
The Small and the Mighty
Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement
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

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sharon McMahon
-
By:
-
Sharon McMahon
About this listen
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.
In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.
You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: John Green
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
-
-
Powerful, Heartbreaking, Informative, Inspiring, Hopeful.
- By Kendall R. Genier on 03-25-25
By: John Green
-
Broken Country
- By: Clare Leslie Hall
- Narrated by: Hattie Morahan
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.
-
-
Great Listen - recommend!
- By Julie & Mike on 03-06-25
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
How We Learn to Be Brave
- Decisive Moments in Life and Faith
- By: Mariann Edgar Budde
- Narrated by: Mariann Edgar Budde
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How We Learn to Be Brave is an inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves, by the bishop of the famed Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.
-
-
inspiring
- By B. Lebow on 02-06-24
-
The Road from Coorain
- By: Jill Ker Conway
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1930s, Jill Ker's parents bought a sheep farm on the western plains of New South Wales. In 1944, they lost nearly everything when a drought hit. Forced to leave Coorain, 11-year-old Jill and her mother settled in Sydney where Jill struggled to find a place for herself among Sydney's elite. Her story, both a chronicle of life in the Australian outback and the odyssey of a brilliant woman fighting the constraints of her time, offers a loving view of Australia.
-
-
So glad I (finally) listened to my aunt
- By T. on 07-12-13
By: Jill Ker Conway
-
The Lion Women of Tehran
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”
-
-
Wonderful story Awful Narration
- By Sogol on 08-14-24
By: Marjan Kamali
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: John Green
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
-
-
Powerful, Heartbreaking, Informative, Inspiring, Hopeful.
- By Kendall R. Genier on 03-25-25
By: John Green
-
Broken Country
- By: Clare Leslie Hall
- Narrated by: Hattie Morahan
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.
-
-
Great Listen - recommend!
- By Julie & Mike on 03-06-25
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
How We Learn to Be Brave
- Decisive Moments in Life and Faith
- By: Mariann Edgar Budde
- Narrated by: Mariann Edgar Budde
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How We Learn to Be Brave is an inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves, by the bishop of the famed Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.
-
-
inspiring
- By B. Lebow on 02-06-24
-
The Road from Coorain
- By: Jill Ker Conway
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1930s, Jill Ker's parents bought a sheep farm on the western plains of New South Wales. In 1944, they lost nearly everything when a drought hit. Forced to leave Coorain, 11-year-old Jill and her mother settled in Sydney where Jill struggled to find a place for herself among Sydney's elite. Her story, both a chronicle of life in the Australian outback and the odyssey of a brilliant woman fighting the constraints of her time, offers a loving view of Australia.
-
-
So glad I (finally) listened to my aunt
- By T. on 07-12-13
By: Jill Ker Conway
-
The Lion Women of Tehran
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”
-
-
Wonderful story Awful Narration
- By Sogol on 08-14-24
By: Marjan Kamali
-
Madness
- Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
- By: Antonia Hylton
- Narrated by: Antonia Hylton
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports listeners behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum. In Madness, journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital.
-
-
Glad to have added this to my cerebral quarters
- By Alednam A Uonopk on 04-25-24
By: Antonia Hylton
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
The narration was brilliant…totally engrossing and beautifully spoken
- By Karen Lausa on 12-13-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
The Dearly Beloved
- A Novel
- By: Cara Wall
- Narrated by: Kathy Keane
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart. Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry.
-
-
God Is Real
- By Becky on 10-12-19
By: Cara Wall
-
The Sacred Balance (25th Anniversary Edition)
- Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
- By: David Suzuki, Robin Wall Kimmerer - foreword, Bill McKibben - afterword
- Narrated by: David Suzuki, Megan Tooley, Zack Sage
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is changing at a relentless pace. How can we slow down and act from a place of respect for all living things? The Sacred Balance shows us how.
