9780062095800
Play Sample

Confidence Men audiobook

  • By: Ron Suskind
  • Narrator: James Lurie
  • Length: 22 hours 0 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: September 20, 2011
  • Language: English
  • (2024 ratings)
(2024 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 44.99 USD

Confidence Men Audiobook Summary

The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single, powerful, quintessentially American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, tapping brazen innovations over the past three decades, learned how to manufacture it.

Until August 2007, when that confidence finally began to crumble.

In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in “a new era of responsibility.” It is a story that follows the journey of Barack Obama, who rose as the country fell, and offers the first full portrait of his tumultuous presidency.

Wall Street found that straying from long-standing principles of transparency, accountability, and fair dealing opened a path to stunning profits. Obama’s determination to reverse that trend was essential to his ascendance, especially when Wall Street collapsed during the fall of an election year and the two candidates could audition for the presidency by responding to a national crisis. But as he stood on the stage in Grant Park, a shudder went through Barack Obama. He would now have to command Washington, tame New York, and rescue the economy in the first real management job of his life.

The new president surrounded himself with a team of seasoned players–like Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner–who had served a different president in a different time. As the nation’s crises deepened, Obama’s deputies often ignored the president’s decisions–“to protect him from himself”–while they fought to seize control of a rudderless White House. Bitter disputes–between men and women, policy and politics–ruled the day. The result was an administration that found itself overtaken by events as, year to year, Obama struggled to grow into the world’s toughest job and, in desperation, take control of his own administration.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind intro-duces readers to an ensemble cast, from the titans of high finance to a new generation of reformers, from petulant congressmen and acerbic lobbyists to a tight circle of White House advisers–and, ultimately, to the president himself, as you’ve never before seen him. Based on hundreds of interviews and filled with piercing insights and startling disclosures, Confidence Men brings into focus the collusion and conflict between the nation’s two capitals–New York and Washington, one of private gain, the other of public purpose–in defining confidence and, thereby, charting America’s future.

Other Top Audiobooks

Confidence Men Audiobook Narrator

James Lurie is the narrator of Confidence Men audiobook that was written by Ron Suskind

About the Author(s) of Confidence Men

Ron Suskind is the author of Confidence Men

Confidence Men Full Details

Narrator James Lurie
Length 22 hours 0 minutes
Author Ron Suskind
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date September 20, 2011
ISBN 9780062095800

Additional info

The publisher of the Confidence Men is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062095800.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

