The Ghost Map

by Steven Johnson; Narrated by Alan Sklar

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. The Ghost Map is an endlessly compelling and utterly gripping account of that London summer of 1854, from the microbial level to the macrourban-theory level-including, most important, the human level.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 249.2 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Audio Book (WMA) [ 127.1 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Lucia

by Andrea di Robilant; Narrated by Stephen Hoye

In 1787, Lucia, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of a prominent Venetian statesman, is married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. But their life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed when Venice falls to Bonaparte. As the larger events unfolding around Lucia mingle with her most personal concerns, we witness - through her letters to her sister and other primary sources - her painful series of miscarriages and the pressure on her to produce an heir; her impassioned affair with an Austrian officer and its stunning results; the glamour and strain of her career as a hostess in Hapsburg Vienna and lady-in-waiting at the court of Napoleon's stepson, Prince Eugene de Beauharnais, as well as her intimate relationship with the Empress Josephine; and her amazing firsthand account of the defeat of Napoleon in Paris in 1814. In her later years, Lucia, regal and still beautiful and a bit battle-hardened herself, was Byron's landlord during the poet's stay in Venice. In a fitting finale to this sweeping drama, Lucia stands as a relic of a lost golden age: she created, in part, the aura that gave rise to the Romantic view of Italy and its culture that we still nourish today.

With the brave and articulate Lucia at the center of his re-creation of this remarkable historical period, Andrea di Robilant has once again reached across the centuries, and deep into his own past, to bring history to rich and vivid life on the page.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 174.8 Mb ]
Street Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008

Fiasco

by Thomas Ricks; Narrated by James Lurie

From the Washington Post's two-time Pulitzer-winning senior Pentagon reporter, the definitive military chronicle of the Iraq War-and a searing judgment of its gross strategic blindness-drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 296.8 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Audio Book (WMA) [ 151.4 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

America's Women

by Gail Collins; Narrated by Jane Alexander America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America.

Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 92.2 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004

The Greatest Story Ever Sold

by Frank Rich; Narrated by Grover Gardner

New York Times columnist Frank Rich reviews the trajectory of fictions spun by the Bush administration from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, revealing the most brilliant spin campaign ever conducted.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 281.0 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Audio Book (WMA) [ 143.3 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Longitude

by Dava Sobel; Narrated by Kate Reading

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the dayand had been for centuries.The quest for a solution has occupied scientists for the better part of two centuries when, in 1714, England's Parliament upped the ante by offering a king's ransom to anyone whose method or device proved successful. One man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solutiona clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land.LONGITUDE is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking. Through Dava Sobel's consummate skill, LONGITUDE opens many new windows on our world."The marine chronometer is a glorious and fascinating object, but it is not a simple one, and its explanation calls for a writer as skilled with words as the watchmakers were with their tools: happily just such a writer has been found in Dava Sobel." Patrick O'Brian, author of the Aubrey/Maturin naval series

Audio Book (MP3) [ 125.2 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Audio Book (WMA) [ 63.8 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Listening Is an Act of Love

by Dave Isay; Narrated by Storycorps Participants; Narrated by Storycorps Participants

Drawn from the work of StoryCorps, the largest and most ambitious private oral history project in American history, comes this tapestry of the stories Americans have been sharing from their lives to leave behind to their loved ones.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 26.2 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Audio Book (WMA) [ 13.4 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Mayflower

by Natha Philbrick; Narrated by Edward Herrmann

The startling story of the Plymouth Colony, from the flight to religious freedom to the war that ravaged New England, from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 171.8 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Audio Book (WMA) [ 87.7 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Around the World on Two Wheels

by Peter Zheutlin; Narrated by Barrett Whitener

Audio Books - The Incredible Story of the First Female to Bike Around the World

Until 1894 there were no female sport stars, no product endorsement deals, and no young mothers with the chutzpah to circle the globe on a bicycle. Annie Kopchovsky changed all of that.

Annie was a Jewish immigrant and working mother of three living in a Boston tenement with her husband, a peddler. This was as close to the American dream as she was likely to get---until she became part of what one newspaper called "one of the most novel wagers ever made": a high-stakes bet between two wealthy merchants that a woman could not ride around the world on a bicycle, as Thomas Stevens had a few years before. Annie rose to the challenge, pledging to finish her fifteen-month trip with a staggering $5,000 earned by selling advertising space on her bike and her clothing, making personal appearances in stores and at bicycle races, and lecturing about her adventures along the way. When the Londonderry Lithia Springs Water Company of New Hampshire offered to become the first of her many sponsors, Annie Kopchovsky became Annie Londonderry, and a legend was born. So began one of the greatest escapades---and publicity stunts---of the Victorian Age.

In this marvelously written book, author Peter Zheutlin vividly recounts the story of the audacious woman who turned every Victorian notion of female propriety on its ear. When Annie left Boston in June 1894, she was a brash young lady with a 42-pound bicycle, a revolver, a change of underwear, and a dream of freedom. The epic journey that followed---from a frigid ride through France to an encounter with outlaw John Wesley Hardin in El Paso---took the connection between athletics and commercialism to dizzying new heights and turned Annie into a symbol of sexual equality.

