
Lawless Republic
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Narrated by:
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David Holt
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By:
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Josiah Osgood
About this listen
In its final decades, the Roman Republic was engulfed by a crime wave. An epidemic of extortions, murders, and acts of insurrection tested the court system's capacity to maintain order. As case after case filled the docket, an ambitious young lawyer named Cicero seized every opportunity to litigate, forging a reputation as a master debater with a bright future in politics. In Lawless Republic, historian Josiah Osgood recounts the legendary orator's ascent and fall, and his pivotal role in the republic's lurch toward autocracy.
Cicero's first appearance in the courts came shortly after the end of a brutal civil war. After leveraging his fame as a lawyer to become a consul, he ruthlessly crushed a coup by suppressing the liberties of Roman citizens. The premiere legal mind of Rome came to argue that the pursuit of a higher justice could sometimes justify sweeping the law aside, laying the groundwork for Roman history's most famous act of political violence—the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Lawless Republic vividly resurrects the spectacle of the courts in the time of Cicero and Caesar, showing how politics trumped the rule of law and sealed the fate of Rome.
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- The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
- By: Marlene L. Daut
- Narrated by: Don Elivert
- Length: 29 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
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The unknow history, that was hidden.
- By Flo on 04-06-25
By: Marlene L. Daut
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Tequila Wars
- Jose Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico
- By: Ted Genoways
- Narrated by: Andrew Joseph Perez
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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At the dawn of the twentieth century, José Cuervo inherited his family's humble distillery, La Rojeña, in the Tequila Valley. Within a decade, it would become Mexico's leading producer of tequila. But when the Mexican Revolution erupted, a charge of treason and a death threat against him by Pancho Villa forced Cuervo to flee. In Tequila Wars, award-winning author Ted Genoways restores Cuervo to his place as a key player in Mexico's formative period. Before the revolution, Cuervo's acclaim spread worldwide, and once war broke out, Cuervo remained an impresario, kingmaker, and cultural force.
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The writing was heavy on descriptions but light on historical content.
- By George Q. Bissonnette on 06-06-25
By: Ted Genoways
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Buckley
- The Life and the Revolution That Changed America
- By: Sam Tanenhaus
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 31 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Majestic in its sweep, rich in ideas and argument, and packed with news and revelations, Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases—founding editor of National Review, the 20th century’s most influential political journal; syndicated columnist and TV debater; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York; and bestselling novelist and memoirist.
By: Sam Tanenhaus
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Rain of Ruin
- Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan
- By: Richard Overy
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1945, US air attacks in Japan killed 300,000 civilians in three hours of night bombing and two nuclear strikes. The firebombing of Tokyo in March burned almost the entire city, killed some 85,000 residents, and left more than 1 million homeless. The atomic blast in Hiroshima in August killed some 119,000 civilians and 20,000 soldiers. After a second nuclear attack days later in Nagasaki and a declaration of war by the Soviet Union, Japan accepted defeat.
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The Voice ruins the book.
- By Bryce on 05-28-25
By: Richard Overy
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Inventing the Renaissance
- The Myth of a Golden Age
- By: Ada Palmer
- Narrated by: Candida Gubbins
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we’re told) heralds the dawning of a new world—a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In Inventing the Renaissance, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we’ve told ourselves about Europe’s not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity.
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Completely changed my perspective of Machiavelli
- By Amazon Customer on 04-30-25
By: Ada Palmer
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Homer and His Iliad
- By: Robin Lane Fox
- Narrated by: Steve John Shepherd
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity.
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Masterful!
- By J. C. Weaver on 01-08-24
By: Robin Lane Fox
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Marcus Aurelius
- The Stoic Emperor
- By: Donald J. Robertson
- Narrated by: Donald J. Robertson
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) to life for a new generation by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own Meditations and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the Augustan History and other ancient texts.
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Robertson does it again
- By J. Gilmore on 02-17-24
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Martin Van Buren
- America's First Politician
- By: James M. Bradley
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This new biography of Van Buren—the first full-scale portrait in four decades—charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
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Woke
- By sriaknal on 06-06-25
By: James M. Bradley
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American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
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fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
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The Lives of the Caesars
- By: Suetonius, Tom Holland - introduction translator
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth, Tom Holland
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the center of Rome and power, in the early 2nd century AD. By placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome’s ultimate portraits of power.
By: Suetonius, and others
Entertaining and educational
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