-
-
It’s Now or Never
- By Anonymous User on 08-30-24
By: David Suzuki, and others
-
The PLAN
- Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius
- By: Kendra Adachi
- Narrated by: Kendra Adachi
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most time-management books leave you feeling inadequate, focusing on greatness and optimization. But what if you want to simply live your life without chasing productivity at every turn? Is there a way to manage your time without being at its mercy?
-
-
Essay stretched to book length
- By R on 12-17-24
By: Kendra Adachi
-
The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- By: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
-
-
Entertaining perhaps but not science.
- By Jerry Miller on 07-31-24
By: Zoë Schlanger
-
Outraged
- Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground
- By: Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s easy to assume that liberals and conservatives have radically different moral foundations. In Outraged, Kurt Gray showcases the latest science to demonstrate that we all have the same moral mind—that everyone’s moral judgments stem from feeling threatened or vulnerable to harm, and provides a captivating new explanation for our moral outrage, and unpacks how to best bridge divides. If you want to understand the morals of the “other side,” ask yourself a simple question—what harms do they see?
-
-
Great book. Horrible narrator.
- By Sara Stall-Ryan on 02-22-25
By: Kurt Gray
-
At Last She Said It
- Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, and Everything in Between
- By: Susan Hinckley, Cynthia Winward
- Narrated by: Susan Hinckley, Cynthia Winward
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Women of faith, discussing complicated things.” That’s how authors Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward describe At Last She Said It, and they don’t expect the knots to untangle themselves. Even with two very different personalities and a decade or so between them, as their friendship developed they kept stumbling onto what felt like an uncanny amount of common ground in their church experiences. Often their conversations ended with, “Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Someone should do a podcast!” So they did.
-
-
At last, we're not alone
- By Rick's rose on 06-07-25
By: Susan Hinckley, and others
-
The Jane Austen Society
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Jenner
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now, it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people - a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others - could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen.
-
-
Why so much bad language? Ruined a good book
- By Anonymous User on 08-12-20
By: Natalie Jenner
-
We Will Be Jaguars
- A Memoir of My People
- By: Mitch Anderson, Nemonte Nenquimo
- Narrated by: Christine Ann-Roche
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo had a singular upbringing. She was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. She played barefoot in the forest until she was a teenager and left to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. But after Nemonte’s ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture, she listened. Nemonte returned to the forest and traditional ways of life and became one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism.
-
-
A story that needed telling
- By just asking for some common sense on 01-17-25
By: Mitch Anderson, and others
-
Woodworking
- By: Emily St. James
- Narrated by: L. Morgan Lee, Saoirse Ní Shúilleabháin, Emily St. James
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.
-
-
Hiss
- By Kindle Customer on 04-06-25
By: Emily St. James
-
Go as a River
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Read
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known.
-
-
Great character development
- By ALB on 11-22-23
By: Shelley Read
Critic reviews
“With shimmering research, an observant eye, and a bright moral compass, Sharon McMahon leads us through the thickets of the past until we can see where we came from and where we are going.”―David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon
“Sharon McMahon is a national treasure and a one-woman cavalry for truth, saving our republic one loving and clear-eyed lesson at a time. She and this book are a gift to our country.”—Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Boys of Riverside
- A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory
- By: Thomas Fuller
- Narrated by: Thomas Fuller
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one.
-
-
Feel Good Story
- By Yasmine on 09-03-24
By: Thomas Fuller
-
Underestimated
- The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway
- By: Mary Marantz, Sharon McMahon - foreword
- Narrated by: Mary Marantz
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Because so often when faced with the choice between creating nothing and creating failure, we choose nothing. Another year goes by. The clock goes on ticking. And the world is worse for our absence. It's time to move from stuck to start. This book does the heavy lifting to dismantle all the lies fear uses, move you out of an endless spiral of your own excuses (not to mention other people's opinions), and bring you right up to a threshold of no return—this place where we become people who feel the fear and move forward anyway.
