprints in the Dust offers a thorough, engrossing, and multifaceted account of the Apollo missions. The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with key figures in the space program, the authors convey the human drama and chart the technological marvels that went into the Apollo missions. They also put the accomplishments of American spaceflight into historical context, examining the competitive space race with the Soviet Union, the roles of politics and personality in launching the mission, and the consequences, practical and profound, of this giant leap for mankind.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Shock Factor

Subtitle: American Snipers in the War on Terror

Author: John R. Bruning, Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin USMC (Ret.)

Narrator: Tony Ward

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-28-14

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 141 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Retired Marine sniper Jack Coughlin and John Bruning pull back the curtain of secrecy to take an insider's look at the dark and misunderstood world of America's sniper force. Long considered the redheaded stepchildren of the infantry, snipers have been loathed by their fellow warriors, called "ten cent killers" by our media, and portrayed as unbalanced psychopaths by Hollywood. Coughlin and Bruning explore the lives and careers of some of America's most effective snipers during key missions, moments, and campaigns in the War on Terror. Part pause-register thriller, part deeply human drama, Shock Factor takes you from the streets of the modern day "Stalingrad" of Ramadi to the skyscrapers of Baghdad as America's one-shot warriors fight desperate battles against all odds, find themselves at the heart of tense international incidents, stalk key enemy leaders, and discover horrific human rights abuses perpetrated by our own Allies. Based on extensive interviews with snipers currently on active duty, Shock Factor's gripping accounts of harrowing combat, buried truths and secrets revealed could only be told by snipers to a trusted member of their own elite and cloistered brotherhood. Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin is the New York Times best-selling author of the autobiography, Shooter (with Donald A. Davis). He served with the Marines during the drive to Baghdad and has operated on a wide range of assignments in hot spots around the world. John R. Bruning is the author or coauthor of 15 nonfiction books. He received the Thomas Jefferson Award for Journalism for an article he wrote while embedded with the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade in Afghanistan.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Marquis

Subtitle: Lafayette Reconsidered

Author: Laura Auricchio

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-14-14

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 49 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A major biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution, looks past the storybook general and selfless champion of righteous causes who, at the age of 19, volunteered to fight under George Washington, casting aside fortune and family (from one of France's oldest families; his ancestors served in the Crusades and alongside Joan of Arc) to advance the transcendent aims of liberty and justice.

We see how Lafayette's reputation rose to great heights during the American Revolution, but collapsed more than a decade later during the French Revolution; how when the Bastille fell on July 14, 1789, Parisians hailed Lafayette as the French Washington, appointing him commander of their National Guard in the hope that he would be able to restore order to a city wracked by starvation and violence. As revolutionaries hurtled in radical directions and staunch monarchists dug in their heels, Lafayette lost control, remaining steadfast in his belief that the French monarchy needed to be reformed, but not abolished, and doing everything in his power to prevent an American-style republic from taking root in his native land. Formerly seen as France's heroic figure, he was now a traitor to his nation, forced to flee his country, and today remains a murky figure in French memory.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: All the Truth Is Out

Subtitle: The Week Politics Went Tabloid

Author: Matt Bai

Narrator: Rob Shapiro

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-30-14

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 66 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The former chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine brilliantly revisits the Gary Hart affair and looks at how it changed forever the intersection of American media and politics.

In 1987, Gary Hart - articulate, dashing, refreshingly progressive - seemed a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination for president and led George H. W. Bush comfortably in the polls. And then: rumors of marital infidelity, an indelible photo of Hart and a model snapped near a fatefully named yacht (Monkey Business), and it all came crashing down in a blaze of flashbulbs, the birth of 24-hour news cycles, tabloid speculation, and late-night farce. Matt Bai shows how the Hart affair marked a crucial turning point in the ethos of political media - and, by extension, politics itself - when candidates' "character" began to draw more fixation than their political experience. Bai offers a poignant, highly original, and news-making reappraisal of Hart's fall from grace (and overlooked political legacy) as he makes the compelling case that this was the moment when the paradigm shifted - private lives became public, news became entertainment, and politics became the stuff of Page Six.

Critic Reviews:

"A masterfully written account...this first-rate work of political journalism will fan embers long thought to have gone out." (Publishers Weekly starred review)

"A new look at a scandal that changed American politics[a] probing narrative." (Kirkus)

"Digging deep into a long-ago, mis-remembered scandal, Matt Bai has written an acutely intelligent and surprisingly moving page-turner about Gary Hart, journalistic blindness, and the trivialization of American politics." (George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Mississippi in Africa

Subtitle: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today

Author: Alan Huffman

Narrator: Andrew L. Barnes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-20-14

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 17 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

The gripping story of 200 freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colony - where the colonists' repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence.

