And after hearing the St. Helena portions of the podcast this week, I was motivated to check out Assasination on St. Helenaby the late Ben Wieder.

Once I have read it and some other Napolean research, perhaps a thread discussion regarding the Emperor later this spring.

I been listening to many books with text to speech on my kindle.

I just finished Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland.

After a bit of adjustment the electronic voice is easy to acclimate to and I got caught up in the story.

How good is text to speech? Is it clear? How fast is it? Can you speed it up if you want?

How good depends on taste I guess. Most words are accurately pronounced and once i got use to the electronic voice I don't miss professional narration because so many books are now available to interact with TTS on Amazon.

The voice quality is like Siri on an iphone.

I can read for while like normal with the Kindle. Pop the kindle in an vest pocket to walk the dog, click on TTS, return home feed the dog still listening to TTS. Read like normal before I go to sleep, turn of the light and set the sleep timer on the kindle to listen some more with TTS. Get up the next day an listen to the book on my commute to work, and read like a traditional book at lunch and so on. Try to do that with a regular book.

This works well with history because a good history book usually tells a story in a narrative form, perfect for TTS on the kindle. I have an Ipad but it only can read one page at a time so the kindle is the clear leader in this area.

This may not work well for a poker book for example, but for history, I love it.

Yes you can speed the reading up. How much depends on the model of the kindle you get.

One warning I have a 1st, 2nd generation and Fire Kindle. The Fire does not have text to speech as it is really an android notebook computer.

I love the Fire but I use my other Kindles for TTS.

Finally getting to Dan Carlin... I'm a bit bummed I can only get the 10 most recent episodes on iTunes though...

He took the old episodes off and is selling them as a subscription. They are all very good. I don't know what he is charging but they are definably worth a few bucks.

Oh man... Dan is miles away the best podcaster in terms of history. Iv'e seldom seen someone make history so damn fun. It's worth buying all his stuff - it is THAT good.

The series on the Eastern front of WWII is incredible.

Any suggestions for podcasts focused on religious history?

The In Our Time Archives have about 30-40 episodes on religion, you can subscribe to it as a separate podcast

As previously posted, In our time Archives: Religion is probably best. Ancient Religions of the Mediterranean is pretty solid as well, although it is christian centric so far(he's entering roman religion right now). China History podcast has done a good job as well, in particular with Taoism.

I find that Islam is the weakest - except for the shia/sunni split, i have yet to find much on it.

For Christianity only, look at the various religious schools on ItunesU. One that was interesting is ''intro to the new testament'' by Yale - it is extremely neutral(unlike 99% of religious history found on Itunes at least, which are done by various christian schools).

Adaptation, if you have time, would you mind just doing a total list of podcasts you've listened to. I (and some of my students) have enjoyed many of your previous recommendations. I've even learned a thing or three!

I will be purchasing a subscription to Dan Carlin as soon as I get home this evening. There are many historians who would do well to take some lecture lessons from him.

I will do a big post on history resources and audio books. Iv'e listened to so much and kept the majority of it, it is quite shocking!

Brad DeLong's lecture series on the Economic History of the U.S. is very good if you want more economic history.

Far and away the best podcast I have listened to. I just started last week and went through the available "Blitz" podcasts and then the "Logical Insanity" episode. Now it is on to Death Throes. I'm glad I jumped in now before they went to archive.

Has anyone given his "Common Sense" podcast a listen? It's more political than history but still entertaining.

Yeah it's pretty decent. It's obviously less well-prepped than Hardcore History, but it's a reasonably good program, and he does go out of his way to try and book some good guests occasionally.

I'm glad I wandered into this forum......the Dan Carlin podcasts are amazing.

Europe from its Origins As good as Dan Carlin or A History of Oil. IMO

I tried to stay to Audio stuff but yes Europe from its origins was very good. It has its dull moment(could use a dan carlin-like narrator), but the analysis of sources and new information brought to the table were quite mind blowing. He attacks many of the ''established'' truths of history. Most importantly, hands down the best take i have seen on general medieval Europe.

Although Europe from its origins is video, one could easily listen to it without actually watching the video.

This is what I'm doing, since I largely listen at the gym or while I'm driving, and neither of those are safe places to be looking at the pretty pictures.

It's definitely a good podcast, though. I've been looking for something on medieval history for a bit, so this will be fun.

Any good recommendations on Revolutionary/Early Republic of the US? I'm kinda on a kick of that on my reading list right now... might have something to do with the Early American History course I'm teaching in 3 weeks...

Oddly enough i found that in ''Short podcast episodes'' no one covers US history correctly. It seems always too short or superficial. For proper US content Itunes U offers much better choice. Still, i find that most ItunesU is always a bit tougher to listen to; afterall, the professor is talking to students in a class, and not for an iPod audience.

Early American History i would say

American Revolution from Yale University by Joanna Freeman : My top choice. Debunks a lot of the myths of american revolution and more importantly the building of the constitution. More of a ''top down history'', which i think is fine. She can be quite funny which is always a plus compared to a lot of the very serious american history audiobooks.

Conceived in Liberty Vol III & IV By Murray Rothbard : Audiobook written from a VERY libertarian and Economic point of view. It is fairly opiniated(don't look for neutrality here), but the economic data is worth it alone. Vol I and II focus more on the colony period, Vol III is road to revolution and Vol IV is the actual revolution. I would say skip the I and II and start with the III.

Colonial and revolutionnary America from Stanford by Jack Revoke : This falls more in what we would call ''social'' or ''class'' history. Although it covers the colonial period extensively(you might want to start in the middle if what you want is revolution and after). A bit too dry for my taste, nonetheless informative. The guy is a HUGE James Madison fan, which is refreshing compared to the usual attention on Washington,Adams and Jefferson.

Yeah I have all those (although I could not get through Rothbard for the life of me)... for some reason, iTunes U doesn't sync to my iPod, but it's lol-old (I bought it with VIP points from PokerStars in like 2005 lol).

Have any of you guys tried The History of England? I like it.

Yeah I loved it. It's amazing with the pictures, but it's also amazing without them. Pretty deep analysis too, not just facts, dates, kings & battles (although I love facts, dates, kings & battles).