Classic Audiobook Collection

Civilization and Climate by Ellsworth Huntington audiobook. Genre: history In Civilization and Climate, geographer and early climate thinker Ellsworth Huntington asks a bold question: how much of human history can be understood through the rhythms of weather, seasons, and long-term climatic change? Moving across regions and centuries, Huntington traces how temperature, rainfall, and variability may shape agriculture, health, migration, labor, and the rise and decline of societies. He connects everyday human energy and productivity to broader patterns of settlement and economics, arguing that climate is not just background scenery but an active force that can amplify opportunity or intensify hardship. Along the way, he draws on travel observations, historical records, and the scientific ideas available in his era to build a sweeping interpretation of civilization as a living system responding to environmental pressures. The book blends big-picture historical storytelling with an investigator's desire to measure, compare, and explain, inviting listeners to weigh evidence, question assumptions, and consider how climate influences culture and power. Even when you disagree, Huntington's provocative framework makes the past feel newly dynamic and raises unsettling questions about resilience and vulnerability in any age. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (01:04:31) Chapter 02 (01:55:56) Chapter 03 (02:38:39) Chapter 04 (03:40:24) Chapter 05 (04:25:53) Chapter 06 (04:58:41) Chapter 07 (05:37:51) Chapter 08 (06:12:38) Chapter 09 (06:57:31) Chapter 10 (07:38:28) Chapter 11 (08:30:15) Chapter 12 (08:58:19) Chapter 13 (09:42:52) Chapter 14 (10:24:24) Chapter 15 (10:45:09) Chapter 16 (11:22:43) Chapter 17 (12:05:44) Chapter 18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Campaigns of Curiosity - Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in London by Elizabeth L. Banks audiobook. Genre: biography In Campaigns of Curiosity, American journalist Elizabeth L. Banks arrives in London in the 1890s with ambition, nerve, and little patience for the rules of a rigid class system. Determined to break into British journalism, she turns herself into the story, adopting disguises and taking on a string of roles that place her on both sides of Victorian society. One assignment drops her into the exhausting routines and tight quarters of domestic service; another pushes her into the precarious hustle of street work; still others test what it takes to survive on low wages where respectability is a luxury. Then Banks flips the experiment, presenting herself as a wealthy American and probing how easily money, titles, and connections can purchase entry into polite circles. With sharp observation, humor, and a reporter's instinct for telling detail, she exposes the hidden labor that keeps London running while challenging assumptions about women, work, and social rank. Part personal chronicle and part investigative experiment, this pioneering account captures the daring spirit of early undercover journalism and the questions it raised about empathy, power, and who gets believed. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:15:04) Chapter 01 (00:29:42) Chapter 02 (00:52:35) Chapter 03 (01:11:24) Chapter 04 (01:33:15) Chapter 05 (01:57:52) Chapter 06 (02:20:53) Chapter 07 (02:42:33) Chapter 08 (03:04:16) Chapter 09 (03:13:55) Chapter 10 (03:23:20) Chapter 11 (03:32:16) Chapter 12 (03:38:16) Chapter 13 (04:02:57) Chapter 14 (04:19:24) Chapter 15 (04:41:24) Chapter 16 (05:03:38) Chapter 17 (05:20:51) Chapter 18 (05:38:49) Chapter 19 (05:57:55) Chapter 20 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Weather Influences by Edwin Grant Dexter audiobook. Genre: science First published in the early 1900s, Edwin Grant Dexter's Weather Influences sets out to test a question most people think they already understand: how much do day-to-day meteorological conditions shape what we feel and what we do? Dexter begins by surveying the rich tradition of weather lore - proverbs, folk beliefs, and literary portraits of 'skyey influences' - then pivots to a rigorously empirical challenge. Using meteorological records for temperature, humidity, wind, barometric pressure, and seasonal changes, he compares shifts in the atmosphere to real-world human outcomes drawn from schools, courts, police records, financial activity, and public health statistics. Chapter by chapter, Dexter follows weather's possible fingerprints across attention and classroom behavior, crime, mental illness, suicide, drunkenness, and other social indicators, always wrestling with a central problem: how to separate coincidence and cultural storytelling from patterns that can be measured. Written in a clear, methodical style, Weather Influences offers an early model of data-driven behavioral science, inviting listeners to question their assumptions, examine evidence, and consider how subtle environmental forces might nudge individuals and societies alike. