Badass: The Birth of a Legend Audiobook By Ben Thompson cover art

Badass: The Birth of a Legend

Spine-Crushing Tales of the Most Merciless Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Villains, and Mythical Creatures Ever Envisioned

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Badass: The Birth of a Legend

By: Ben Thompson
Narrated by: Darren Todd
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $19.95

Buy for $19.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

From sex-crazed gods to ravenous monsters, Ben Thompson brings legendary titans to life in tales of adventure, bloodlust, and unrelenting badassitude.

Since the beginning of human history people have created myths, tall tales, superheroes, and arch-villains - men and women who embarked on insane adventures, performed extraordinary feats of unparalleled awesomeness, and overcame all odds to violently smite their foes into bloody pulp. In Badass: The Birth of a Legend, Ben Thompson compiles these fantastical tales from the beginning of time to today and tells them in the completely over-the-top manner in which they were intended, including:

  • Rama: The Indian god-king who led an army of monkeys against the King of All Demons
  • Thor: The Viking god of thunder and awesome hair, who crushed the skulls of giants with a ridiculously huge hammer
  • Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon hero so hardcore he could arm-wrestle monsters' joints out of their sockets
  • Moby-Dick: The hate-filled literary behemoth who obliterated ship hulls with his face
  • Skuld: The Norse necromancer queen who summoned a horde of zombie berserkers
  • Dirty Harry Callahan: The prototypical modern-day antihero and very embodiment of badass
©2011 HarperCollins (P)2012 Ben Thompson Literary History & Criticism Literature & Fiction Popular Culture Social Sciences

People who viewed this also viewed...

Badass Audiobook By Ben Thompson cover art
Badass By: Ben Thompson
Creative Writing • Cultural Education • Great Narration • Unfiltered Exuberance • Amusing Imagery • Inspiring Content
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
When I literally read Badass 2, I had the screaming, cool, chill, clever author in my head telling me these stories. With this audiobook version of Badass (one), a robotic, monotone, boring person reads the story like the evidence in a court case. This is what Siri sounds like when she's been asked the same question 600 times by a 5 year old. I have HOURS left of this book and I just can't do it.

You need Samuel L Jackson to read this book.

Terrible narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Maybe the book is good oh, but I can't really tell because the narrator is so awful. Barely made it through chapter 1 and couldn't bring myself to listen to chapter 2. This narrator should be banned from audible.

Awful Narrator!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Because of this book, I have been inspired to read more books about the bad-asses in this book. I will probably be reading Beowulf and learning more about the Egyptians. I like how he gave props to Joseph Campbell who came up with the hero's journey and figured out the recipe for every great story ever written.

This book is very entertaining and is a great way for the average man's man to learn a little about culture.

A gateway book to finer literature.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
My review; semi colons are overrated . So that ends this badass review. It was fine background sound .

Entertaining

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Five stars for creative writing, cultural education, laughter, a chapter on James T. Kirk, and unfiltered exuberance on the book’s topic. Envisioning the ancient slayers through a contemporary and slang lens, and including subjects of the present for good measure, this book is fluidly badass. Thank you, Ben Thompson, for knowing your shit and having the balls to share it.

A break from the classics. Just asskickingly fun.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not as good as the other books in the series, but still paints very amusing images about some very important characters in mythology and fiction.

Hilarious

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is a no brainer for boredom . Would definitely recomend this book

Best of them all

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What didn’t you like about Darren Todd’s performance?

The narrator of the book put me to sleep. L.J. Ganser who narrated the first Bad Ass, made the book come alive with the way he read the story. Unfortunately, Darren Todd's performance was without feeling and completely mono-tone

Narrator killed it for me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the second book by Ben Thompson I have read.
What a fantastic way of teaching history, of sharing knowledge in a most entertaining way.
The narration was great as well.
Thank you.

The makings of a History Nerd

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.