18 Best History, Biography & Autobiography Books
History, Biography & Autobiography is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top History, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 18 History, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks below.
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Early
- By: Sarah DiGregorio
- Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 9 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: January 28, 2020
- Language: English
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4.52(364 ratings)
4.52(364 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDInspired by the author’s harrowing experience giving birth to her premature daughter, a compelling and empathetic work that combines memoir with rigorous reporting to tell the story of neonatology–and to meditate on the questions raisedInspired by the author’s harrowing experience giving birth to her premature daughter, a compelling and empathetic work that combines memoir with rigorous reporting to tell the story of neonatology–and to meditate on the questions raised by premature birth.
The heart of many hospitals is the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is a place where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways as parents, doctors, and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions: When does life begin? When and how should life end? And what does it mean to be human?
Nearly twenty years ago, Dr. John D. Lantos wrote The Lazarus Case, a seminal work on ethical dilemmas in neonatology. He described the NICU as “a strong, strange, powerful place.” The NICU is a place made of stories–the stories of mothers and babies who spend days, weeks, and even months waiting to go home, and the dedicated clinicians who care for these tiny, developing humans. The book explores the evolution of neonatology and its breakthroughs–how modern medicine can be successful at saving infants at five and a half months gestation who weigh less than a pound, when only a few decades ago, there were essentially no treatments for premature babies.
For the first time, Sarah DiGregorio tells the complete story of this science–and the many people it has touched. Weaving her own story, those of other parents, and NICU clinicians with deeply researched reporting, Early delves deep into the history and future of neonatology, one of the most boundary pushing medical disciplines: how it came to be, how it is evolving, and the political, cultural, and ethical issues that continue to arise in the face of dramatic scientific developments.
Eye-opening and vital, Early uses premature birth as a lens to view our own humanity, and the humanity of those around us.
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Yogi
- By: Jon Pessah
- Narrator: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 21 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: April 14, 2020
- Language: English
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4.5(412 ratings)
4.5(412 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDDiscover the definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 10 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history.Lawrence “Yogi” Berra was never supposed to become a major leagueDiscover the definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 10 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history.... Read more
Lawrence “Yogi” Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer.
That’s what his immigrant father told him. That’s what Branch Rickey told him, too–right to Berra’s face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he’d never make it in the big leagues.
Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn’t allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game–at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have.
Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success–on and off the playing field–as well as his failures; how the man who insisted “I really didn’t say everything I said!” nonetheless shaped decades of America’s culture; and how Berra’s humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star.
Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America. -
What Is Real?
- By: Adam Becker
- Narrator: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 11 hours 45 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.28(2262 ratings)
4.28(2262 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity’s finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be aThe untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe
Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity’s finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr’s students vigorously protected his legacy and the physics community favored practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics.
What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.
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Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
- By: John Foxe
- Narrator: Robin Lawson
- Length: 11 hours 45 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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4.25(16271 ratings)
4.25(16271 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USD“This is a book which will never die—one of the greatest Christian classics. As interesting as fiction, it is written with both passion and tenderness, telling the dramatic story of some of the most thrilling periods in Christian“This is a book which will never die—one of the greatest Christian classics. As interesting as fiction, it is written with both passion and tenderness, telling the dramatic story of some of the most thrilling periods in Christian history. Presented here in its most complete form, it brings to life the days when ‘a noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid…climbed the steep ascent of heaven, amid peril, toil, and pain.’