David

December 30, 2011

My liberal friends have two views of President Barack Obama, the first African American to be elected President. The most cynical view is that Obama was always a “Trojan horse,” talking liberal talk while always basically aligned with the interests of corporate America and Wall Street. A more sympathetic view is that Obama went into office a good man with great ideas, and simply couldn’t pull them off because he wasn’t up to the job.Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, published in 2011, comes down on the side of the latter. Suskind takes a long look at Obama’s first two years and paints a devastating portrait of an inspirational figure who fell to earth, dreadfully short of public expectations. In Suskind’s view, Obama’s lack of management skills allowed the supremely confident trio of Ron Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geither to take virtual control of the White House’s response to the economic crisis, and basically abort Obama’s reformist agenda which was swept, piece by piece, off the table and into the dustbin of good ideas.Suskind doesn’t get into Obama’s nearly complete cave in to what has been called the military-industrial complex, his continuation of former President George W. Bush’s two wars and its expansion into other countries such as Pakistan. He doesn’t mention Obama’s refusal to prosecute anyone in the Bush administration for crimes against the Constitution, his inability to close Guantanamo or any of that. And he doesn’t waste many words on the hatchet dance that Republican senators and representatives embarked on from the day he entered office, vowing to make Obama a one-term president, warning signs that Obama seemed to ignore in his naïve or idealistic search for the winning compromise.As the book’s subtitle indicates, Suskind focuses on the Obama administration’s nearly complete cave in to Wall Street, a place where casino investing and exotic financial instruments had replaced common sense and led to a devastating financial crash. During his run for office, Suskind notes, Obama had plenty of friends on Wall Street, many of whom he’d met at fund-raising events. His contacts gave him an inside track to understanding the financial crisis as it was looming, and allowed him to appear to be ahead of the curve when the financial walls began to come down, calling for reform, which helped him win the election.A lucky guy, Obama had been elected senator from Illinois because of his Republican opponent self-destructed in a sex scandal. As presidential candidate, and a brilliant speaker, the economic meltdown played into his hand.But once in office, enjoying solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama’s inexperience began to show. He had never managed a company or an agency before. His jobs – corporate lawyer, teacher, community organizer, politician --were basically jobs which required him to think, write, and talk. Afraid to show his imperfect mastery of the many crises which he found on his plate the minute he took office, Obama pushed aside advisers like Paul Volker and Robert Reich who had guided his campaign, and took on what Suskind calls “the B team.”Two aggressively self-confident bullies, Ron Emanual and Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, were appointed to crucial positions. New Chief of Staff Emanual, a foul-mouthed mover and shaker as well as architect of the Democratic party’s conservative “Blue Dog” strategy, tightly controlled access to Obama. Summers, who was briefly Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton and so confident in his own intellect that he bragged he could win either side of any argument, took over the framing of economic policy. Both of these confident men had received lots of money from the financial community, and both rose to control much of the debate as the economic crises compounded. The third “confidence man,” sartorially-challenged Treasury Secretary Geithner, a tax dodger who once led the New York Fed, worked to preserve business as usual in the financial casino and basically accomplished that.Suskind makes clear there was a moment early on when Wall Street would have accepted whatever medicine the president chose to dole out, including limits on their big bonuses and regulation of their risky business operations which were sucking money and talent out of the economy without providing anything in return. But when the president called the titans of Wall Street into his office and told them that they had a public relations problem, and that he wanted to help them, this helped signal that the bottom line was still business as usual.In staff meetings, many observed that Obama seemed unable to make a decision he couldn’t see as an all-encompassing compromise, and get his staff to agree with. While many women on his staff felt shut out of the game, Obama’s staff had lots of meetings where ideas were hashed and rehashed or “relitigated” with no significant action because Obama wasn’t confident in moving forward. Meanwhile, millions of Americans were getting thrown out of their jobs and houses.Obama’s early decision to go for health care reform rather than completely focus on the economic mess is presented as a mistake. For one thing, Obama could not get the knowledgeable former Senator Thomas Daschle appointed to head Health and Human Services, which would have helped. Working out the tedious details of health care reform, through many back-room deals and compromises, left Obama with a package which didn’t contain what many advisers felt was the most important element of his original proposal – cost controls in the form of incentives for doctors and hospitals to practice “evidence based” medicine which eliminates dubious tests and treatments and financially rewards medical treatments that are proven to work. Suskind doesn’t make much of Obama’s refusal to support the popular “public option,” which would have provided private health insurance companies some price competition, and perhaps lowered costs, too.Obama is presented as inconsistent rather than sinister, making glorious speeches one day, and not following through the next. His inexperience under the microscope of the world’s biggest job, plus his vacillation and his unfortunate B team appointments, basically left him after two years in office on a par with Jimmy Carter at projecting confidence. Near the end of the book, when Obama realizes the need to shake up his staff, Emanual resigns to run for mayor of Chicago, and Summers leaves his position with admiring words from Obama, but without the appointment to head the Federal Reserve that he expected. Probably no president since Franklin Roosevelt had come into office with challenges like those Obama faced, and with such public support to shake things up. Unfortunately, Obama is too timid to become a Roosevelt. Suskind describes Obama as a brilliant amateur who arrived at the presidency believing he’d make his case with correct answers to complex problems, but because of inexperience, a lack of confidence, and bad personnel choices he could not competently execute his good ideas. Obama admittedly admires former President Ronald Reagan’s ability to inspire confidence in people while playing the role of president, and Reagan’s mastery of symbols and gestures. In an interview with Obama near the end of the book Suskind makes it clear that he is still working on that confidence thing.Even for a Pulitizer Prize winning reporter, the task of nailing down the moving target of public policy as it develops through hundreds of late-night meetings and the clashes of big egos and practical considerations is enormous. Suskind manages to make sense of this tedious process in Confidence Men, a supremely readable book. He has written a brilliant first draft of the history of Obama’s first two years, and he extracts some lessons from the chaos in which hopes were betrayed, and opportunities for meaningful change were squandered away.Obama’s failure to impose significant reform on Wall Street, so important and so apparently within his grasp at one time, may well come back to haunt this country in the years ahead.

