Social Science audiobooks

Nerd

By: Maya Phillips

Narrated by: Maya Phillips

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

In the vein of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) and Black Nerd Problems, this witty, incisive essay collection from New York Times critic at large Maya Phillips explores race, religion, sexuality, and more through the lens of her favorite pop culture fandoms.

From the moment Maya Phillips saw the opening scroll of Star Wars, Episode V:... Read more

Vanishing Treasures

By: Katherine Rundell

Narrated by: Lenny Henry & Katherine Rundell

Length: 3 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

A Most Anticipated Book from Boston Globe, Parade, & Literary Hub • From the award-winning author Katherine Rundell comes a “rare and magical book” (Bill Bryson) reckoning with the vanishing wonders of our natural world

The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and... Read more

The Third Rainbow Girl

By: Emma Copley Eisenberg

Narrated by: Emma Copley Eisenberg

Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

A stunning, complex narrative about the fractured legacy of a decades-old double murder in rural West Virginia -- and the writer determined to put the pieces back together.
In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an... Read more

Dopesick

By: Beth Macy

Narrated by: Beth Macy

Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

A Hulu limited series inspired by the New York Times bestselling book by Beth Macy.

Journalist Beth Macy's definitive account of America's opioid epidemic "masterfully interlaces stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference" (New York Times) -- from the boardroom to the courtroom and into the... Read more

The Indian Card

By: Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

Narrated by: Amy Hall

Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States

“Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.” —The Whiting Foundation... Read more

The Racism of People Who Love You

By: Samira Mehta

Narrated by: Fareeda Pasha

Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

An unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their varying cultural backgrounds

In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and essayist Samira Mehta reflects on many facets of being... Read more

Wandering in Strange Lands

By: Morgan Jerkins

Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins

Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

One of Buzzfeed's 24 New Books We Couldn’t Put Down“One of the smartest young writers of her generation.”—Book RiotFrom the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing—a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with”—comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her... Read more

Barracoon

By: Zora Neale Hurston

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God that brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last ""Black Cargo"" ship to arrive in... Read more

The Six

By: Loren Grush

Narrated by: Inés del Castillo

Length: 11 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

“Vivid.” —The Guardian * “Engrossing.” —Booklist * “Suspenseful, meticulously observed, enlightening.” —Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures

In this account of America’s first women astronauts “Grush skillfully weaves a story that, at its heart, is about desire: not a nation’s desire to conquer space, but... Read more

White Tears/Brown Scars

By: Ruby Hamad

Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò

Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Called "powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, this explosive book of history and cultural criticism reveals how white feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color.

Taking us from the... Read more

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . .

By: David Graeber

Narrated by: Jacques Servin & Savitri D

Length: 13 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews.

"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic... Read more

The Intersectional Environmentalist

By: Leah Thomas

Narrated by: Leah Thomas, Hayden Bishop & Erin Walker

Length: 4 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

From the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change. The Intersectional Environmentalist examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental... Read more

Recollections of My Nonexistence

By: Rebecca Solnit

Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography
Longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Political Writing

An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent, from the author of Orwell's Roses

In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her... Read more

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Narrated by: January LaVoy

Length: 1 hour 1 minute

Abridged: No

New York Times Best Seller
A Skimm Reads Pick
An NPR Best Book of 2017

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise... Read more

Get the Picture

By: Bianca Bosker

Narrated by: Bianca Bosker

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY NPR, TIME, AND THE ECONOMIST

“Get the Picture is one of the funniest books I’ve read . . . Brilliant.” —The Washington Post

“A gripping and often hilarious investigation into the art world. . . . Bosker goes full Tom Wolfe.” —TIME

“Funny, whip-smart, and gorgeously written, Get the... Read more

Wastelands

By: Corban Addison

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 16 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

"Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and told with the air of suspense that few writers can handle, Wastelands is a story I wish I had written." —From the Foreword by John Grisham
 
The once idyllic coastal plain of North Carolina is home to a close-knit, rural community that for more than a generation has battled the polluting practices... Read more

Good and Mad

By: Rebecca Traister

Narrated by: Rebecca Traister

Length: 10 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

*Updated with a new introduction*

Journalist Rebecca Traister’s New York Times bestselling exploration of the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement is “a hopeful, maddening compendium of righteous feminine anger, and the good it can do when wielded efficiently—and collectively” (Vanity... Read more

My Body

By: Emily Ratajkowski

Narrated by: Emily Ratajkowski

Length: 5 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

"Ratajkowski shares thoughts on sexuality, feminism, and power dynamics in a nuanced way that will have listeners looking for more from her." —AudioFile

"The essays are more impactful when you hear Ratajkowski read them, which she does with sincere emotion." —Shondaland

"My Body offers a lucid examination of the... Read more

A Tomb With a View – The Stories & Glories of Graveyards

By: Peter Ross

Narrated by: Peter Ross

Length: 10 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

'In his absorbing book about the lost and the gone, Peter Ross takes us from Flanders Fields to Milltown to Kensal Green, to melancholy islands and surprisingly lively ossuaries . . . a considered and moving book on the timely subject of how the dead are remembered, and how they go on working below the surface of our lives.' - Hilary... Read more

Long Time Coming

By: Michael Eric Dyson

Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson

Length: 4 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

"As a narrator, the reverence and tenderness Dyson communicates in his letters--addressed to victims of racist violence Elijah McClain, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, and the Rev. Clementa Pinckney--invoke the experience of listening in on a holy epistle. Don't miss this." -- AudioFile Magazine

This... Read more

Pockets

By: Hannah Carlson

Narrated by: Stephanie Cannon

Length: 6 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

A thought-provoking microhistory of the humble pocket that uncovers what pockets reveal about us—and why it matters.

It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, shows us how... Read more

Wasteland

By: W. Scott Poole

Narrated by: Andrew Eiden

Length: 11 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Historian and Bram Stoker Award nominee W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literature.In the early twentieth century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of... Read more

The Sixth Extinction

By: Elizabeth Kolbert

Narrated by: Anne Twomey

Length: 9 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
From the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a powerful and important work about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a compelling account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass... Read more

The Meth Lunches

By: Kim Foster

Narrated by: Sara Sheckells

Length: 12 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table—eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the... Read more