AudioFile’s 2022 Best Biography & History Audiobooks feature insightful perspectives on major historical events and compelling stories of our present, all with outstanding narrations.
AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild
This is undoubtedly one of the year’s best and most important histories, narrated with impressive skill, balance, and restraint by Jonathan Todd Ross. The era of WWI and the 1920s was a time of unchecked racism, union opposition, and patriotic fervor, making this difficult but important listening still relevant today.
REVIEW: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/222484/
FRANKLINLAND by Lloyd Suh
In this fast-paced, comically insightful theatrical dialogue, narrators Gregory Harrison and Larry Powell spar as the brilliant, abrasive, confident Franklin and his not-so-confident illegitimate son, William. A marvelously performed entertaining romp through history.
REVIEW: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/210313/
HIS NAME IS GEORGE FLOYD: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels
Dion Graham narrates with such knowing naturalism and compassion that it will just about break listeners’ hearts. He brings sensitive, bighearted George Floyd’s story to life in this moving audiobook.
REVIEW: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/212697/
THE REVOLUTIONARY: SAMUEL ADAMS by Stacy Schiff
Virtuoso narrator Jason Culp re-creates the world of the American Revolution in this biographical work on an almost-forgotten Founding Father. Culp moves smoothly between the writings of Adams’s fellow revolutionaries and Schiff’s brisk narrative of the tumultuous time.
SUPER-INFINITE: The Transformation of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
Portraying the life of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, narrator Simon Vance is, as always, eloquent, precise, and finely attuned. A fine production of one of the year’s best literary biographies.
REVIEW: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/221366/
YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES: And Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Genevieve West
Robin Miles captures Hurston’s intonations and invigorates her essays with an understanding of the author’s intentions, helping to reveal her meanings and bring Hurston’s world vividly to life.
REVIEW: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/208133/
Audiobook narrators pictured above: Jason Culp, photo by Zachary Smith/BK Headshots and Jonathan Todd Ross photo by Diane Phelan