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:38:59) Chapter 01 (00:52:19) Chapter 02 (01:15:48) Chapter 03 (01:34:17) Chapter 04 (02:01:15) Chapter 05 (02:35:47) Chapter 06 (03:01:18) Chapter 07 (03:37:38) Chapter 08 (04:18:35) Chapter 09 (04:54:33) Chapter 10 (05:10:12) Chapter 11 (05:40:48) Chapter 12 (06:10:14) Chapter 13 (06:28:27) Chapter 14 (06:49:37) Chapter 15 (07:20:50) Chapter 16 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas audiobook. Genre: history Highways and Byways in Sussex is E. V. Lucas's warm, observant journey through an English county of chalk downs, market towns, seaside resorts, and quiet lanes where history seems to press close to the present. Framed as a wanderer's progress shaped largely by railway lines, Lucas enters Sussex in the west at Midhurst and zig-zags eastward through places such as Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton, Lewes, Eastbourne, Hastings, and Rye, pausing wherever a church tower, castle wall, inn sign, or stretch of heath sparks a story. This is not a strict guidebook of timetables and practicalities, but a literary bouquet: a blend of local legend and literary echoes, architecture and antiquities, countryside character and coastal bustle, and the small, telling details of everyday life. Along the way Lucas introduces the reader to Sussex's shifting landscapes and long memory, from Roman roads and medieval strongholds to village customs and the natural life of fields and forests. Frederick L. Griggs's illustrations, paired with the book's roaming curiosity, make the county feel both intimate and freshly discovered. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:20:47) Chapter 02 (00:48:52) Chapter 03 (00:59:27) Chapter 04 (01:18:21) Chapter 05 (01:46:19) Chapter 06 (02:16:41) Chapter 07 (02:28:50) Chapter 08 (02:48:18) Chapter 09 (03:01:14) Chapter 10 (03:24:37) Chapter 11 (03:34:26) Chapter 12 (03:55:10) Chapter 13 (04:10:19) Chapter 14 (04:21:18) Chapter 15 (04:37:50) Chapter 16 (05:03:02) Chapter 17 (05:41:23) Chapter 18 (05:55:43) Chapter 19 (06:07:58) Chapter 20 (06:35:50) Chapter 21 (06:41:10) Chapter 22 (06:59:18) Chapter 23 (07:09:31) Chapter 24 (07:18:14) Chapter 25 (07:30:42) Chapter 26 (07:59:26) Chapter 27 (08:12:37) Chapter 28 (08:31:14) Chapter 29 (08:45:05) Chapter 30 (09:06:27) Chapter 31 (09:21:50) Chapter 32 (09:34:17) Chapter 33 (09:58:26) Chapter 34 (10:17:02) Chapter 35 (10:37:13) Chapter 36 (10:53:09) Chapter 37 (11:10:07) Chapter 38 (11:42:18) Chapter 39 (12:12:46) Chapter 40 (12:41:59) Chapter 41 (13:09:47) Chapter 42 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salome and the Head by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: thriller Edmund Templar, a young Englishman on the verge of shipping out to the South African War, takes refuge with relatives and wanders the New Forest to steady his nerves. There, in a sunlit clearing, he witnesses an unforgettable scene: a wild, spellbinding girl dancing as a crippled boy plays a penny whistle, the two of them seeming to belong to some older, stranger story than his own. Years later, returned to civilian life and still haunted by that encounter, Edmund sets out to find them again - and is drawn into the limelight world of London performance, where beauty is a commodity, reputations are manufactured, and desire can be engineered as expertly as any stage effect. As the dancer is remade into a modern Salome for a hungry audience, Edmund begins to sense that the drama is not confined to the theatre. A secret refuge, a web of dependence, and hints of coercion and unnatural influence tighten around the principals, until the line between a prop and a reality becomes dangerously uncertain. Darkly romantic and sharply aware of the traps laid for women, Nesbit builds a macabre melodrama of obsession, artifice, and the price of being watched. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:24:24) Chapter 02 (00:47:27) Chapter 03 (01:10:25) Chapter 04 (01:27:10) Chapter 05 (01:54:00) Chapter 06 (02:18:50) Chapter 07 (02:41:21) Chapter 08 (03:06:04) Chapter 09 (03:37:05) Chapter 10 (03:56:59) Chapter 11 (04:25:20) Chapter 12 (04:57:07) Chapter 13 (05:24:32) Chapter 14 (05:42:30) Chapter 15 (06:05:39) Chapter 16 (06:41:19) Chapter 17 (07:05:51) Chapter 18 (07:29:50) Chapter 19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices