The Biographies & Memoirs category has 8,363 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 123,952 ratings. The most-rated is Born a Crime.

Harold Schechter, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Hell’s Princess, unearths a nearly forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge, and one of the first - and worst - mass murders in American history. In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school - one of the most modern in the Midwest - Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history. Maniac is Harold Schechter’s gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a “human time bomb” whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age.
©2021 Harold Schechter. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

From award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the first history of New York’s most famous residential hotel - The Barbizon - and the remarkable women who lived there. Welcome to New York's legendary hotel for women. Liberated from home and hearth by World War I, politically enfranchised and ready to work, women arrived to take their place in the dazzling new skyscrapers of Manhattan. But they did not want to stay in uncomfortable boarding houses. They wanted what men already had - exclusive residential hotels with daily maid service, cultural programs, workout rooms, and private dining. Built in 1927 at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was intended as a safe haven for the “Modern Woman” seeking a career in the arts. It became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and, over the years, its almost 700 tiny rooms with matching floral curtains and bedspreads housed Titanic survivor Molly Brown; actresses Grace Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Ali MacGraw, Jaclyn Smith, Phylicia Rashad, and Cybill Shepherd; writers Joan Didion, Diane Johnson, Gael Greene, and Meg Wolitzer; and many more. Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, as did Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School its students and the Ford Modeling Agency its young models. Before the hotel’s residents were household names, they were young women arriving at the Barbizon with a suitcase and a dream. Not everyone who passed through the Barbizon’s doors was destined for success - for some it was a story of dashed hopes - but until 1981, when men were finally let in, the Barbizon offered its residents a room of their own and a life without family obligations or expectations. It gave women a chance to remake themselves however they pleased; it was the hotel that set them free. No place had existed like it before or has since. Beautifully crafted and impeccably researched, The Barbizon weaves together a tale that has, until now, never been told. It is both a vivid portrait of the lives of these young women who came to New York looking for something more, and an epic history of women’s ambition.
©2021 Paulina Bren. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Edward Coles, who lived from 1786-1868, is most often remembered for his antislavery correspondence with Thomas Jefferson in 1814, freeing his slaves in 1819, and leading the campaign against the legalization of slavery in Illinois during the 1823-24 convention contest. In this new full-length biography, Suzanne Cooper Guasco demonstrates for the first time how Edward Coles continued to confront slavery for nearly 40 years after his time in Illinois. Not only did he attempt to shape the slavery debates in Virginia immediately before and after Nat Turner's rebellion, he also consistently entered national political discussions about slavery throughout the 1830s, '40s, and '50s. On each occasion Coles promoted a vision of the nation that combined a celebration of America's antislavery past with an endorsement of free labor ideology and colonization, a broad appeal that was designed to mollify his fellow-countrymen's sense of economic self-interest and virulent anti-Black prejudice. As Cooper Guasco persuasively shows, Coles' antislavery nationalism, first crafted in Illinois in the 1820s, became the foundation of the Republican Party platform and ultimately contributed to the destruction of slavery. The book is published by Southern Illinois University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks. "Fascinating, inspiring, and tragic all at once." (Claremont Review of Books) "Ably illuminates the debate over slavery and race from the revolutionary era through the early Reconstruction years, bridging important historiographic gaps in the process." (The Journal of American History) "Elegantly written study of Edward Coles, second governor of Illinois…" (Midwest Review)
©2013 Northern Illinois University Press (P)2021 Redwood Audiobooks

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women-and America's highest paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee, winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy. Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art, exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as Ladies of Leisure, The Miracle Woman, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen; her Pre-Code movies Night Nurse and Baby Face; and her classic roles in Stella Dallas, Remember the Night, The Lady Eve, and Double Indemnity. After making more than eighty films in Hollywood, she revived her career by turning to television, where her role in the 1960s series The Big Valley renewed her immense popularity. Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in, leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk, All I Desire and There's Always Tomorrow, and two outrageous westerns, The Furies and Forty Guns. The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs-at the very top of her profession-and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity. The book is published by University Press of Mississippi.
©2012 Dan Callahan (P)2013 Redwood Audiobooks

