What should I listen to during my one hour commute? Any good audiobooks?

I subscribe to Audible. I don't love the DRM, but a lot of the books are great, and not excruciatingly expensive. If you want non-DRM versions, you can buy the CDs, or you may be able to find them at your local library, if you don't want to buy them.

Here are a few of the books I've listened to recently that I've really liked: Economics: "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely: Behavioral economics. Describes a lot of cool, counter-intuitive results about how we make economic decisions. "The Ascent of Money" by Niall Ferguson: A history of the rise of money as a form of exchange, and especially the history of banking and the financial industry.

Story: "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell: Read by the author (who contributes frequently to This American Life) with the help of some celebrity voice talent. Quirky and fascinating popular history surrounding the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. "John Adam" by David McCullough: A really great biography.

The audio version is over 30 hours, so should keep you busy for a while. Fiction: "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke: Fantastic voice talent. A wonderful fantasy novel set in an alternate early 19th century Britain.

Written in the style of a Victorian history/novel, with faux scholarly footnotes. Lots of witty details. "Summerland" by Michael Chabon: Read affectingly by the author.

A fantasy about (among other things) baseball and filial love. "The Devil You Know" and "Vicious Circle" by Mike Carey: He's mainly been a comic book writer, but has 4 novels out (only these 2 in the US, so far) starring Felix Castor, a freelance exorcist in a modern London where the dead regularly come back to "life". They read like hard-boiled detective thrillers.

Great stuff. Anything by Christopher Moore (I've listened to "Lamb", "Fool", and "A Dirty Job"). And his books have great readers.In addition to the commercial stuff, if you're an iTunes user, there's a section of the iTMS called iTunes U that has lots of lectures for free download.

Smart thinking! Be productive in that lost hour :) While these are not 1-hr long books, I find that taking them in 1-hr chunks and then pondering them works well. Outliers The Tipping Point Automatic Wealth Getting Things Done Freakonomics How to Win Friends and Influence People (old, but excellent) A Brief story of the World Those are the tops of my list!

My parents live 9 hrs from where I'm doing grad school, so I use the time to read books. Enjoy!

If you can, download Nassim Nicholas Taleb's audiobook The Black Swan - The Impact of the ghly Improbable from iTunes. It will totally change how you view and understand the world as you will begin to see the role of chance and uncertainty in life and especially how much control we think we have over it, when actually we dont.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. €? With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months.

On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has the book he wrote based on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy will continue to inspire us all, for generations to come. http://www.thelastlecture.com.

The Count of Monte Cristo. Not only is it a good story, but the way it is written provides an excellent lesson in logic and clarity of thought.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki is a good audio book. A nice way to increase your financial IQ and a possible way to eliminate those 2 hour commutes. ; ).

Well, I can't help you with 'productive' but I can suggest a whole pile of free podcasts. SlashFilmFilmJunkTwitand anything from Simply SyndicatedAll free.

I am always a fan of anything from The Teaching Company (teach12.com). Or if you want to learn a language, the Pimsleur series are excellent (pimsleur.com). I have also enjoyed listening to some classic literary works during my commute, such as: Of Mice and Men A Clockwork Orange Animal Farm The Great Gatsby and many others...

Currently, the top audiobook on iTunes is "The Art of War" (Unabridged) by Sun Tzu. It is 1 hour and 16 minutes, and can be purchased for a steal: $3.95!

If you are looking for educational AND entertaining, then I would vote for "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell. The book traces her explorations through the first 3 presidential assassinations and is read by the author, who is hilarious.

I don't know if you are religious but it's a good way to listen to the Bible because it's so hard to read through it. I've been making a point to at least once read through it all and know what it's all about. But so hard to read it all.So listening to it like that is a good way to get it in your head in a stress free way.

firefighters.org/kjv/bible/index.cfm There is a very good source to download a free one. Amazon is always great for cheap versions too.

Congratulations on your decision to make use of these two valuable hours. If you work full time that means you have now about 400 hours + that will be put to good use! I run an online audio books store that offers well over 10'000 titles to download, and you can listen to a short (about 5 minutes) sample recording of all titles before you decide to download.

We have about 50 free recordings, you can find them easily by using the 'Advanced Search' function and settign the price to 'FREE'. As far as the useful books is concerned, have a look in the self help departement (see URL below), there is a wide selection of different topics. Or choose in the business audio books section.

Personally I love the Pimsleur language courses, we offer full programs for many different languages, from Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese to more exotic languages like Lithuanian and other East European languages, also Thai and Tagalog. Learning languages that way is fun and entertaining, Also, by knowing different languages, you open entire new worlds for yourself.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.