-
Dark Archives
- A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
- Narrated by: Justis Bolding
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand?
In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy - the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the worlds most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, innocents, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.
A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives - captivating and macabre in all the right ways - she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
All the Living and the Dead
- From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work
- By: Hayley Campbell
- Narrated by: Hayley Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
-
-
Excellent
- By Noelle on 09-01-22
By: Hayley Campbell
-
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
- Big Questions from Tiny Mortals
- By: Caitlin Doughty
- Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to 35 distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death?
-
-
There is just something with Caitlin Doughty...
- By Elijah on 09-21-19
By: Caitlin Doughty
-
Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
-
-
Feels like old school Discovery channel
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-23
By: Erika Engelhaupt
-
The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
-
-
Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
-
The Icepick Surgeon
- Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.
-
-
FANTASTIC! & What’s up with all these naysayers (negative reviewers)?!
- By Zophie Leslea on 08-19-21
By: Sam Kean
-
Cursed Objects
- Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items
- By: J.W. Ocker
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world's most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale.
-
-
Good information!
- By Amelia on 07-29-21
By: J.W. Ocker
-
All the Living and the Dead
- From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work
- By: Hayley Campbell
- Narrated by: Hayley Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
-
-
Excellent
- By Noelle on 09-01-22
By: Hayley Campbell
-
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
- Big Questions from Tiny Mortals
- By: Caitlin Doughty
- Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to 35 distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death?
-
-
There is just something with Caitlin Doughty...
- By Elijah on 09-21-19
By: Caitlin Doughty
-
Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
-
-
Feels like old school Discovery channel
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-23
By: Erika Engelhaupt
-
The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
-
-
Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
-
The Icepick Surgeon
- Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.
-
-
FANTASTIC! & What’s up with all these naysayers (negative reviewers)?!
- By Zophie Leslea on 08-19-21
By: Sam Kean
-
Cursed Objects
- Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items
- By: J.W. Ocker
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world's most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale.
-
-
Good information!
- By Amelia on 07-29-21
By: J.W. Ocker
-
Bonk
- The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The study of sexual physiology has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic.
Mary Roach, "The funniest science writer in the country", devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
-
-
Absolutely Wonderful!
- By Gurmukh on 07-05-08
By: Mary Roach
-
Fuzz
- When Nature Breaks the Law
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Mary Roach
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
-
-
The footnotes
- By Alex on 09-24-21
By: Mary Roach
-
Mortuary Confidential
- Undertakers Spill the Dirt
- By: Todd Harra, Kenneth McKenzie
- Narrated by: Susan Larkin, Allan Robertson
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell - and a special way of telling them. In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death's door.
-
-
A wonderful read!
- By Grace Adele Spruiell on 12-25-22
By: Todd Harra, and others
-
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
- And Other Lessons from the Crematory
- By: Caitlin Doughty
- Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty - a 20-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre - took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. With an original voice that combines fearless curiosity and mordant wit, Caitlin tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters, gallows humor, and vivid characters (both living and very dead).
-
-
Loved it So Much I Bought it After Reading it Free
- By J. Mattox on 05-17-17
By: Caitlin Doughty
-
The Facemaker
- A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Daniel Gillies
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies.
-
-
My favorite author
- By Dani on 06-07-22
-
The Salt Grows Heavy
- By: Cassandra Khaw
- Narrated by: Susan Dalian
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.
-
-
Weird and gory
- By Deborah Kamm on 10-15-24
By: Cassandra Khaw
-
A Taste for Poison
- Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them
- By: Neil Bradbury Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals, and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin and tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads listeners on a fascinating tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive - or don’t.
-
-
Poison, Murder, and So Much More!
- By Rebecca Hill on 02-12-22
-
Goddess of Filth
- By: V. Castro
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One hot summer night, Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. Their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes suspects it's something else—something far more ancient and powerful.
-
-
Great
- By Elise on 09-25-23
By: V. Castro
-
From Here to Eternity
- Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
- By: Caitlin Doughty
- Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls) and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage.
-
-
Caitlin has done it again
- By Shaun on 10-03-17
By: Caitlin Doughty
-
Quackery
- A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
- By: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.
-
-
Computer-generated Narrator. Dated Humour.
- By Nemo on 12-28-18
By: Lydia Kang, and others
-
The Scapegracers
- Scapegracers, Book 1
- By: Hannah Abigail Clarke, Liz Gorinsky - editor
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Skulking near the bottom of West High’s social pyramid, Sideways Pike lurks under the bleachers doing magic tricks for Coke bottles. As a witch, lesbian, and lifelong outsider, she’s had a hard time making friends. But when the three most popular girls pay her $40 to cast a spell at their Halloween party, Sideways gets swept into a new clique. The unholy trinity are dangerous angels, sugar-coated rattlesnakes, and now - unbelievably - Sideways’ best friends.
