12 Free Political Audiobooks from Librivox

By Rob Maguire, April 17, 2007 Comments (0)

In search of literary ear candy classics for your listening pleasure? Look no further than Librivox, the non-profit, volunteer-driven project that aims to make every work of literature available as a free audiobook download. Hold on, scratch that. Every out of copyright work of literature. The problem is that about 70 percent of books are out of print but still in copyright, and corporate copyright holders tend to cling to those rights like drowning rats to inflatable cheese. Not willing to print, yet not willing to share—the publishing industry could learn a lesson or two from preschool children.

Until the day comes that we radically change copyright, Librivox has its hands full with the 20 percent of books that are already in the public domain. Their website currently features over 500 works recorded by volunteer book readers, with new additions uploaded every day. They're always on the lookout for volunteers, so if you love poetry, prose, and the sound of your own voice, you might want to drop them a line.

I recently scoured Librivox for their more political offerings, and I now present to you twelve political picks from their free library of audiobooks:

• On The Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
• God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
• The Autobiography of Mother Jones - Mary Harris Jones
• The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx & Friendrich Engels
• From October to Brest-Litovsk - Leon Trotsky
• The Prince and the Pauper - Mark Twain
• Embankment at Night Before the War: Outcasts - D.H. Lawrence
• Perpetual Peace - Immanuel Kant
• The Art of War - Sun Tzu
• Notes From the Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• On Liberty - John Stuart Mill