These audiobook biographies offer fascinating windows onto aspects of American history—and the country as it is today—by exploring the lives of people who’ve helped to make it.
In We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America (Random House Audio, Feb. 24), authors Norah O’Donnell and Kate Andersen Brower focus on significant but often lesser-known women who influenced American history. As our Earphones Award review explains, “Dozens of overlooked heroines are profiled, such as Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved woman who filed a lawsuit to obtain her freedom, or Emily Warren Roebling, an engineer who saved the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband fell ill.” To these portraits of trailblazers, add O’Donnell’s professional and compelling delivery, honed by her TV journalism experience. Writes our reviewer, “O’Donnell varies her tone to suit the material, reflecting intensity, disbelief, humor, and admiration.” Hearing this audiobook will inspire listeners to learn more about the women she profiles, and Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Random House Audio, 2022) is one example of an excellent follow-up listen. With an energetic, passionate, and powerful narration, Karen Chilton illuminates the life and work of the first Black woman appointed to the federal court.
Howard Bryant writes about two more American originals in Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America (Harper Audio, Jan. 20). Narrator JD Jackson tells the story of these two Black celebrities—Robinson, a baseball legend, and Robeson, a popular football star, actor, and singer—who faced discrimination and racism even as they entertained America. Their fortunes diverged when Robeson advocated for communism, while Robinson made an appearance at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1949. “This insightful work of American history is well researched, well written, and very well told,” writes our reviewer. Pair this audiobook with another biography narrated by Jackson: Jon Meacham’s His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope (Random House Audio, 2020). According to our Earphones Award review, “Jackson voices John Lewis with an authentic and nuanced nod to his rural Alabama roots. He adroitly does the New England intonations of JFK and RFK and the drawls of LBJ and George Wallace. But it is the powerful retelling of John Lewis’ life’s work fighting to bring civil and voting rights to Black Americans that stays with the listener.”
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers, reveals his own story and his deeply held beliefs in his posthumously published writings. Truth and Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope (Bloomsbury, March 3), edited by Michael Ellsberg and Jan R. Thomas, collects Ellsberg’s previously unpublished essays, memoirs, and musings and demonstrates the breadth of his thought and the depth of his intellect. Jason Culp, who has narrated other biographies of American icons, notably Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain (Penguin Audio, 2025) and Stacy Schiff’s The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Hachette Audio, 2022), here performs “thoughtfully, with the right tone and tempo” and, says our review, “captures Ellsberg, the brilliant, larger-than-life anti-war activist.” Lives worth hearing, indeed.
Jennifer Dowell is the audiobooks editor.
