New Reviews: History

Sorkin's thoroughly researched depictions of the personalities and market gyrations that led up to the stock market crash of 1929 give the listener insights into the economic greed and foolishness of the 1920s. A NEW YORK TIMES writer and television personality, Sorkin narrates as a practiced professional. While the audiobook may be considered a parable for today's "market... Read More

Listeners will need patience and some prior interest in the murderous history of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to fully appreciate this audiobook. While author Philippe Sands is an effective narrator, his range is narrow, and his voice somewhat abrasive. The audiobook is enriched by impressive research and full diligence in interviewing those who labored to bring Pinochet... Read More

Stefanie Powers delivers an exquisite, often thrilling, performance of this deeply researched and unvarnished history of Amelia Earhart. Listeners may be familiar with the basic outlines of Earhart's accomplishments as a pilot. This new audiobook provides a detailed picture of how Earhart, a social worker in the 1920s, became a skilled aviator. George Putnam, well known for... Read More

Mount Rushmore is an awe-inspiring site, and the story behind it is nearly as monumental. Author Matthew Davis chronicles the history of the project, paying particular attention to its impact on and relationship with the people who lived there for centuries. He adds bits of trivia, such as the fact Thomas Jefferson isn't in his planned location because an overeager worker used... Read More

Never underestimate the value of a pleasing voice, especially when the subject is history--in particular, a topic as obtuse as the English Civil War. Mark Meadows's light British accent is an enhancement and a defining feature of this well-told narrative, a sequel of sorts to Oxford scholar Jonathan Healey's THE BLAZING WORLD. That narrative surveyed the entire revolutionary... Read More

Bacon's book is significantly longer than Gordon Lightfoot's renowned song, so listeners will learn a lot more about the tragic sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. Johnny Heller presents fascinating details that include the physics of Great Lakes waves, the growth of their shipping industry, other notable wrecks, the commissioning and building of the Edmund Fitzgerald,... Read More

The four years thoroughly chronicled by Jonathan Mahler show the growing divisions in a changing New York City in the late 1980s--and suggest parallels to today. In a rich, steady tone, Golden Voice narrator Robert Petkoff conveys the rising rates of crime and poverty, and the widening racial divide, along with the opposing ways the city's leaders reacted to them. The audiobook... Read More

The great auk, a large flightless seabird related to guillemots and razorbills, has been extinct since 1844, wholly at the hands of people. John Sackville's crisp English accent and conversational pacing draw the listener into ornithologist Tim Birkhead's wide-ranging investigation into the life and afterlife of the great auk. Sackville is a charming and precise guide as we... Read More

This account of how the Founders dealt with the issues of slavery and the treatment of America's Indigenous populations is solidly narrated by Golden Voice Kimberly Farr. Ellis, a prominent historian, goes into detail about the contradictions inherent in America's founding relating to those two issues. He also notes that the Founders were people and that irony and contradiction... Read More

This dramatic audiobook chronicles the first months that followed the opening month of WWI, a history memorably depicted in Barbara Tuchman's THE GUNS OF AUGUST. This narrative describes the struggle that then unfolded in Flanders. Narrator Paul Boehmer has the range and stamina needed for so vast and bloody a tale. One hero emerges, King Albert of Belgium. Albert's valiant... Read More

David Potter has written a straight-ahead biography of Julius Caesar with a coda about his posthumous influence, and Graham Winton gives a correspondingly straight-ahead performance of both. His voice is pleasantly serviceable, and he generally conveys meaning accurately in his tone, emphasis, and phrasing. Overall, he delivers the sense of the text in a way that's congenial... Read More

Narrator Paul Woodson's resonant voice, measured pacing, and subtle expression transport the listener to WWII Occupied France through the lens of the artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Matisse, aging and in poor health, defiantly stayed in France and considered his groundbreaking new art form an act of resistance. Confined to his bed, he created the famous paper cutouts in bold... Read More

Brian Nishii reprises his narration of HIROSHIMA, the first of a two-volume series that recounts the atomic bombings of Japan in August 1945. Author Sheftall draws on extensive interviews with those who survived, providing detail on the day-to-day lives of the Japanese and a history of Japanese relations with the West. He also provides details on the Americans involved--giving... Read More

As an audiobook author, historian Matthew Restall is spirited, witty, highly informed, and full of insights and revelations. As a narrator, he's more subdued, even a bit flat. But no matter. Restall's steady, evenhanded narration reenforces the balance and objectivity of his history of the "nine lives of Christopher Columbus." Over five centuries, Columbus has been hailed and... Read More

It's not altogether certain, as this audiobook claims, that rope is the backbone of civilization. But it has as good a claim as the wheel, whose history has been forever linked with it. From the pyramids to the hangman's noose, rope has been an essential component of mankind's advance. Its many applications--or "strands," as they're called here--lead into a future in which... Read More

Mitch Crawford narrates this nonfiction account of the Fountain Grove utopian community in California in the late 1800s. Run by minister, spiritualist, and poet Thomas Lake Harris, the community went through a large public scandal involving gender, race, and sexual mores. As a result, it was dubbed the first "cult"--and Harris the first "cult leader." Crawford narrates with a... Read More

This graphic audiobook is not for the tenderhearted. Dion Graham narrates the account of one of the most horrific incidents to occur during the Atlantic slave trade. The ZORG was a Dutch ship that was captured by British privateers off the coast of West Africa and then sent to Jamaica in 1781. As contagious illness swept through the crew and the 244 enslaved people aboard, a... Read More