-
-
Very Encouraging
- By E. Ruddell on 05-09-25
By: Mary Marantz, and others
-
How to Human
- Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us
- By: Carlos Whittaker, Sharon McMahon - foreword
- Narrated by: Carlos Whittaker, Sharon McMahon
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These are crazy times, people. We are more agitated than ever. We’re fighting. Wrestling with big issues. Less connected than ever to one another and to God. It’s a perfect storm: debilitating anxiety, crashing relationships, and forgetting what it feels like to, well, be human. In How to Human, author, speaker, and social-media personality Carlos Whittaker offers a fresh vision for becoming the best versions of ourselves. We can refuse to let disagreements define us. We can say no to becoming upset, rage-filled humans and say yes to fuller, happier lives.
-
-
Positive and Uplifting Message
- By JRindal on 05-18-25
By: Carlos Whittaker, and others
-
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
- Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether he’s reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone- tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling stories that explore the nature of obsession and that piece together true and unforgettable mysteries.
-
-
One good story, but mostly ho hum.....
- By William on 04-19-10
By: David Grann
-
Phosphorescence
- A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark
- By: Julia Baird
- Narrated by: Julia Baird
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After surviving a difficult heartbreak and battle with cancer, acclaimed author and columnist Julia Baird began thinking deeply about how we, as people, persevere through the most challenging circumstances. She started to wonder, when we are overwhelmed by illness, loss or pain, or a tragedy outside our control: How can we keep putting one foot in front of the other? Baird went in search of the magic that fuels the light within - our own phosphorescence.
-
-
Not what I was expecting
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-21
By: Julia Baird
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
The Boys of Riverside
- A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory
- By: Thomas Fuller
- Narrated by: Thomas Fuller
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one.
-
-
Feel Good Story
- By Yasmine on 09-03-24
By: Thomas Fuller
-
Underestimated
- The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway
- By: Mary Marantz, Sharon McMahon - foreword
- Narrated by: Mary Marantz
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Because so often when faced with the choice between creating nothing and creating failure, we choose nothing. Another year goes by. The clock goes on ticking. And the world is worse for our absence. It's time to move from stuck to start. This book does the heavy lifting to dismantle all the lies fear uses, move you out of an endless spiral of your own excuses (not to mention other people's opinions), and bring you right up to a threshold of no return—this place where we become people who feel the fear and move forward anyway.
-
-
Very Encouraging
- By E. Ruddell on 05-09-25
By: Mary Marantz, and others
-
How to Human
- Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us
- By: Carlos Whittaker, Sharon McMahon - foreword
- Narrated by: Carlos Whittaker, Sharon McMahon
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These are crazy times, people. We are more agitated than ever. We’re fighting. Wrestling with big issues. Less connected than ever to one another and to God. It’s a perfect storm: debilitating anxiety, crashing relationships, and forgetting what it feels like to, well, be human. In How to Human, author, speaker, and social-media personality Carlos Whittaker offers a fresh vision for becoming the best versions of ourselves. We can refuse to let disagreements define us. We can say no to becoming upset, rage-filled humans and say yes to fuller, happier lives.
-
-
Positive and Uplifting Message
- By JRindal on 05-18-25
By: Carlos Whittaker, and others
-
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
- Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether he’s reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone- tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling stories that explore the nature of obsession and that piece together true and unforgettable mysteries.
-
-
One good story, but mostly ho hum.....
- By William on 04-19-10
By: David Grann
-
Phosphorescence
- A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark
- By: Julia Baird
- Narrated by: Julia Baird
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After surviving a difficult heartbreak and battle with cancer, acclaimed author and columnist Julia Baird began thinking deeply about how we, as people, persevere through the most challenging circumstances. She started to wonder, when we are overwhelmed by illness, loss or pain, or a tragedy outside our control: How can we keep putting one foot in front of the other? Baird went in search of the magic that fuels the light within - our own phosphorescence.
-
-
Not what I was expecting
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-21
By: Julia Baird
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
When the World Tips Over
- By: Jandy Nelson
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Alex McKenna, Briggon Snow, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head. Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces.
-
-
Just a great book!!