Discover the remarkable life of John Wilkes Booth.... Free BONUS Inside! By the age of 26, John Wilkes Booth had achieved success on the stage. He had rugged good looks and the fame he craved. Yet that wasn’t enough for the fanatical actor. On April 14, 1865, just a few days following the end of the American Civil War, Booth stepped into the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington and shot Abraham Lincoln. He subsequently managed an incredible escape until he himself was killed. What would drive a man who had everything going for him to commit such a heinous act? What were his motives? This book unravels a tale of fanatical hate and deadly vengeance. John Wilkes Booth saw himself as a southern hero - the rest of the world will remember him as a stone-cold assassin. Discover a plethora of topics such as: Early Signs of Trouble Finding Fame as an Actor The Plot to Kidnap the President A Modern-Day Caesar The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Legacy of an Assassin And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on John Wilkes Booth, simply scroll up, and click the "Buy" button for instant access!
©2020 Hourly History (P)2021 Hourly History

Memoir of a Life from John Street to Wall Street Chris McGale lived a life of "fight or flight" and always chose to fight. His memoir tells of a remarkable journey from being bookies-runner at his family's Irish pub, to mega-stakes gambling, and to a dazzling City career with the Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch. Along the way, he nearly died in a collision with a lorry and his fundraising for the Omagh Bomb victims led to a nomination for the New Year's Honours List. The story also traces the emotional conflict, return to education, and reconciliation between the author and his fellow-orphan sibling, Paul. Then at the height of his City career, The Million Dollar Irishman went on sabbatical and never went back. He had burnt out, doing too much of what he called "The too muches" - a never-ending cycle of long days, late nights, booze, gambling, and the compulsion to win. This is his life story.
©2021 Chris McGale (P)2021 Chris McGale

Longlisted for The Tata Literature Live Business Book of the Year Award 2019 Immediately upon completing his DPhil degree, young Mukund Rajan came back to India and joined the Tata group as Ratan Tata's executive assistant. Over the next 23 years, as he worked closely with Ratan Tata, he got an inside view of the ups and downs, the controversies and achievements of the Tata group. In his book of memoirs, he talks of what really went on during those turbulent times and how the Tatas pulled through each of these situations. Along with that, this book offers a close portrait of the enigmatic Ratan Tata from his longest-serving executive assistant. The Brand Custodian is a study of the Tata group's evolution and explains the relevance of the conglomerate to the world we live in.
©2019 Mukund Rajan (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes, mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but he could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: A man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 Jan Swafford (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

An intimate memoir by the controversial and outspoken, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his complicated New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while driving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the high and low moments: We see meetings with Al Pacino over Stone’s scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino; the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award-winning film, Midnight Express. Chasing the Light is a true insider’s look at Hollywood’s years of upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s. Narrated by the author.
©2020 Oliver Stone (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

"An extraordinary saga." (David Grann, New York Times best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon) The mesmerizing account of a granddaughter's search for a World War II family history hidden for 60 years. Growing up in Paris, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her grandmother and her mother had fled their home city of Königsberg in the far east of Germany near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to Königsberg - now known as Kaliningrad, and part of Russia - and called her grandmother, who uncharacteristically burst into tears. "I have so much to tell you," Inge said. In this transporting and illuminating audiobook, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow. Ultimately, O'Donnell uncovers the act of violence that separated Inge from the man she loved; a terrible secret hidden for more than six decades. A captivating World War II saga, Inge's War is also a powerful reckoning with the meaning of German identity and inherited trauma. In retracing her grandmother's footsteps, O'Donnell not only discovers the remarkable story of a woman caught in the gears of history, but also comes face-to-face with her family's legacy of neutrality and inaction - and offers a rare glimpse into a reality too long buried by silence and shame.
©2020 Svenja O'Donnell (P)2020 Penguin Audio

This is a repeat of a similar book I wrote, with corrections and more detail. It is about the people we met both on and off the base in Morocco, and it is about the friendly people during that period. Ever since the Americans left, it seems Morocco, much like the Middle East, is turning for the worst. It was some of my best of times, and it became the worst of times prior to departing for the USA. It's about what it was like back then and how thing have changed.
©2020 Lawrence Lueder (P)2021 Lawrence Lueder

Mawson's Will is the dramatic story of what Sir Edmund Hillary calls "the most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history". For weeks in Antarctica, Douglas Mawson faced some of the most daunting conditions ever known to man: blistering wind, snow, and cold; loss of his companion, his dogs and supplies, the skin on his hands and the soles of his feet; thirst, starvation, disease, snowblindness - and he survived. Sir Douglas Mawson is remembered as the young Australian who would not go to the South Pole with Robert Scott in 1911, choosing instead to lead his own expedition on the less glamorous mission of charting nearly 1,500 miles of Antarctic coastline and claiming its resources for the British Crown. His party of three set out through the mountains across glaciers in 60-mile-per-hour winds. Six weeks and 320 miles out, one man fell into a crevasse, along with the tent, most of the equipment, all of the dogs' food, and all except a week's supply of the men's provisions. Mawson's Will is the unforgettable story of one man's ingenious practicality and unbreakable spirit and how he continued his meticulous scientific observations even in the face of death. When the expedition was over, Mawson had added more territory to the Antarctic map than anyone else of his time. Thanks to Bickel's moving account, Mawson can be remembered for the vision and dedication that make him one of the world's great explorers.
©2000 Lennard Bickel (P)2011 Steerforth Press LLC

