In 2024, I listened to thirty-seven audiobooks that covered history, broadly defined. Some of these I had skimmed earlier, but this was my first time reading them straight through. Once again, I am glad to see so many recent university-press titles being released in this format. I am also glad that my friend Gary Bass, who writes very good— but very long—books, has gotten his work released in this format.

Edit, January 9, 2025. I forgot to include Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Harvard University Press, 2009), which I have now added. Also, WGBH’s Big Dig podcast is a fine work of history, which I wish were a full-scale book.

I offer this list to let people know what’s out there on audio, without reviews or recommendations.  I did flag Challenger and Unworthy Republic as two of my favorite reads in 2024.

Publication details come from Google Books. Please let me know if you spot any errors, such as the date of the paperback in place of the original publication date.

For last year’s list, history audiobooks, 2023 edition.

Aldous, Richard. Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Austin, Paula C. Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life. NYU Press, 2019.

Baron, Martin. Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post. Flatiron Books, 2023.

Bass, Gary J. Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia. Pan Macmillan UK, 2024.

———. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (Pulitzer Prize Finalist). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

Bogdanich, Walt, and Michael Forsythe. When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2023.

Bomey, Nathan. Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Message. Random House, 2024.

Doyle, Don H. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. Basic Books, 2014.

Eisenberg, Carolyn Woods. Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Franklin, H. Bruce. The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America. Island Press, 2007.

Fraser, Max. Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class. Princeton University Press, 2023.

Freedman, Samuel G. Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Gienapp, Jonathan. Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique. Yale University Press, 2024.

Gordon-Reed, Annette, and Peter S. Onuf. “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Hager, Thomas. Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia. Abrams, 2021.

Haslam, Jonathan. The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II. Princeton University Press, 2022.

Higginbotham, Adam. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Simon and Schuster, 2024.

Hinton, Elizabeth. America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Liveright Publishing, 2021.

Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. HarperCollins, 2011.

Kennefick, Daniel. No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. Basic Books, 2008.

Lichtenstein, Nelson, and Judith Stein. A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism. Princeton University Press, 2023.

Lochbaum, David, Edwin Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan, and The Union of Concerned Scientists. Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster. New Press, 2015.

Mulvihill, Andy, and Jake Rossen. Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park. Penguin, 2020.

Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Overy, R. J. Why the Allies Won. W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Reynolds, Henry. Why Weren’t We Told?: A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History. Penguin, 2000.

Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Sargent, Daniel J. A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism. Yale University Press, 2019.

Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Smil, Vaclav. Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure. MIT Press, 2024.

Waterhouse, Benjamin C. One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.

Wehrman, Andrew M. The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022.

Young, Neil J. Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. University of Chicago Press, 2024.