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Free Download The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0BVRZLG2J | 2023 | 11 hours and 8 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 321 MB
Author: Sarah Ogilvie
Narrator: Sarah Ogilvie, Joan Walker
A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others. Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time. The Dictionary People is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.

Free Download The Darcy Myth: Jane Austen, Literary Heartthrobs, and the Monsters They Taught Us to Love (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CCSVQ1V8 | 2023 | 6 hours and 15 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 354 MB
Author: Rachel Feder
Narrator: Deanna Anthony
What if we’ve been reading Jane Austen and romantic classics all wrong? A funny, brainy, eye-opening take on how our contemporary love stories are actually pretty terrifying. Covering cultural touchstones ranging from Twilight to Taylor Swift and from Lord Byron to The Bachelor, The Darcy Myth is a book for anyone who loves thinking deeply about literature and culture-whether they love Jane Austen or not. You already know Mr. Darcy-at least you think you do! The brooding, rude, standoffish romantic hero of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy initially insults and ignores the witty heroine but eventually succumbs to her charms. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers Description and one that has profoundly influenced our cultural ideas about courtship. But what if this classic isn’t just a grand romance but a horror novel about how scary love and marriage can be for women? In The Darcy Myth, literature scholar Rachel Feder unpacks Austen’s Gothic influences and how they have led us to a romantic ideal that is halfway to being a monster story. Why is our culture so obsessed with cruel, indifferent romantic heroes, and sometimes heroines? How much of that is Darcy’s fault? And, now that we know, what do we do about it?

Free Download The Darcy Myth: Jane Austen, Literary Heartthrobs, and the Monsters They Taught Us to Love (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CCSVQ1V8 | 2023 | 6 hours and 15 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 354 MB
Author: Rachel Feder
Narrator: Deanna Anthony
What if we’ve been reading Jane Austen and romantic classics all wrong? A funny, brainy, eye-opening take on how our contemporary love stories are actually pretty terrifying. Covering cultural touchstones ranging from Twilight to Taylor Swift and from Lord Byron to The Bachelor, The Darcy Myth is a book for anyone who loves thinking deeply about literature and culture-whether they love Jane Austen or not. You already know Mr. Darcy-at least you think you do! The brooding, rude, standoffish romantic hero of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy initially insults and ignores the witty heroine but eventually succumbs to her charms. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers Description and one that has profoundly influenced our cultural ideas about courtship. But what if this classic isn’t just a grand romance but a horror novel about how scary love and marriage can be for women? In The Darcy Myth, literature scholar Rachel Feder unpacks Austen’s Gothic influences and how they have led us to a romantic ideal that is halfway to being a monster story. Why is our culture so obsessed with cruel, indifferent romantic heroes, and sometimes heroines? How much of that is Darcy’s fault? And, now that we know, what do we do about it?

Free Download The Culture of Knighthood in Medieval Romance (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CP9TVRYL | 2023 | 2 hours and 19 minutes | M4B@256 kbps | 256 MB
Author: Larissa (Kat) Tracy, The Great Courses
Narrator: Larissa Tracy
See the word knight and you’ll likely think of gallant men facing off on the field of battle, or rescuing fair maidens from danger, or jousting at tournaments. Since the early 19th century, poets, authors, painters, and playwrights have cultivated such images of medieval knighthood-images that continue to capture our imagination to this day. But just how true to medieval history are these images? What do they tell us about how life was lived in the Middle Ages? What does our obsession with them tell us about who we are today?

Free Download The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0BVNYHT9S | 2023 | 9 hours and 26 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 274 MB
Author: Rebecca Clarren
Narrator: Rebecca Clarren
An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors’ land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government. Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major Description points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story. What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United States government.

Free Download The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest Common Food-Featuring More Than 100 Historical Recipes (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0BXZ4FHX7 | 2023 | 5 hours and 8 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 286 MB
Author: Mark Kurlansky
Narrator: Mark Kurlansky
From the New York Times-bestselling author, a delectable look at the cultural, historical, and gastronomical layers of one of the world’s most beloved culinary staples-featuring recipes from around the world. As Julia Child once said, "It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions." Historically, she’s been right-and not just in the kitchen. Flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews, and sauces, but for medicines, metaphors, and folklore. Now they’re Kurlansky’s most flavorful infatuation yet as he sets out to explore how and why the crop reigns from Italy to India and everywhere in between.

Free Download The Convoy: HG-76: Taking the Fight to Hitler’s U-boats (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0C5F351MG | 2023 | 10 hours and 16 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 559 MB
Author: Angus Konstam
Narrator: Philip Pope
The Convoy represents a fresh approach to the story of the Battle of the Atlantic. It is also the first to deal with the more spectacular story of HG-76, a major turning point in the naval war. HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941 and was specially targeted by the Germans. A wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed too in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it had even sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine. Despite this the convoy fought its way through. Improved radar and sonar gave the convoy’s escorts a slight edge over their opponents, while the escort group was led by Commander Walker, an anti-submarine expert who had developed new, aggressive U-boat hunting tactics.

Free Download The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0C7HJT247 | 2023 | 5 hours and 53 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 329 MB
Author: Stuart Stevens
Narrator: Jeff Bottoms
A former chief Republican strategist and bestselling author offers an ominous warning that the G.O.P. is dragging our country towards autocracy, and if we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election. Today’s Republican party is not a "normal" political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.

Free Download The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CCF71G84 | 2023 | 7 hours and 47 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 223 MB
Author: Margaret Renkl
Narrator: Margaret Renkl
From New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Margaret Renkl comes a "howling love letter to the world" (Ann Patchett): a luminous book tracing the passing of seasons, personal and natural. In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a devotional of sorts: fifty-two essays that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons-from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year-what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of the natural world: "Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will always find a reason to love the world."

Free Download The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B096G91TTJ | 2023 | 10 hours and 27 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 304 MB
Author: Simon Singh
Narrator: Patty Nieman
Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logistical breakthrough that made internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy. Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that email you just sent really is.