-
-
Everything I hoped it would be
- By Marti on 09-08-21
By: Hannah Abigail Clarke, and others
-
Gulp
- Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. Roach takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: The questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts?
-
-
Funtastic Voyage
- By Mel on 04-05-13
By: Mary Roach
Related to this topic
-
Severed
- A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
- By: Frances Larson
- Narrated by: Reay Kaplan
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, anthopologist Frances Larson here explores our macabre fixation with severed heads.
-
-
Good narrator
- By Caitlin kestell on 04-27-24
By: Frances Larson
-
Printer's Error
- Irreverent Stories from Book History
- By: Rebecca Romney, J. P. Romney
- Narrated by: J.P. Romney
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's name doesn't appear anywhere on it.
-
-
Porn for Ye Old Bibliophiles
- By George M. Liveakos on 03-24-17
By: Rebecca Romney, and others
-
The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
-
-
thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
-
The Knife Man
- The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
- By: Wendy Moore
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's murky and macabre world - a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Bird on 12-02-15
By: Wendy Moore
-
The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
-
-
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Lost Gutenberg
- The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey
- By: Margaret Leslie Davis
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For rare-book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible - of which there are fewer than 50 in existence - represents the ultimate prize. Here, Margaret Leslie Davis recounts five centuries in the life of one copy, from its creation by Johannes Gutenberg, through the hands of monks, an earl, the Worcestershire sauce king, and a nuclear physicist to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault in Tokyo.
-
-
Spare me
- By Dr. Small on 05-04-20
-
Severed
- A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
- By: Frances Larson
- Narrated by: Reay Kaplan
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, anthopologist Frances Larson here explores our macabre fixation with severed heads.
-
-
Good narrator
- By Caitlin kestell on 04-27-24
By: Frances Larson
-
Printer's Error
- Irreverent Stories from Book History
- By: Rebecca Romney, J. P. Romney
- Narrated by: J.P. Romney
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's name doesn't appear anywhere on it.
-
-
Porn for Ye Old Bibliophiles
- By George M. Liveakos on 03-24-17
By: Rebecca Romney, and others
-
The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
-
-
thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
-
The Knife Man
- The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
- By: Wendy Moore
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's murky and macabre world - a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Bird on 12-02-15
By: Wendy Moore
-
The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
-
-
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Lost Gutenberg
- The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey
- By: Margaret Leslie Davis
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For rare-book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible - of which there are fewer than 50 in existence - represents the ultimate prize. Here, Margaret Leslie Davis recounts five centuries in the life of one copy, from its creation by Johannes Gutenberg, through the hands of monks, an earl, the Worcestershire sauce king, and a nuclear physicist to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault in Tokyo.
-
-
Spare me
- By Dr. Small on 05-04-20
-
ArtCurious
- Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
- By: Jennifer Dasal
- Narrated by: Jennifer Dasal
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed - or even murdered.
-
-
Couldn’t take it
- By Amira on 03-05-22
By: Jennifer Dasal
-
Descartes' Bones
- A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
-
-
Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
By: Russell Shorto
-
Sacred Treasure - The Cairo Genizah
- The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic
- By: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Narrated by: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue - the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1897, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered.
-
-
Not what I thought it would be, but worth it
- By Lisa on 03-14-12
-
The Art of the English Murder
- From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock
- By: Lucy Worsley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early 19th century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism.
-
-
Should Come With a Spoiler Alert
- By Jessica on 04-15-16
By: Lucy Worsley
-
Gods of the Upper Air
- How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
- By: Charles King
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced". What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature.
-
-
Great Book, Much Needed despite poor performance
- By J. Kahn on 08-21-19
By: Charles King
-
The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
-
-
Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
-
Ripper
- The Secret Life of Walter Sickert
- By: Patricia Cornwell
- Narrated by: Mary Stuart Masterson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.
-
-
I thought this was a new book.
- By Stephanie on 03-01-17
-
The Hunt for History
- On the Trail of the World's Lost Treasures - from the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein to the Secret Recordings On-Board JFK's Air Force One
- By: Nathan Raab, Luke Barr
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nathan Raab, America’s preeminent rare documents dealer, delivers a “diverting account of treasure hunting in the fast lane” (The Wall Street Journal) that recounts his years as the Sherlock Holmes of historical artifacts, questing after precious finds and determining their authenticity.