“After the Bible itself, no book so profoundly influenced early Protestant sentiment as the Book of Martyrs. Even in our time it is still a living force. More than a record of persecution, it is an arsenal of controversy, a storehouse of romance, and a source of edification.”—James Miller Dodds, English Prose
This collection includes treatises on the following:
1. The Persecution of the Early Christians 2. Constantine the Great 3. John Wickliff 4. Sir John Oldcaste, Lord Cobham 5. John Huss 6. William Tyndale 7. Martin Luther 8. John Hooper 9. Rowland Taylor 10. The Martyrs of Scotland 11. Hugh Latimer 12. Bishop Ridley 13. The Trial, Condemnation, and Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer 14. The Fires of Smithfield 15. Thomas Cranmer 16. Anecdotes and Sayings of Other Martyrs
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Tom Seaver
- By: Bill Madden
- Narrator: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.21(271 ratings)
4.21(271 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDAn authoritative, “must-read” (Keith Hernandez) biography of Hall of Fame pitching legend Tom Seaver, still the greatest player ever to wear a Mets jersey, by a journalist who knew him well.He was called Tom Terrific for a reason. TomAn authoritative, “must-read” (Keith Hernandez) biography of Hall of Fame pitching legend Tom Seaver, still the greatest player ever to wear a Mets jersey, by a journalist who knew him well.
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He was called Tom Terrific for a reason. Tom Seaver is “among the greatest pitchers of all time” (Bob Costas). He is one of only two pitchers with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts, and an ERA under 3.00. He was a three-time Cy Young award winner, twelve-time All Star, and was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame with the highest percentage ever at the time. Popular among players and fans, Seaver was fiercely competitive but always put team success ahead of personal glory.
Born in Fresno, California, Seaver signed with the New York Mets in 1967, leading them to their stunning 1969 World Series victory. After a legendarily lopsided trade, he joined the Cincinnati Reds, then later played for the White Sox and the Red Sox before ending his career following the 1986 season. After his playing days, Seaver retired back to California to establish a successful vineyard. The in 2013, a recurrence of Lyme disease severely affected his memory, which Madden was the first to report. In 2019, Seaver’s family announced that he had been diagnosed with dementia and was withdrawing from public life. Tom Seaver died on August 31, 2021.
Madden began following Seaver’s career in the 1980s. Seaver came to trust Madden so completely that, eager to return to New York from Chicago, he asked Madden to explore a possible trade to the Yankees which never materialized. Drawing in part on their long relationship, Madden “has crafted a biography as terrific as the subject” (Jane Leavy, New York Times bestselling author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy). -
Clemente
- By: David Maraniss
- Narrator: David Maraniss
- Length: 5 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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4.15(4751 ratings)
4.15(4751 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.95 USDDiscover the remarkable life of Roberto Clemente—one of the most accomplished—and beloved—baseball heroes of his generation from Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss.On New Year’s Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificentDiscover the remarkable life of Roberto Clemente—one of the most accomplished—and beloved—baseball heroes of his generation from Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss.
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On New Year’s Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero’s death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, a book destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi, When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man.
Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often defined by statistics. During his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his team to championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in all fourteen World Series games in which he played. His career ended with three-thousand hits, the magical three-thousandth coming in his final at-bat, and he and the immortal Lou Gehrig are the only players to have the five-year waiting period waived so they could be enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their deaths.
There is delightful baseball here, including thrilling accounts of the two World Series victories of Clemente’s underdog Pittsburgh Pirates, but this is far more than just another baseball book. Roberto Clemente was that rare athlete who rose above sports to become a symbol of larger themes. Born near the canebrakes of rural Carolina, Puerto Rico, on August 18, 1934, at a time when there were no blacks or Puerto Ricans playing organized ball in the United States, Clemente went on to become the greatest Latino player in the major leagues. He was, in a sense, the Jackie Robinson of the Spanish-speaking world, a ballplayer of determination, grace, and dignity who paved the way and set the highest standard for waves of Latino players who followed in later generations and who now dominate the game.
The Clemente that Maraniss evokes was an idiosyncratic character who, unlike so many modern athletes, insisted that his responsibilities extended beyond the playing field. In his final years, his motto was that if you have a chance to help others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth. Here, in the final chapters, after capturing Clemente’s life and times, Maraniss retraces his final days, from the earthquake to the accident, using newly uncovered documents to reveal the corruption and negligence that led the unwitting hero on a mission of mercy toward his untimely death as an uninspected, overloaded plane plunged into the sea. -
The Soul of A New Machine
- By: Tracy Kidder
- Narrator: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 9 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 17, 2016
- Language: English
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4.12(6772 ratings)
4.12(6772 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDTracy Kidder’s “riveting” (Washington Post) story of one company’s efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding theTracy Kidder’s “riveting” (Washington Post) story of one company’s efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry.
