Double Life: A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 13 mins)
• By Hanne Blank
• Narrated By Fran Tunno

It's surprising that the term "heterosexuality" is less than 150 years old and that heterosexuality's history has never before been written, given how obsessed we are with it. In Straight, independent scholar Hanne Blank delves deep into the contemporary psyche as well as the historical record to chronicle the realm of heterosexual relations - a subject that is anything but straight and narrow.

Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 9 mins)
• By William J. Mann
• Narrated By Bo Foxworth

In 1930, William Haines was Hollywood's #1 box-office draw - a talented, handsome, and wisecracking romantic lead. Off screen, however, protected by a careful collaboration between studio and press, he was openly gay with reporters and studio chiefs alike. Here is Haines's virtually unknown story - rich with detail, revelations, and scandal - about silent movies and talkies; his lover Jimmie Shields, and their fifty-year relationship.

When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Cleve Jones
• Narrated By Cleve Jones
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From longtime activist Cleve Jones, here is a sweeping, beautifully written memoir about a full and remarkable American life. Jones brings to life the magnetic spell cast by 1970s San Francisco, the drama and heartbreak of the AIDS crisis and the vibrant generation of gay men lost to it, and his activist work on labor, immigration, and gay rights, which continues today.

Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Tracy Borman
• Narrated By Julian Elfer
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Thomas Cromwell has long been reviled as a Machiavellian schemer who stopped at nothing in his quest for power. As Henry VIII's right-hand man, Cromwell was the architect of the English Reformation, secured Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and plotted the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and upon his arrest, was accused of trying to usurp the King himself. But here Tracy Borman reveals a different side of one of the most notorious figures in history.

The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 24 mins)
• By Anthony Pagden
• Narrated By Robert Blumenfeld
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One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.

Lincoln

• UNABRIDGED (30 hrs and 27 mins)
• By David Herbert Donald
• Narrated By Dick Estell
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In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

A Day's Read

• ORIGINAL (18 hrs and 24 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Arnold Weinstein, Professor Emily Allen, Professor Grant L. Voth

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.

Miss D and Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Kathryn Sermak, Danelle Morton - featuring
• Narrated By Kathryn Sermak
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Miss D and Me is a story of two powerful women, one at the end of her life and the other at the beginning. As Bette Davis aged, she was looking for an assistant, but she found something more than that in Kathryn: a loyal and loving buddy, a co-conspirator in her jokes and schemes, and a competent assistant whom she trained never to miss a detail.

The Foundations of Western Civilization

• ORIGINAL (24 hrs and 54 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Thomas F. X. Noble

What is Western Civilization? According to Professor Noble, it is "much more than human and political geography," encompassing myriad forms of political and institutional structures - from monarchies to participatory republics - and its own traditions of political discourse. It involves choices about who gets to participate in any given society and the ways in which societies have resolved the tension between individual self-interest and the common good.

Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 5 mins)
• By Rodger Streitmatter
• Narrated By Christopher Hurt
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For more than a century before gay marriage became a hot-button political issue, same-sex unions flourished in America. Pairs of men and pairs of women joined together in committed unions, standing by each other "for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health" for periods of 30 or 40 - sometimes as many as 50 - years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife. In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn’t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture.

Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 20 mins)
• By Shaun Considine
• Narrated By January LaVoy
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This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.

Openly Straight

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 1 min)
• By Bill Konigsberg
• Narrated By Pete Cross
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Rafe is a normal teenager from Colorado. He's been out since 8th grade, accepted by his peers & championed by his progressive parents. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to be a regular guy. To have his sexuality be a part of who he is, but not the headline, every single time. So when Rafe transfers to an all-boys' boarding school in New England, he decides to keep his sexuality a secret - not so much going back in the closet as starting over with a clean slate.

Born on the Fourth of July

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 32 mins)
• By Ron Kovic
• Narrated By Holter Graham, Bruce Springsteen - introduction
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This New York Times best seller (more than one million copies sold) details the author's life story (portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oliver Stone film version) - from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.

Christopher and His Kind

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Christopher Isherwood
• Narrated By James Clamp

Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable 10 years in the writer's life, from 1929, when Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America. When the book was published in 1976, readers were deeply impressed by the courageous candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, Heinz, from the Nazis.

Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five Star Beverly Hills Server

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 1 min)
• By Paul Hartford
• Narrated By James Patrick Cronin
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Waiter to the Rich and Shameless is not just a peek into the secretive inner workings of a legendary five-star restaurant; it is not just a celebrity tell-all or a scathing corporate analysis. It is a top-tier waiter's personal coming-of-age story, an intimate look into the complicated challenges of serving in the country's most elite, Hollywood-centric dining room while fighting to maintain a sense of self and purpose.

Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 34 mins)
• By Kevin Cook
• Narrated By Stephen Hoye
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On the 50th anniversary of her murder, Kevin Cook presents the real Kitty Genovese. She was a vibrant young woman - unbeknownst to most, a lesbian - a bartender working (and dancing) her way through the colorful, fast-changing New York of the ’60s, a cultural kaleidoscope marred by the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, and race riots. Downtown, Greenwich Village teemed with beatniks, folkies, and so-called misfits like Kitty and her lover. Kitty Genovese evokes the Village’s gay and lesbian underground with deep feeling and colorful detail.

The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Staceyann Chin
• Narrated By Staceyann Chin
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Stacyann Chin has appeared on television and radio, including The Oprah Winfrey Show , CNN, and PBS, discussing issues of race and sexuality. But it is her extraordinary voice that launched her career as a performer, poet, and activist. Here, she shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir.

No one knew Staceyann's mother was pregnant until a dangerously small baby was born on the floor of her grandmother's house in Jamaica, on Christmas Day.

The Doors of Perception

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 17 mins)
• By Aldous Huxley
• Narrated By Rudolph Schirmer

The critically acclaimed novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley, describes his personal experimentation with the drug mescaline and explores the nature of visionary experience. The title of this classic comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 43 mins)
• By André Aciman
• Narrated By Armie Hammer
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Call Me by Your Name first swept across the world in 2007. It is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. During the restless summer weeks, unrelenting but buried currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them and verge toward the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Leslie Bennetts
• Narrated By Erin Bennett
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition, and her massive insecurities.

The Economics of Inequality

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 41 mins)
• By Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
• Narrated By L. J. Ganser

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 6 mins)
• By Jane Ward
• Narrated By Dara Rosenberg
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Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: There's fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men.

Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 12 mins)
• By Lesley Blume
• Narrated By Jonathan Davis
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In the summer of 1925, Ernest Hemingway and a clique of raucous companions traveled to Pamplona, Spain, for the town's infamous running of the bulls. Then, over the next six weeks, he channeled that trip's maelstrom of drunken brawls, sexual rivalry, midnight betrayals, and midday hangovers into his groundbreaking novel The Sun Also Rises. This revolutionary work redefined modern literature as much as it did his peers, who would forever after be called the Lost Generation.

I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 24 mins)
• By Robert Wagner
• Narrated By Robert Wagner
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In a career that has spanned more than 60 years, Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and more.