-
-
I wished it was longer
- By NANAS on 04-15-20
By: Nathan Raab, and others
-
The Organ Thieves
- The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South
- By: Chip Jones
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a Black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a White businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge.
-
-
Not your story to tell
- By Bianca S on 11-22-20
By: Chip Jones
-
History's Most Powerful Witches and Wizards
- 2 Books in 1
- By: Desmond Wilde
- Narrated by: Charles D. Baker
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Witches have always worried, scared, and fascinated people in equal measure. From dark magic to home remedies, they have been part of the cultural landscape for people across the world. From Europe to the Americas, Asia to Africa, the idea of women who delve deep into magic has created some of the most enduring stories in the history of humanity. Often, these stories blend the real with the unreal, truth with fiction, and magick with the mundane.
By: Desmond Wilde
-
The Apparitionists
- A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
By: Peter Manseau
-
What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
- The History and Future of Reading
- By: Leah Price
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed.
-
-
Wasn't a fan.
- By Erika on 12-27-20
By: Leah Price
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Lay Them to Rest
- On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless
- By: Laurah Norton
- Narrated by: Laurah Norton
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fans of true crime shows like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law and Order know that when it comes to “getting the bad guy” behind bars, your best chance of success boils down to the strength of your evidence—and the forensic science used to obtain it. Beyond the silver screen, forensic science has been used for decades to help solve even the most tough-to-crack cases.
-
-
Enjoyable author, but not my style
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-23
By: Laurah Norton
-
The Day I Die
- The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America
- By: Dr. Anita Hannig
- Narrated by: Linda Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking book, Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying—a legal option now available to one in five Americans. The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine.
-
-
Honest, Revealing
- By Mark L on 08-26-22
By: Dr. Anita Hannig
-
Boys Enter the House
- The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind
- By: David Nelson
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.
-
-
What we really needed to know about the Gacy murders.
- By Aaron on 03-02-24
By: David Nelson
-
Cannibalism
- By: Bill Schutt
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.
-
-
Ruined it at the end
- By Kimberly Ames on 12-07-17
By: Bill Schutt
-
Without a Prayer
- The Death of Lucas Leonard and How One Church Became a Cult
- By: Susan Ashline
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar - he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas' church would eventually find themselves facing murder-related charges. But how did they get to that point? And what made Lucas confess?
-
-
The Depravity of the Human Soul
- By J. Miller on 01-31-20
By: Susan Ashline
-
Data Baby
- My Life in a Psychological Experiment
- By: Susannah Breslin
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life, or is something else?
-
-
There should be a law. Oh wait there is.
- By all our stories on 05-31-24
By: Susannah Breslin
-
Lay Them to Rest
- On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless
- By: Laurah Norton
- Narrated by: Laurah Norton
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fans of true crime shows like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law and Order know that when it comes to “getting the bad guy” behind bars, your best chance of success boils down to the strength of your evidence—and the forensic science used to obtain it. Beyond the silver screen, forensic science has been used for decades to help solve even the most tough-to-crack cases.
-
-
Enjoyable author, but not my style
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-23
By: Laurah Norton
-
The Day I Die
- The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America
- By: Dr. Anita Hannig
- Narrated by: Linda Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking book, Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying—a legal option now available to one in five Americans. The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine.
-
-
Honest, Revealing
- By Mark L on 08-26-22
By: Dr. Anita Hannig
-
Boys Enter the House
- The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind
- By: David Nelson
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.
-
-
What we really needed to know about the Gacy murders.
- By Aaron on 03-02-24
By: David Nelson
-
Cannibalism
- By: Bill Schutt
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.
-
-
Ruined it at the end
- By Kimberly Ames on 12-07-17
By: Bill Schutt
-
Without a Prayer
- The Death of Lucas Leonard and How One Church Became a Cult
- By: Susan Ashline
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar - he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas' church would eventually find themselves facing murder-related charges. But how did they get to that point? And what made Lucas confess?
-
-
The Depravity of the Human Soul
- By J. Miller on 01-31-20
By: Susan Ashline
-
Data Baby
- My Life in a Psychological Experiment
- By: Susannah Breslin
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life, or is something else?
-
-
There should be a law. Oh wait there is.
- By all our stories on 05-31-24
By: Susannah Breslin
-
Out Cold
- A Chilling Descent into the Macabre, Controversial, Lifesaving History of Hypothermia
- By: Phil Jaekl
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Out Cold, science writer Phil Jaekl chronicles the underappreciated story of human innovation with cold, from Ancient Egypt, where it was used to treat skin irritations, to 18th-century London, where scientists used it in their first explorations of suspended animation. Throughout history, physicians have used cold to innovate life extension, enable distant space missions, and explore consciousness.