... Read moreComputers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.
The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century.“Fascinating…A surprisingly gripping account of people at work.” —Wall Street Journal -
To Conquer the Air
- By: James Tobin
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2003
- Language: English
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4.05(279 ratings)
4.05(279 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.95 USDJames Tobin, award-winning author of Ernie Pyle’s War and The Man He Became, has penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary rival Samuel Langley across ten years and twoJames Tobin, award-winning author of Ernie Pyle’s War and The Man He Became, has penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary rival Samuel Langley across ten years and two continents to conquer the air.
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For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the US War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths—Langley’s toward oblivion, the Wrights’ toward the heavens—though not before facing countless other obstacles. With a historian’s accuracy and a novelist’s eye, Tobin has captured an extraordinary moment in history. To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement. -
County
- By: David A. Ansell
- Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 7 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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4(766 ratings)
4(766 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDThe amazing tale of “County” is the story of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County HospitalThe amazing tale of “County” is the story of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the health-care provider of last resort for the city’s uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of its history, from the late 1970s, when the author began his internship, to the “final rounds,” when the enormous, iconic Victorian hospital building was replaced and hundreds of former trainees gathered to bid it an emotional farewell.
Ansell writes of the hundreds of doctors who went through the rigorous training process with him, sharing his vision of saving the world and of resurrecting a hospital on the verge of closing. County is about people, from Ansell’s mentors, including the legendary social justice activist Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients he and County’s medical staff labored to diagnose and heal. It is a story about politics, from contentious union strikes to battles against “patient dumping,” and about public health, depicting the AIDS crisis and the opening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic, the first in the city.
Finally, it is about a young man’s medical education in urban America, a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation, and poverty.
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The Doctor Who Fooled the World
- By: Brian Deer
- Narrator: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.99(588 ratings)
3.99(588 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe true story of Andrew Wakefield–the man behind the false link between the MMR vaccine and autism–and the conspiracy that fueled a global epidemic, from the prize-winning journalist who broke the story. From San Francisco to Shanghai,The true story of Andrew Wakefield–the man behind the false link between the MMR vaccine and autism–and the conspiracy that fueled a global epidemic, from the prize-winning journalist who broke the story.
From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant “anti-vax” movement has surfaced to campaign against children’s shots.But why?
In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. Writing with the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid.
At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called “father of the anti-vaccine movement”: a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer’s discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a “war.”
In an epic investigation spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.
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Dinner with DiMaggio
- By: Rock Positano
- Narrator: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.93(132 ratings)
3.93(132 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA revealing account of the great Baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio from the man who knew him best in the last ten years of his life–“a rare, intimate portrait…that pries open Joltin’ Joe’s perpetually buttoned-upA revealing account of the great Baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio from the man who knew him best in the last ten years of his life–“a rare, intimate portrait…that pries open Joltin’ Joe’s perpetually buttoned-up privacy” (The New York Times) with stories about the Yankees, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and other celebrities.
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In 1990, Dr. Rock Positano, a thirty-two-year-old foot and ankle specialist, met Joe DiMaggio. Despite the forty years between them, an unlikely friendship developed after the doctor successfully treated the baseball champ’s heel spur injury. Joe mentored Rock but came to rely on his young friend to show him a good time in New York, the town that made him a legend. In time, the famously reserved DiMaggio opened up to Dr. Positano and talked about his joys, his disappointments, and his sorrows as he reflected on his extraordinary life. The stories and experiences he shared with Dr. Positano comprise an intimate portrait of one of the great stars of baseball and icon of the twentieth century.
