Social Science audiobooks

When the Stars Begin to Fall

By: Theodore R. Johnson

Narrated by: Theodore R. Johnson

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

A bold, thought-provoking pathway to the national solidarity that could, finally, address the ills of racism in America

“Racism is an existential threat to America,” Theodore R. Johnson declares at the start of his profound and exhilarating book. It is a refutation of the American Promise enshrined in our Constitution that all men and women are... Read more

Running Out

By: Lucas Bessire

Narrated by: John Chancer

Length: 6 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Finalist for the National Book Award This audiobook narrated by John Chancer recounts an intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair.... Read more

Under a White Sky

By: Elizabeth Kolbert

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

AudioFile Magazine’s Best Audiobooks of 2021

The New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction and Field Notes from a Catastrophe returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment in Under a White Sky.

That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a... Read more

Four Lost Cities

By: Annalee Newitz

Narrated by: Chloe Cannon

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site... 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

Stakes Is High

By: Mychal Denzel Smith

Narrated by: Mychal Denzel Smith

Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future.

The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our... Read more

Having and Being Had

By: Eula Biss

Narrated by: Alex McKenna

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME , NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling.” —Associated Press 

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York... 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

Yellow Bird

By: Sierra Crane Murdoch

Narrated by: Sierra Crane Murdoch

Length: 14 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism.

“I don’t know a more complicated, original protagonist in literature than Lissa Yellow Bird, or a more dogged reporter in American journalism than... Read more

Tightrope

By: Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn

Narrated by: Jennifer Garner, Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl W...

Length: 9 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky now issue a plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure.

With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us... Read more

The Geography of Nowhere

By: James Howard Kunstler

Narrated by: Al Kessel

Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the... Read more

The Last Whalers

By: Doug Bock Clark

Narrated by: Jay Snyder

Length: 11 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In this "immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book [with] the texture and color of a first-rate novel" (New York Times), journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to a tribe on the brink.

A New York Times Notable Book​
A New York Times Editors' Choice
Winner... Read more

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

By: Kristen R. Ghodsee

Narrated by: Esther Wane

Length: 5 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

A spirited, deeply researched exploration of why capitalism is bad for women and how, when done right, socialism leads to economic independence, better labor conditions, better work-life balance and, yes, even better sex.

In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The... Read more

Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

By: Phoebe Robinson

Narrated by: Phoebe Robinson

Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

DON’T MISS PHOEBE ROBINSON’S COMEDY SERIES EVERYTHING’S TRASH—NOW ON FREEFORM!

New York Times bestselling author and star of 2 Dope Queens Phoebe Robinson is back with a new, hilarious, and timely essay collection on gender, race, dating, and the dumpster fire that is our world.

Wouldn't it be great if life came with instructions? Of course, but... 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

Heartland

By: Sarah Smarsh

Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh

Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

*Finalist for the National Book Award*
*Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*
*Instant New York Times Bestseller*
*Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly*

An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of... Read more

Feminasty

By: Erin Gibson

Narrated by: Erin Gibson

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

From the wickedly funny and feminist creator and host of the Throwing Shade podcast, a collection of hilarious personal essays and political commentary perfect for fans of Lindy West and Roxane Gay.

Since women earned the right to vote a little under one hundred years ago, our progress hasn't been the Olympic sprint toward gender equality... Read more

Unbelievable (Movie Tie-In)

By: T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong

Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Now the Netflix Limited Series Unbelievable, starring Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, and Kaitlyn Dever • Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true crime story of a teenager charged with lying about having been raped—and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth.
 
“Gripping . . . [with a] John... Read more

This Will Be My Undoing

By: Morgan Jerkins

Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins

Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins’ highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today—perfect for fans of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist,... Read more

When They Call You a Terrorist

By: Patrisse Cullors & asha bandele

Narrated by: Angela Davis & Patrisse Cullors

Length: 6 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrating her own work, Patrisse Khan-Cullors shares the salient moments of her life that led her to become a founder of Black Lives Matter...pain, frustration, and joy [emblazon] each word she utters." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by Patrisse Cullors and includes a bonus conversation.

The emotional and powerful story of one of the... Read more

The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures

By: Aaron Mahnke

Narrated by: Aaron Mahnke

Length: 9 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

A fascinating, beautifully illustrated guide to the monsters that are part of our collective psyche, featuring stories from the Lore podcast—now a streaming television series—including “They Made a Tonic,” “Passed Notes,” and “Unboxed,” as well as rare material.

They live in shadows—deep in the forest, late in the night, in the dark recesses of... 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

Ghettoside

By: Jill Leovy

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, AND CHICAGO TRIBUNE • A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE... 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