-
-
Left cold.
- By Lars on 09-12-22
By: Phil Jaekl
-
Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
-
-
Feels like old school Discovery channel
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-23
By: Erika Engelhaupt
-
Ghostland
- An American History in Haunted Places
- By: Colin Dickey
- Narrated by: Jon Lindstrom
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes", Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places.
-
-
A fluffed-up college essay writ large.
- By Gavin on 10-13-16
By: Colin Dickey
-
Over My Dead Body
- Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries
- By: Greg Melville
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.
-
-
excellent read!
- By KJ on 03-05-23
By: Greg Melville
-
The Unclaimed
- Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels
- By: Pamela Prickett, Stefan Timmermans
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Mama&cubs on 09-11-24
By: Pamela Prickett, and others
-
All the Living and the Dead
- From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work
- By: Hayley Campbell
- Narrated by: Hayley Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
-
-
Excellent
- By Noelle on 09-01-22
By: Hayley Campbell
-
Pathogenesis
- A History of the World in Eight Plagues
- By: Jonathan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Kennedy
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.
-
-
Devolves into political advocacy
- By Mark Fackler on 04-29-23
By: Jonathan Kennedy
-
Tremors in the Blood
- Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector
- By: Amit Katwala
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the present day, Tremors in the Blood reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph, through gripping true-crime cases featuring explosive gunfights, shocking twists, and high-stakes courtroom drama. Touching on psychology, technology, and the science of the truth, Tremors in the Blood is a vibrant, atmospheric thriller and a warning from history: beware what you believe.
-
-
Incredible Book
- By Christine on 01-04-24
By: Amit Katwala
-
From Here to Eternity
- Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
- By: Caitlin Doughty
- Narrated by: Caitlin Doughty
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls) and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage.
-
-
Caitlin has done it again
- By Shaun on 10-03-17
By: Caitlin Doughty
-
The Great Mortality
- An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
- By: John Kelly
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholars and the general public. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story. In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people—one third of the known population—before it vanished.
-
-
Endless Speculation and Contradiction
- By Greg on 04-20-24
By: John Kelly
-
Unmask Alice
- LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
- By: Rick Emerson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
-
-
I’m from Pleasant Grove where rumors of Jay’s Journal are alive and well
- By Ruby Tuesday on 10-06-22
By: Rick Emerson
-
Strange Medicine
- A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages
- By: Nathan Belofsky
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now published in five languages, Strange Medicine casts a gimlet eye on the practice of medicine through the ages that highlights the most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders. From bad science and oafish behavior to stomach-turning procedures that hurt more than helped, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward.
By: Nathan Belofsky
What listeners say about Dark Archives
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica Jackson
- 02-24-23
Wonderfully researched and read perfectly
I know I would’ve loved the extensive research on a very sensitive topic but the book was enhanced by the reading as the author dealt with people from different countries and cultures, both living and dead.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Abbey Pflegl
- 11-21-21
Fascinating
What most would consider a macabre subject, I truly enjoyed the journey with the author through finding out more about these interesting and dark books.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Paula
- 05-24-21
An intelligent and empathetic look at both books and death
Despite the sensationalism of the title, this book is extraordinarily well researched, and is written very thoughtfully and empathetically. It is a book that immediately piqued my interest, since I not only am drawn to macabre subjects, but I also work in the library field. It touches on issues of censorship, research ethics, conservatism, dehumanization, consent, and death positivity. As long as you’re not super squeamish, I would recommend this book to any adult.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Melanie-mae Lavoie
- 01-25-23
accents
narrator is good until they start doing accents to match the quotes. otherwise fine.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Catherine McMahon
- 07-14-21
Slow read
I found this book pretty boring. I felt like the topic could have been covered in one chapter.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 11-05-21
Armchair Psychology with Nothing Gained
The narrator, Justis, has an amazing voice! Her cadence was soothing but kept the story feeling personal. She made it feel like a conversation between friends.
Except, I am not a very good friend of this book...
Maybe if I didn't have a heavy interest in morbid history this book would've been more insightful. Unfortunately, all I really learned is that the French don't like sharing. There wasn't a real deep insight or introspection behind the idea of why human skin books create such interest and controversy. The deep religious, cultural and emotional undertones of how the human body is used after death was only brushed against--outside of one incredibly pompous interview with a fellow librarian (the one who likened skin books to sexual assault). As for the practice itself... I learned the proper names for bookbinding, so there's that.
All in all, I don't regret the read but I won't recommend it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!