“Readers do not have to be baseball fans to be captivated by this memoir, which explores such universal themes as friendship, celebrity, aging, and mortality” (Library Journal, starred review). DiMaggio was a complicated figure–sometimes demanding, sometimes big-hearted, always impeccable, loyal, and a true stand-up guy. This memoir of a decade-long friendship reveals the very private DiMaggio as “a wholly human portrait of an American icon navigating his way through an adoring yet relentlessly demanding public” (Booklist, starred review), while serving up illuminating stories and rare insights about the people in his life, including his teammates, Muhammad Ali, Sandy Koufax, Woody Allen, and many more. -
Freud
- By: Frederick Crews
- Narrator: William Hughes
- Length: 25 hours 58 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.9(215 ratings)
3.9(215 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDFrom the master of Freud debunkers, the book that definitively puts an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator Since the 1970s, Sigmund Freud’s scientific reputation has been in an accelerating tailspin–and for excellentFrom the master of Freud debunkers, the book that definitively puts an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator
Since the 1970s, Sigmund Freud’s scientific reputation has been in an accelerating tailspin–and for excellent reasons. Nevertheless, the idea persists that some of his proposals were visionary discoveries. In Freud: The Making of an Illusion, Frederick Crews investigates the record and reveals findings that will revolutionize our conception of the therapist, the theorist, and the human being.
Drawing on rarely consulted archives, Crews shows us a man who blundered tragicomically in his dealings with patients, who never produced a corroborated cure, who promoted cocaine in one decade and was deluded by it in the next, who misunderstood the psychological controversies of the era, and who advanced his career through falsifying case histories and betraying the mentors who had helped him to rise. The contrary legend has persisted, Crews shows, thanks to Freud’s self-fashioning as a master detective of the psyche and later through a campaign of censorship and obfuscation conducted by his followers.
A monumental biographical study and a slashing critique, Freud: The Making of an Illusion will stand as the last word on one of the most significant and contested figures of the twentieth century.
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Tales from Q School
- By: John Feinstein
- Length: 5 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 02, 2007
- Language: English
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3.86(1495 ratings)
3.86(1495 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.98 USDFrom the author of Raise a Fist, Take a Knee and A Good Walk Spoiled, this “must-read” national bestseller takes you inside the dramatic world of the highest-pressure golf tournament in the world (Tampa Tribune). It is the tournamentFrom the author of Raise a Fist, Take a Knee and A Good Walk Spoiled, this “must-read” national bestseller takes you inside the dramatic world of the highest-pressure golf tournament in the world (Tampa Tribune).... Read more
It is the tournament that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hell at Q school, as the tournament is universally known, to get a shot at the PGA Tour, vying for the 30 slots available.
The grim reality: If you don’t make it through Q school, you’re not on the PGA tour. You’re out. And those who make it to the six-day finals are the lucky ones: hundreds more players fail to get through the equally grueling first two stages of the event. John Feinstein tells the story of the players who compete for these coveted positions in the 2005 Q school as only he can. With arresting accounts from the players, established winners, rising stars, the defeated, and the endlessly hopeful, America’s favorite sportswriter unearths the inside story behind the PGA Tour’s brutal all-or-nothing competition. -
Comeback Season
- By: Cam Perron
- Narrator: Aden Hakimi
- Length: 5 hours 45 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.86(124 ratings)
3.86(124 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDThe uplifting, unlikely, and inspirational true story of the friendships formed between Cam Perron–a white, baseball-obsessed teenager from Boston–and hundreds of former professional Negro League players, who were still awaiting theThe uplifting, unlikely, and inspirational true story of the friendships formed between Cam Perron–a white, baseball-obsessed teenager from Boston–and hundreds of former professional Negro League players, who were still awaiting the recognition and compensation that they deserved from Major League Baseball more than fifty years after their playing days were over. Featuring the players’ fascinating stories and original photographs.
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Cam Perron always loved history, and from an early age, he had a knack for collecting. But when he was twelve and bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from the Negro Leagues, something clicked.
Cam started writing letters to former Negro League players in 2007, asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. He got back much more than he expected. The players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, and the racism they faced, including run-ins with the KKK. They explained how they were repeatedly kept out of the major leagues and confined to the historic but lower-paying Negro Leagues, even after Jackie Robinson–who got his start in the Negro Leagues–broke the color barrier. By the time Cam finished middle school, letters had turned into phone calls, and he was spending hours a day talking with the players.