Maddi

September 28, 2011

Four and a half stars.While I thought this would be a political inside-the-mind-of-the-advisors type of book, there's quite a bit of The Big Short (Michael Lewis) in here too; an explanation of the Wall Street shenanigans that led to the near-collapse of the US economy. Suskind has to spend time getting us into that mileau to explain where the economic advisors either came from or were reacting to.Certainly some of the advisers come across better than others, and with a book of this type one always wonders if that's due to their actions, their personalities, or how cooperative they were with Suskind. The two who come across the worst are Lawrence Summers and Rahm Emanuel. Tim Geithner isn't far behind. Summers is shown as manipulative and petty, trying to stay ahead of everyone by jumping in to frame every discussion and bringing back policy discussions on issues Obama had already told his advisers what he wanted. Emanuel is shown as a chief of staff who didn't handle chief of staff issues such as getting all these personalities working effectively instead of against each other, to the point that many advisers considered him part of the problem the chief of staff should be solving. And Geithner is called out for flat-out insubordination; stalling when Obama asked him to come up with a plan to break up Citibank.I found the Wall Street and economic explanations fascinating, but I love that sort of thing, and I was a huge fan of The Big Short. So for me that was an unexpected bonus. Getting inside the worldview of so many of the White House staff was fascinating. In fact, the only reason I can't give this book five stars is the execution. Since there are so many viewpoints, the book jumps around a lot, not only through people but through timelines as well, and in many cases, I didn't think the structure effectively made the points as well as it could have. There were a few places where I completely lost track of where we were in time and who was in the room because Suskind uses a lot of flashbacks. That's an excellent literary technique for a film or even a novel, but for a current affairs piece, he'd better be damned sure we're clear who is talking and when. Suskind switches back and forth in name use, which also doesn't help when some of the actors have the same first name (Larry Summers and Larry Fink got me confused because he spent so much time on Summers and then did an extended piece on Fink but kept calling him Larry, for example).That's not enough for me to say don't bother reading this. In fact, if you enjoy knowing why a politician's promises are often not acted upon, this is as good a presentation as any to show the difficulty in getting everyone to agree even before they try selling it to Congress or Business. I just wish Suskind had either spent some time getting the continuity a little better or had his editor do a better job helping him with it. This is the sort of problem that can happen with a book that goes through multiple re-writes, and I wonder if publishers just aren't recognizing the value of an excellent editor anymore.Suskind already won a Pulitizer for his reporting in 1995, and this book does show us why he was worthy of it. One quote that stayed with me after finishing it was his musing on the change in the American economy, from manufacturing to abstract financial instrument. As he put it, we changed from a country that made things to a country that "made things up."

Les

January 06, 2012

This book by an award-winning author, the first who had inside access to the Obama White House, names names of culprits in the greatest failure of the American financial system since the Great Depression and how they worked to enrich themselves while building a bubble economy that produced little underlying value. It spotlights Wall Street flimflam artists whose venal hawking of credit swap derivatives of sub-prime mortgage instruments led to the Great Recession of 2008 (a calamity which may yet prove to be only the first dropped shoe; the second "shoe" being an even more devastating financial collapse up the road). And it reveals how the same charlatans--whose Too Big To Fall banks rescued with public money--are engaging in the same flimflam today rather than making loans to American businesses to get the economy moving again.But in some ways, the truer villains in Confidence Men are the bloodless, cold-eyed operators inside the Obama Administration who hijacked for their own ends the Obama presidency and the hopes of millions of voters. Here again, Ron Suskind, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, names names--White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Director Larry Summers of the National Economic Council. Geithner was jaw-droppingly insubordinate, ignoring Obama's order to the Treasury to consider breaking up the banking behemoth, Citigroup. Geitthner also stifled Elizabeth Warren's repeated attempts at bold financial reform--reforms that would prevent devil-may-care Too Big Fail banks from piling up debts far in excess of the government's revenues, thus posing not only the clear and present danger of another bailout but also the possibility of a Greece-like insolvency for the United States.But, if possible, Summers was worse than Geithner. White House budget chief Peter Orszag quotes the imperious Summers (the temperamental, misogynistic ex-president of Harvard) as saying of them and the Obama White House, "You know, Peter we're really home alone. There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes." Later, Orszag tells Suskind, "Larry just didn't think the president didn't know what he was deciding," he was "likely saying" flat-out, "I know more than the president." Author Suskind documents how push-back from Emmanuel, Summers and Geithner led to interminable "re-litigation" of policy choices, resulting in sputtering decision-making, with no real jobs program produced in the first two years of the Administration and botched opportunities for transformational change in health care coverage and cost containment and financial reform.And if anyone still doubts that money is corrupting the American political system, this book dispels the myth. Lobbyists for Wall Street bankers, Big Pharma, and the insurance industry are seen working like termites, boring into the timber of governance, hollowing out policies into a shell of what they should have been and could have been in earlier age when money wasn't all-pervasive in politics.Finally this is a book about a young man in the Oval Office--a good and virtuous man--who inherits the biggest financial calamity since the depression and two wars, who, rendered insecure by warring advisers and inexperience, forgets his gift for connecting with ordinary people and instead, tragically, relies on wonkish, technocratic half measures.Obama's men (Axelrod, et al) hate this book, but it is axiomatic that truth hurts.The book does has failings that frustrate the reader. Suskind lacks the skill of, say, a Michael Lewis (The Big Short and Boomerang) to explain in lay terms the exotic and reckless securities Wall Street connived to invent, and how lightly regulated bankers--not the Republicans' favorite whipping boys, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--were (and still are) the cause of our unstable financial system. Confidence Men is oddly haphazard in its organization, too, coming from an author with such a pedigree. Finally, in a large sin of omission, the author introduces us to hundreds of figures in this saga but, once identified, wrongly assumes the reader will remember exactly who they are throughout the remainder of the book. A simple table of characters, which the reader could refer to, would have been a helpful boon. Still, Confidence Men is an extraordinarily important work. In this election year, it will help readers understand who is spinning fanciful tales about our deep and still-present financial dangers (the Tea Party) and who is dealing with reality (Elizabeth Warren). Which is extraordinarily important. Because rarely has the U.S. been as in need of well-informed political consumers.