When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. Ross' heirs contested the will for more than a decade in the state courts and legislature - prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned Ross' mansion to the ground - but the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival mansions in a region the Americo-Africans renamed "Mississippi in Africa." The seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal peoples would explode in the late 20th century, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day.

In the award-winning tradition of Slaves in the Family, this enthralling work traces an epic legacy that sweeps from the slave quarters of the antebellum South to the war-ravaged streets of modern-day Monrovia. Tracking down Prospect Hill's living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.

Critic Reviews:

"A great story. In the journey from Mississippi to Liberia, Huffman has uncovered a fascinating tale that's spent too long in obscurity." (

San Francisco Chronicle, Best Books of 2004)

"Alan Huffman is a brilliant storyteller who pulls off a difficult story with breathtaking skill, taking us from the antebellum South to war-torn Liberia. An absolute pleasure to read." (Sebastian Junger, author of

The Perfect Storm)

"A superior historical and journalistic investigation, tracing the lives and legacies of freed slaves in America and Africa... Thought-provoking and expertly told." (

Kirkus Reviews)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Nature's God

Subtitle: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Author: Matthew Stewart

Narrator: Michael Quinlan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-12-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 53 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party. These radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.

The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, and the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza.

Drawing deeply on his study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America's revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of "Nature's God", "self-evident", and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood. Stewart's lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: Washington Journal

Subtitle: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall

Author: Elizabeth Drew

Narrator: Jo Anna Perrin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-09-14

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 73 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Unfolding over the course of a single year, from September 1973 to August 1974, Washington Journal is the record of the near-dissolution of a nation's political conscience - told from within. In this book, we see corruption in its most prosaic and grandest forms, along with occasional flashes of decency, ethics, and humanity, and other sights rarely witnessed in the wilds of the capital.

Cool and understated - and all the more devastating for its understatement - Washington Journal was hailed upon its publication as a landmark work of journalism. With an introduction that brings this all-too-relevant book squarely into the present, Washington Journal is ready for its place in the pantheon of great writing about American politics.

Critic Reviews:

"Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in

Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling." (Tom Brokaw)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: The Mercury 13

Subtitle: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight

Author: Martha Ackmann

Narrator: Julie Eickhoff

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-23-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 30 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

For fans of The Astronaut Wives Club, The Mercury 13 reveals the little-known true story of the remarkable women who trained for NASA space flight.

In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming Americas first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys club at NASA and on Capitol Hill. The USSR sent its first woman into space in 1963; the United States did not follow suit for another 20 years.

For the first time, Martha Ackmann tells the story of the dramatic events surrounding these 13 remarkable women, all crackerjack pilots and patriots who sometimes sacrificed jobs and marriages for a chance to participate in Americas space race against the Soviet Union. In addition to talking extensively to these women, Ackmann interviewed Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and others at NASA and in the White House with firsthand knowledge of the program. Despite the crushing disappointment of watching their dreams being derailed, the Mercury 13 went on to extraordinary achievement in their lives: Jerrie Cobb, who began flying when she was so small she had to sit on pillows to see out of the cockpit, dedicated her life to flying solo missions to the Amazon rain forest; Wally Funk, who talked her way into the Lovelace trials, went on to become one of the first female FAA investigators; Janey Hart, mother of eight and, at age 40, the oldest astronaut candidate, had the political savvy to steer the women through congressional hearings and later helped found the National Organization for Women. A provocative tribute to these extraordinary women, The Mercury 13 is an unforgettable story of determination, resilience, and inextinguishable hope.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: American Spring

Subtitle: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution

Author: Walter R. Borneman

Narrator: Tom Taylorson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-07-14

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 42 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

A new look at the American Revolution's first weeks, from the author of the best seller The Admirals.

When we look back on our nation's history, the American Revolution can feel almost like a foregone conclusion. In reality, the first weeks of the war were much more tenuous, and a fractured and ragtag group of colonial militias had to coalesce to have even the slimmest chance of toppling the mighty British Army.

American Spring follows a fledgling nation from Paul Revere's little-known ride of December 1774 and the first shots fired on Lexington Green through the catastrophic Battle of Bunker Hill, culminating with a Virginian named George Washington taking command of colonial forces on July 3, 1775.

Focusing on the colorful heroes John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Franklin, and Patrick Henry, and the ordinary Americans caught up in the revolution, Walter Borneman tells the story of how a decade of discontent erupted into an armed rebellion that forged our nation.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]