In these conversations, many of the players revealed that their careers had been unrecognized over time, and they’d fallen out of touch with their former teammates. So Cam, along with a small group of fellow researchers, organized the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama in 2010. At the celebratory, week-long event, fifteen-year-old Cam and the players–who were in their 70s, 80s, and 90s–finally met in person. They quickly became family.
As Cam and the players returned to the reunion year after year, Cam became deeply involved in a complicated mission to help many players get pension money that they were owed from Major League Baseball. He also worked to get a Negro League museum opened in Birmingham, and stock it with memorabilia.
Sports fans–and anyone who enjoys a heartfelt story–will have their eyes opened by this book about unlikely friendships, the power of memories, and just how far a childhood interest can go. -
The Lion House
- By: Christopher de Bellaigue
- Narrator: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 9 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: November 08, 2022
- Language: English
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3.75(133 ratings)
3.75(133 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USD“Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds.” –Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Narrated through the eyes of the“Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds.” –Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife.
Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander Barbarossa placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head to toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy.
In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells not just the story of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Blood Letters
- By: Lian Xi
- Narrator: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 20, 2018
- Language: English
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3.73(85 ratings)
3.73(85 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrestedThe staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime
Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The only Chinese citizen known to have openly and steadfastly opposed communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith — and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets.
Miraculously, Lin Zhao’s prison writings survived, though they have only recently come to light. Drawing on these works and others from the years before her arrest, as well as interviews with her friends, her classmates, and other former political prisoners, Lian Xi paints an indelible portrait of courage and faith in the face of unrelenting evil.
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A Story of the Red Cross
- By: Clara Barton
- Narrator: S. Patricia Bailey
- Length: 4 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.45(59 ratings)
3.45(59 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDClara Barton was one of those diminutive New England women of the nineteenth century who was determined to make the world a better place. In 1881, she founded the American Red Cross to help the unfortunate victims of war and disaster, and served asClara Barton was one of those diminutive New England women of the nineteenth century who was determined to make the world a better place. In 1881, she founded the American Red Cross to help the unfortunate victims of war and disaster, and served as its president from 1882 to 1904. The Red Cross of today stands as a living memorial to the lifelong efforts of this valiant lady.
Here Miss Barton tells the story of the first twenty-five years of the historic organization she founded. She shares details about the relief the Red Cross brought during the Texas Famine, the Mount Vernon Cyclone, the Johnstown Flood, the Sea Island Hurricane, and the Galveston Tidal Wave. The stories become all the more dramatic as a living eyewitness account told in Clara Barton’s own words.
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Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin
- By: Rae Katherine Eighmey
- Narrator: Pam Ward
- Length: 10 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.27(50 ratings)
3.27(50 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDIn this remarkable culinary biography, Rae Katherine Eighmey presents Benjamin Franklin’s experimentation with food throughout his life. At age sixteen, he began dabbling in vegetarianism. In his early twenties, citing the health benefits ofIn this remarkable culinary biography, Rae Katherine Eighmey presents Benjamin Franklin’s experimentation with food throughout his life. At age sixteen, he began dabbling in vegetarianism. In his early twenties, citing the health benefits of water over alcohol, he convinced his printing press colleagues to abandon their traditional breakfast of beer and bread for “water gruel,” a kind of porridge he enjoyed. Franklin is known for his scientific discoveries, including electricity and the lightning rod, and his curiosity and logical mind extended to the kitchen: he even conducted an electrical experiment to try to cook a turkey.
Later in life, on his diplomatic missions–he lived fifteen years in England and nine in France–Franklin ate like a local. Eighmey discovers the meals served at his London home-away-from-home and analyzes his account books from Passy, France, for tips to his diet there. Yet he also longed for American foods; his wife Deborah sent over some favorites including cranberries, which amazed the London kitchen staff. He saw food as key to the developing culture of the United States, penning two essays presenting maize as the defining grain of America. Eighmey revives and re-creates recipes from each chapter in his life. Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin conveys all of Franklin’s culinary adventures, demonstrating how Franklin’s love of food shaped not only his life, but also the character of the young nation he helped build.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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