Dave

September 26, 2011

Everything that has been said about this book in the media has been a red herring. Outlets like CNN have chosen to focus the book's sub-narrative about problems female members of the administration faced or that the book shows Obama as "weak." The problems women had in the first two years of the administration are important, but when compared to the overall story of the massive banking crisis Obama faced it's a secondary story that was meant to provide insight into how the Obama Whitehouse took on characteristics of male dominated brokerage houses in New York. Furthermore, Obama's weakness as President in his early days only describes half the story of the book.The real antagonists in this story are the overcompensated and arrogant robber-barrons of Wall Street. The 2008 crisis was directly attributable to their actions through the previous years. Obama's most important mistake was made right as he was made president-elect. As per the normal "revolving door" structure of regulation in Washington, Obama made some of the Wall Street insiders and some of the Clinton regulators that eased the rules would of curbed the crisis his most important advisors. Because of this the Obama Whitehouse was often wrapped up in furious internal debates that never seemed to resolve. Some advisers even "slow walked" some Obama decisions that would have been inconvenient for their former professions.In the end the book makes it clear that while Obama learned from the experiences of his first two years in office (his "education"), Wall Street learned nothing. They made free money off of the TARP program and then sent lobbyists to try to kill every reform that was proposed. The behavor that led to the 2008 collapse continues almost unabated. The book paints the stark picture of a financial industry that doesn't invest in the U.S., that while constantly championing the "free market" when it was convenient has managed to socialize every major loss, and who continues to run amok in Washington by way of lobbyists.But you won't hear this on the TV news. Any sentiments that makes major corporations look bad no longer make the cut. Television reporters have become corporate cheerleaders first, television personalities second, and journalism has become a distant third. Because of this there continues to become no fail national dialog on fair regulations. CNN parrots John Boehner's call for "less regulation" daily without critically looking into the claims while smart people of all political beliefs have come to the conclusion that the easing of regulations during the Clinton era helped cause the Great Recession of 2008. No voices critical of corporate power make it onto television, and that's where the masses get the "unbiased" information today. Television's reaction to this book makes that reality even more apparent.

Ken

December 22, 2014

Ron Suskind has a knack for turning obscure history into compelling narratives, and he doesn't disappoint here. He fills in the cast of characters like a novelist wielding his creative toolbox--Obama's economic advisers, the Fed, the politicians making up the legislative milieu. We learn quite a lot about Obama's personality, his methods of managing meetings, and his managerial style. It is the latter the comes up severely lacking in Suskind's account. Always engaging, intelligent, concerned, and optimistic, Obama apparently is just a horrible manager.The greatest weakness of this account is Suskind's tendency to pick his favorites: his heroes and his villains. Larry Summers is clearly the bad guy here, Tim Geithner bringing up a close second. Meanwhile, Suskind relies too much on the point of view of his more favored informants--those who seemingly were resisting the tide, though with what degree of effort we can't really be sure. We only have their word. Of course, any journalist has to believe some of his or her sources. I just wish Suskind had taken the accounts of the "good guys" with a few more grains of salt.