A beguiling true story of a bold spirit who reinvented herself against all odds, Around the World on Two Wheels blends social history and high adventure into an unforgettable portrait of courage, imagination, and tenacity.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 100.3 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Tried by War

by James M. McPherson; Narrated by George Guidall

Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience, he Quickly established himself as the greatest commander in chief in American history. James McPherson illuminates this often misunderstood and profoundly influential aspect of Lincoln's legacy. In essence, Lincoln invented the idea of commander in chief, as neither the Constitution nor existing legislation specified how the president ought to declare war or dictate strategy. In fact, by assuming the powers we associate with the role of commander in chief, Lincoln often overstepped the narrow band of rights granted the president. Good thing too, because his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union. For most of the conflict, he constantly had to goad his reluctant generals toward battle, and he oversaw strategy and planning for major engagements with the enemy. Lincoln was a self-taught military strategist (as he was a self-taught lawyer), which makes his adroit conduct of the war seem almost miraculous. To be sure, the Union's campaigns often went awry, sometimes horribly so, but McPherson makes clear how the missteps arose from the all-too-common moments when Lincoln could neither threaten nor cajole his commanders to follow his orders. As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009, this book provides a genuinely novel, even timely, view of the most written about figure in our history. Tried by War offers a revelatory portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. How Lincoln overcame feckless generals, fickle public opinion, and his own paralyzing fears is a story at once suspenseful and inspiring.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 142.4 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)

by Dave Barry; Narrated by Patrick Frederic

A brilliantly funny exploration of the tumultuous recent past from the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 129.6 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Audio Book (WMA) [ 66.1 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The War That Made America

by Fred Anderson; Narrated by Simon Vance

Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian Waralso known as the Seven Years Warand yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history. In January 2006, PBS will air The War That Made America, a four-part documentary about this epic conflict. Fred Anderson, the award-winning and critically acclaimed historian, has written the official tie-in to this exciting television event.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 218.1 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Audio Book (WMA) [ 111.3 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Scratch of a Pen

by Colin G. Calloway; Narrated by Simon Vance

In February 1763, Britain, Spain, and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War. In this one document, more American territory changed hands than in any treaty before or since. As the great historian Francis Parkman wrote, "half a continent...changed hands at the scratch of a pen." Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.

Audio Book (MP3) [ 196.9 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Audio Book (WMA) [ 100.4 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney

by James F. Simon; Narrated by Richard Allen

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and Lincoln's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency.

Lincoln and Taney's bitter disagreements began with Taney's Dred Scott opinion in 1857, when the Chief Justice declared that the Constitution did not grant the black man any rights that the white man was bound to honor. Lincoln attacked the opinion as a warped judicial interperatation of the Framers' intent and accused Taney of being a member of a pro-slavery national conspiracy.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln insisted that the South had no legal right to secede. Taney, who administered the oath of office to Lincoln, believed that the South's seccession was legal and in the best interests of both sections of the country.

Once the war began, Lincoln broadly interpreted his constitutional powers as commander in chief to prosecute the war, suspending habeas corpus, censoring the press, and allowing military courts to try civilians for treason. Taney vociferously disagreed, accusing Lincoln of assuming dictatorial powers in violation of the Constitution. Lincoln ignored Taney's protests, and exercised his presidential authority fearlessly, determined that he would preserve the Union.

James F. Simon skillfully brings to life this compelling story of the momentous tug-of-war between the President and the Chief Justice during the worst crisis in the nation's history."...taut and gripping...a dramatic, charged narrative."--Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Audio Book (WMA) [ 168.5 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Lost Triumph

by Tom Carhart; Narrated by Michael Prichard

A fascinating narrative-and a bold new thesis in the study of the Civil War-that suggests Robert E. Lee had a heretofore undiscovered strategy at Gettysburg that, if successful, could have crushed the Union forces and changed the outcome of the war.

The Battle of Gettysburg is the pivotal moment when the Union forces repelled perhaps America's greatest commander-the brilliant Robert E. Lee, who had already thrashed a long line of Federal opponents-just as he was poised at the back door of Washington, D.C. It is the moment in which the fortunes of Lee, Lincoln, the Confederacy, and the Union hung precariously in the balance.

Conventional wisdom has held to date, almost without exception, that on the third day of the battle, Lee made one profoundly wrong decision. But how do we reconcile Lee the high-risk warrior with Lee the general who launched "Pickett's Charge," employing only a fifth of his total forces, across an open field, up a hill, against the heart of the Union defenses? Most history books have reported that Lee just had one very bad day. But there is much more to the story, which Tom Carhart addresses for the first time.

With meticulous detail and startling clarity, Carhart revisits the historic battles Lee taught at West Point and believed were the essential lessons in the art of war-the victories of Napoleon at Austerlitz, Frederick the Great at Leuthen, and Hannibal at Cannae-and reveals what they can tell us about Lee's real strategy. What Carhart finds will thrill all students of history: Lee's plan for an electrifying rear assault by Jeb Stuart that, combined with the frontal assault, could have broken the Union forces in half. Only in the final hours of the battle was the attack reversed through the daring of an unproven young general-George Armstrong Custer.

Lost Triumph will be one of the most captivating and controversial history books of the season.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 133.8 Mb ]
Street Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Heroes Among Us

by Major Chuck Larson; Narrated by Lloyd James

Over 1 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past four years, but fewer than 500 from this group have earned a Silver Star, Navy Cross, Air Force Cross, Distinguished Service Cross, or the Medal of Honor. Those who have been awarded these distinguished honors all demonstrated an extraordinary courage under fire in the worst of circumstances.

These Americans come from all branches of the military. They also come from all over the country and all walks of life, representing the entire spectrum of races and creeds. But what unites them are their deeds of consummate bravery, beyond the call of duty. Heroes Among Us tells their extraordinary true stories of valor, honor, and sacrifice.

Audio Book (WMA) [ 142.1 Mb ]
Street Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008