- By denise chaney on 11-12-24
By: Jandy Nelson
-
The Demon of Unrest
- A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Will Patton, Erik Larson
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
-
-
Vividly Told History of the Start of the Civil War
- By WLC on 05-01-24
By: Erik Larson
-
On Tyranny
- Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
-
-
History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
- By Darwin8u on 11-19-18
By: Timothy Snyder
-
Challenger
- A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
- By: Adam Higginbotham
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research—a riveting history that flows like a thriller.
-
-
Best book about Challenger so far
- By Bruce Baumbush on 06-05-24
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
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 Black Angels
- The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Maria Smilios
- Narrated by: Gina Daniels
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility, dubbed “the pest house” where “no one left alive.”
-
-
Tons of amazing medical American/black history that easily reads like your favorite novel.
- By Infowiz on 01-31-24
By: Maria Smilios
-
James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers/listeners of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
-
-
Can we ever be free
- By J. Stirling on 04-04-24
By: Percival Everett
-
Our Time Is Now
- Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America
- By: Stacey Abrams
- Narrated by: Stacey Abrams
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celebrated national leader and best-selling author Stacey Abrams offers a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country. A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack.
-
-
Relevant civil inspirations fr. leg. knowhow
- By Lynne B. on 06-19-20
By: Stacey Abrams
-
The Conspiracy to End America
- Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.
-
-
Required Reading
- By Arturo Zendejas on 10-27-23
By: Stuart Stevens
-
Be Ready When the Luck Happens
- A Memoir
- By: Ina Garten
- Narrated by: Ina Garten
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with those hungry for a seat at her table. Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail.
-
-
I love that Ina narrated it.
- By Tricia on 10-06-24
By: Ina Garten
-
Believe
- The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts
- By: Jeremy Egner
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The definitive book on the TV show Ted Lasso, written by New York Times journalist and editor Jeremy Egner, celebrating the show’s improbable rise and cultural impact while never losing sight of the heart, friendship, and passion that have made it an enduring favorite for the ages.
-
-
Repetitive
- By Amazon Customer on 01-10-25
By: Jeremy Egner
I was so eager to listen to this book. And the stories are worth hearing. But as the author and narrator of this Audible, I struggled to listen. She tries to make an impact with her voice and it was ultimately too distracting for me to continue. This is not a criticism of her work as her book is thoroughly researched and put together in a way the reader or listener can follow along. This is a critique of the way it was read which (for me) had me turning the Audible off. I look forward to reading the physical book.
Conflicted
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good stories, but hard to follow
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Masterpiece
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Absolutely Beautiful!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Informative, Moving and Riveting
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the book we all need, written by the only person who could have given it to us. Sharon McMahon is a national treasure and should be protected at all costs. She has single-handedly taken me from feeling shame over America and our current political landscape, to instead feeling an overwhelming sense of pride in my country and her people.
As she says, “And it is us, the small and the mighty, who make America great. Not again, but always.”
A National Treasure
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Courage and compassion of the 12 people.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book doesn't just teach us history in an engaging way. The book is a call to action. "America at her best is just. She is peaceful. She is good. And she she is free. And it is us [yes, I know, Mrs Hawkes, my 8th grade grammar teacher... it probably should say 'it is we'], the small and the mighty, who make America great." "None of us can do it all. But all of us can do something. And it might as well be the next needed thing." "The character you've been cultivating will be called upon, and when that moment comes, whenever it is, I hope you'll rise to it." "Hope is a choice that we make each morning, and we do not have the luxury of hopelessness if we want to see progress."
Sharon narrates the audiobook and it sounds like she is just talking to you and telling you a story on IG or her podcast ("Here's Where It Gets Interesting"). I have to look at the print version to see if she is inserting into the audio version some of the funny things that she says. Also, there are plenty of inside jokes for long-time governerds (the "ho" is silent, for example.).
I am planning to read it again.
A call to action and a call to hope
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Remember that your little part matters
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wonderful!!!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.