Catherine

July 14, 2013

FROM CONFIDENCE MEN:"It was on a Friday, November 21, that [Christina] Romer first entered Obama's curtain-sealed office in Chicago. Unlike Orszag, she was nervous about meeting Obama and she hadn't even come with any ultimatum or conditions about taking the Council of Economic Advisers job. She was just elated to get to know the guy. But their first meeting would open on an odd note. Before exchanging hellos or even shaking hands, the president-elect delivered what seemed intended as a zinger."It's clear monetary policy has shot its wad."[snip]Later it would seem a foreshadowing of something that came to irk many of the West Wing's women: the president didn't have particularly strong "women skills." The guys-guy persona, which the message team would use to show Obama's down-to-earth side, failed to account for at least one thing: What if you didn't play basketball or golf?[snip]"What do you mean?" she asked.Obama extended his hand, now ready to greet her."I guess we need to focus on fiscal policy," he said."No, you're wrong," Romer corrected him. "There's quite a bit we can still do monetarily, even with the historically low interest rates.""

Harry

November 11, 2011

Suskind reports indepth and with great detail on the inner workings of the Obama administration's first two years. The conclusion I come away with is that Obama had hoped to become a transformative President, but is failing badly for several reasons. First, a strong argument can be made that he chose the wrong people for his economic team. Second, his strong instinct is to achieve consensus to the degree that it got in the way of making decisions. He did not exercise strong oversight, and several strong personalities on his staff were allowed to pursue their own agenda. An important, but depressing, book.

Jim

October 17, 2012

I found The Confidence Men to be a fascinating book, but it's not for the faint of heart. The detail Suskind goes into breaking down the economic crisis and the decision making process in Obama's first couple of years is phenomenal. If you like lots of detail and analysis, you'll love this book. Examining the collapse of the housing market, the bailout of the auto industry and the fight for healthcare are a few of the things laid out on the table with tons of behind the scenes interviews and information.

Uwe

January 28, 2012

A stunning portrait of the first 2 years of Obama's administration filled with in-fighting, inexperience and inaction. An important read for any voter, a good glimpse into the psyche of the President.

William

October 21, 2017

This book was a little too long, but overall it was an interesting look at what, exactly, went wrong in the Obama's Administration's first two years. It's exhaustively reported and examines how seasoned political operatives like Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel pushed the new president toward neoliberal centrism, while Wall Street sycophants like Tim Geithner effectively slow-walked Obama's most ambitious financial proposals. It makes clear, though, that Obama himself let the opportunity for dramatic, Rooseveltian reform slip away. Suskind provides in-depth (and often boring) explanations of Wall Street's inner workings, especially in the first third of the book. I'm not particularly interested in how derivatives function, but it illustrates that Wall Street is all smoke and mirrors. There are also some fascinating overviews of the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill–while it's no secret that these bills were substantially weakened throughout the legislative process, it is, nonetheless, really depressing to learn exactly how it happened. Suskind was also oddly light on foreign policy discussions, and while I understand that the book is focused on domestic policy, it really glosses over the role of the Iraq War in the 2008 Democratic primary. Given how detailed the rest of the book is, this struck me as an odd omission. Moreover, some of Suskind's descriptions of Obama's oratory are predictably trite, talking about American greatness and blah blah blah. I'm not so much into that, but the reporting in the book is so great that I could live with it. I really enjoyed the way Suskind uses the concept of confidence throughout the book, and the final chapter culminates with a discussion with Obama about the importance of symbolism in politics–policy details don't inspire people, and, in spite of what many technocrats might argue, substance needs style. This seems particularly relevant as we try and understand why Trump's base is immovably behind him, even with his dearth of policy achievements. If you're a politics junkie, this is a great book. Can't say I would recommend it to anyone else, though.

Byron

May 21, 2017

Confidence men discusses the first two years of the Obama administration, focusing on the administrations efforts to address the economic crisis and to pass health care reform. Susskind presents a solid critique of Obama and his missteps during this period, while maintaining an appreciation for the man and his goals. Susskind discusses the dysfunctions created by Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, but Obama's ownership of these dysfunctions, and his loyalty to these men. One of the best aspects of this book is the way it describes Obama's desire to govern by consensus, which can be a very ineffective style when the right people are not around you.

Michael

March 22, 2019

This was an excellent entry point into Wall Street and the housing bubble burst of the late 2000’s. While I was there, I was not fully aware of the economic implications other than witnessed in gas prices and the like. Siskund writes in a way that makes you feel like you are part of the crew rather than a voyeur. This was an excellent book.

Fran

September 17, 2019

Inside llok at the financial crisis from the viewpoint of Obama getting elected and choosing his economics council.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves