World

The Children of Henry VIII

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Alison Weir
• Narrated By Simon Prebble

New York Times best-selling author Alison Weir is one of the most popular chroniclers of British and European royal history. In this fascinating book she sheds light on the scheming, backstabbing and brutality that plagued England after Henry VIII's death. Filled with remarkable and sometimes shocking details, The Children of Henry VIII is an arresting narrative that brings the past to life and infuses it with all the flair of a riveting novel.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

• UNABRIDGED (19 hrs and 1 min)
• By Bill Bryson
• Narrated By William Roberts

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

A History of the World

• UNABRIDGED (26 hrs and 34 mins)
• By Andrew Marr
• Narrated By Andrew Marr, David Timson

From the earliest civilizations to the 21st century: a global journey through human history, published alongside a landmark BBC One television series. Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean.

The Storm of War

• UNABRIDGED (28 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Andrew Roberts
• Narrated By Christian Rodska

One of the best selling History titles of 2009. Examining the Second World War on every front, Andrew Roberts asks whether, with a different decision-making process and a different strategy, Hitler's Axis might even have won. Were those German generals who blamed everything on Hitler after the war correct, or were they merely scapegoating their former Führer once he was safely beyond defending himself?

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Ishmael Beah

This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than 50 violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now 26 years old, tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of 12, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence.

The Modern Scholar: Mathematics Is Power

• ORIGINAL (4 hrs and 59 mins)
• By Professor William Bloch
• Narrated By Professor William Bloch

William Goldbloom Bloch is a respected professor of mathematics at Wheaton College. This intriguing lecture series, Mathematics Is Power, delves into both the history of mathematics and its impact on people's everyday lives from a non-mathematician's perspective. Bloch first examines the history of mathematics and age-old questions pertaining to logic, truth, and paradoxes. Moving on to a discussion of how mathematics impacts the modern world, Bloch also explores abstract permutations such as game theory, cryptography, and voting theory.

The Mark of a Giant: 7 People Who Changed the World

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 58 mins)
• By Ted Stewart, Chris Stewart
• Narrated By Art Allen

Throughout the course of history, civilization has been blessed by strong-minded men and women who have impacted our world in extraordinary ways. Their imprint upon humanity is beyond dispute. And many would contend that they were no less than the result of Divine Providence - a gift of God to the human race. The Mark of a Giant examines the lives and contributions of seven men and women who changed the world: Abraham of Ur, Pericles, the Apostle Paul, Sir Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa.

The Miss Stone Affair: America's First Modern Hostage Crisis

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Teresa Carpenter
• Narrated By Eliza Foss

On September 3, 1901, a Protestant missionary named Ellen Stone set out on horseback across the mountainous hinterlands of Balkan Macedonia and was ambushed by a band of armed revolutionaries. In The Miss Stone Affair, Teresa Carpenter re-creates an event that captured the attention of the world and posed a dilemma for incoming president Theodore Roosevelt. Should he send in the Navy or not? And, if so, send it where? Drawing upon a wealth of contemporary correspondence and documents, Carpenter constructs a narrative that is suspenseful, harrowing, and at times even comical. It is a story for our time.