Olaudah Equiano was born in Eboe in 1745 and lived among his family and culture until he was kidnapped later, which began a chain of being sold and moved around Africa, to Barbados, and eventually to England, where he served a man as a crewmate on a ship. From there, Equiano was transferred between many owners but was constantly seeking any advantages that would get him closer to buying his own freedom. Equiano’s story, by his own admission, was not one that was particularly different from those of other slaves from his place and time; however, he wanted to recount his story as a way to aid others who were living similar lives and provide inspiration for those hoping to eventually purchase freedom themselves. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was widely read at the time of publication in 1789 and became one of the formative works of slavery narrative nonfiction from the time.
Public Domain (P)2021 InAudio

From the best-selling author of King Leopold's Ghost and Spain in Our Hearts comes the astonishing but forgotten story of an immigrant sweatshop worker who married an heir to a great American fortune and became one of the most charismatic radical leaders of her time. Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of 11. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen. Their friends and houseguests included Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Rose stirred audiences to tears and led strikes of restaurant waiters and garment workers. She campaigned alongside the country’s earliest feminists to publicly defy laws against distributing information about birth control, earning her notoriety as “one of the dangerous influences of the country” from President Woodrow Wilson. But in a way no one foresaw, her too-short life would end in the same abject poverty with which it began. By a master of narrative nonfiction, Rebel Cinderella unearths the rich, overlooked life of a social-justice campaigner who was truly ahead of her time. Lisa Flanagan is an award-winning narrator, voice actor, stage director, improviser, opera librettist, and classical singer. Her VO work includes animation, video games, and commercials. Lisa has received multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, Voice Arts Awards, and the 2019 Audie Award winner for Fantasy (Spinning Silver). She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her cats.
©2020 Adam Hochschild (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Learn about the life and legacy of America’s most ruthless and successful business titan, and learn how to carve your own path to success using his priciples - if you dare! Being one of the richest families in the United States - and possibly even the world - the Rockefeller name has certainly made a significant dent in modern history. But one man in particular is to be the root of all the Rockefellers’ power, riches, and influence - John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. This is the man who started it all. His business acumen, determination, and ambition are unparalleled and still serve as inspiration for all others. Yet, despite his wealth, Rockefeller was a strikingly humble man. He did not let a lot of personal things get to him. If he was dealt a blow, he allowed it to hit him and simply turned the tables so that the odds finally come to his favor. An astute and studious entrepreneur, Rockefeller was able to see through veils and make systems work for him, regardless of the cost. With John D. Rockefeller: Biography of the Richest and Most Ruthless Business Titan in History by Nathan Anderson, listeners will: Explore John D. Rockefeller’s history and legacy and find out how one man was able to change the way capitalism operates forever Learn valuable life lessons - and even key tips - on how to embody a truly ruthless entrepreneur and make profits bend in your favor And so much more John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s story might just as well be a movie. But, unlike Hollywood, his story needs neither embellishments nor fanfare. It simply speaks for itself. No matter your background, this book will show you that your dreams and aspirations are within reach...but only if you’re willing to pay the price. Scroll up, click on “buy now", and grab a copy today!
©2020 Flâneur Media (P)2021 Flâneur Media

Jen Larsen always thought that if she could only lose some weight, she would be unstoppable. She was convinced that once she found a way to not be fat any more, she would have the perfect existence she'd always dreamed of. When diet after diet failed, she decided to try bariatric surgery, and it worked better than she ever could have dreamed: she lost 180 pounds. As the weight fell away, though, Larsen realized that getting skinny was not the magical cure she thought it would be and suddenly, she wasn't sure who she was anymore. Stranger Here is the brutally honest, surprisingly hilarious story of one woman's journey from one extreme of the weight spectrum to the other, and of the unexpected emotional chaos it created. Insightful and unsparing in her self-examination, Larsen depicts the exhilarating highs and devastating lows she experienced as a result of her weight loss, the incredible joy of finally beginning to look like the image of herself she's always carried inside her head, and the crushing pain and confusion of feeling like a stranger in her own body after losing the weight that has always defined her.
©2013 Jen Larsen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

The acclaimed, award-winning novelist takes us on some of his most memorable journeys in this revelatory collection of travel essays that spans the globe, from the Caribbean to Scotland to the Himalayas. Now in his mid-70s, Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. "Since childhood, I've longed for escape, for rejuvenation, for wealth untold, for erotic and narcotic and sybaritic fresh starts, for high romance, mystery, and intrigue," he writes in this compelling anthology. The longing for escape has taken him from the "bright green islands and turquoise seas" of the Caribbean islands to peaks in the Himalayas, the Andes, and beyond. In Voyager, Russell Banks, a lifelong explorer, shares highlights from his travels: interviewing Fidel Castro in Cuba; motoring to a hippie reunion with college friends in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; eloping to Edinburgh with his fourth wife, Chase; driving a sunset-orange metallic Hummer down Alaska's Seward Highway. In each of these remarkable essays, Banks considers his life and the world. In Everglades National Park, a "perfect place to time-travel", he traces his own time line. "I keep going back, and with increasingly clarity I see more of the place and more of my past selves. And more of the past of the planet as well." Recalling his trips to the Caribbean in the title essay, "Voyager", Banks dissects his relationships with the four women who would become his wives. In the Himalayas he embarks on a different quest of self-discovery. "One climbs a mountain not to conquer it but to be lifted like this away from the earth up into the sky," he explains. Pensive, frank, beautiful, and engaging, Voyager brings together the social, the personal, and the historical, opening a path into the heart and soul of this revered writer.
©2016 Russell Banks (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

A meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray, others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life: his childhood, his time as a young gay man in the 1960s, his renowned career as an artist, writer and film-maker. It is at once a lament for a lost generation, an unabashed celebration of gay sexuality and a devotion to all that is living.
©1991 Derek Jarman/The Keith Collins Will (P)2021 Audible, Ltd

A unique collection of eulogies of the 20th century's greatest figures, written by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and compiled by National Review and Fox News White House correspondent James Rosen. In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette, skewered everybody who needed skewering, and in general lived life on a scale, and in a swashbuckling manner, that captivated and inspired countless young conservatives across that half century. Among all of his distinctions, which include founding the conservative magazine National Review and serving as host on the long-running talk show Firing Line, Buckley was a master of that most elusive of art forms: the eulogy. Buckley drew on his unrivaled gifts in what he liked to call "the controversial arts" to mourn, celebrate, or seek eternal mercy for the men and women who touched his life and the nation; to conjure their personalities, recall memorable moments, herald their greatness; or to remind us why a given individual, even with the grace that death can uniquely confer, should be remembered as evil. At all points these remembrances reflect Buckley's singular voice, with its elegant touch and mordant humor, and lend to the lives departed final tributes consistent with their own careers, lives, and accomplishments. Of the more than 100 eulogies located in Buckley's vast archive of published works, A Torch Kept Lit collects the very best, those remembering the most consequential lives (Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan), the most famous to today's listeners (Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Princess Diana), those who loomed largest in the conservative movement (Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman), the most accomplished in the literary world (William Shawn, Norman Mailer), the most mysterious (Soviet spy Alger Hiss, CIA spymaster Richard Helms), and those most dear to Buckley (his mother and father).
©2016 William F. Buckley (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Colombian Killers explores the stories of three men who have forever tainted the lush fields of Latin America. This book narrates the sadistic acts of serial killers Luis Alfredo Garavito, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, and Daniel Camargo Barbosa. For these men, rape and murder were but the beginning of the horrors they inflicted upon the world. The fear their crimes inspire is not about their nature, the methodology, or even the victims. It is about who the killers themselves are. These men were motivated by perhaps the most chilling trifecta - sex, power and revenge. This book begins with three parts, each dedicated to one of these three monsters of modern-day Colombia. Once you've been edified with the general knowledge of the atrocities, we will delve further into the tiny details, the forgotten horrors, the thousands of ways that we as a society failed these men and, in so doing, shaped them into be the monsters they are known as today. Luis Alfredo Garavito, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, and Daniel Camargo Barbosa are among the most prolific serial killers in the world. Between them, they were convicted of 329 murders, but it's believed that the number they committed is over 750. Colombian Killers is not for the faint of heart, nor for the feeble of spirit. Be very sure you want to know what you are about to hear, because if you can be sure of nothing else, be sure of this: You will never forget what you are about to hear.
©2016 Ryan Green (P)2016 Ryan Green