Social Science audiobooks

Esther the Wonder Pig

By: Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter & Caprice Crane

Narrated by: Steve Jenkins

Length: 4 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Unlikely pig owners Steve and Derek got a whole lot more than they bargained for when the designer micro piglet they adopted turned out to be a full-sized 600-pound sow! This funny, inspirational story shows how families really do come in all shapes and sizes.

In the summer of 2012, Steve Jenkins was contacted by an old friend about adopting a... Read more

Head in the Cloud

By: William Poundstone

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

The real-world value of knowledge in the mobile-device age.

More people know who Khloe Kardashian is than who René Descartes was. Most can't find Delaware on a map; don't know what Frank Lloyd Wright did for living; can't say how many calories are in a Big Mac or how many candles are on a menorah. How important it is to know things, anyway?... Read more

Assassination Generation

By: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman & Kristine Pau...

Narrated by: Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of the 400,000-copy bestseller On Killing reveals how violent video games have ushered in a new era of mass homicide -- and what we must do about it.

Paducah, Kentucky, 1997: a 14-year-old boy shoots eight students in a prayer circle at his school.

Littleton, Colorado, 1999: two high school seniors kill a teacher, twelve other... Read more

Tribe

By: Sebastian Junger

Narrated by: Sebastian Junger

Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing... Read more

The Kingdom of Speech

By: Tom Wolfe

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 4 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.

Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech -- not evolution... Read more

Open Letter

By: Charb

Narrated by: Dean Olsher

Length: 1 hour 42 minutes

Abridged: No

An impassioned defense of the freedom of speech, from Stéphane Charbonnier, a journalist murdered for his convictions.

On January 7, 2015, two gunmen stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They took the lives of twelve men and women, but they called for one man by name: "Charb."

Known by his pen name, Stèphane... Read more

Locally Laid

By: Lucie B. Amundsen

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

How a midwestern family with no agriculture experience went from a few backyard chickens to a full-fledged farm—and discovered why local chicks are betterWhen Lucie Amundsen had a rare night out with her husband, she never imagined what he’d tell her over dinner—that his dream was to quit his office job (with benefits!) and start a... Read more

Jihad Academy

By: Nicolas Hénin

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 4 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

A former Islamic State hostage and veteran Middle East journalist explores misperceptions of Islamic State and their consequences.For more than a decade, French journalist Nicolas Hénin has reported from the front lines of conflict in the Middle East, much of his time spent in Iraq and Syria. He witnessed the events leading to the rise of... Read more

If the Oceans Were Ink

By: Carla Power

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed by the Washington Post as “mandatory reading,” and praised by Fareed Zakaria as “intelligent, compassionate, and revealing,” this powerful journey will help bridge one of the greatest divides shaping our world today.If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power’s eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi... Read more

Radical

By: Maajid Nawaz

Narrated by: David Linski

Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

An insightful account of one man’s drastic evolution from religious fervor to enlightened peace.Maajid Nawaz spent his teenage years listening to American hip-hop and learning about the radical Islamist movement spreading throughout Europe and Asia in the 1980s and ’90s. At sixteen, he was already a ranking member in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a... Read more

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

By: John Perkins

Narrated by: Tom Taylorson

Length: 12 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Shocking bestseller: the original version of this astonishing tell-all book spent seventy-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than 1.25 million copies, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.New revelations: featuring fifteen explosive new chapters, this expanded edition of Perkins’s classic... Read more

Young Orson

By: Aaron Digan & Patrick McGilligan

Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka

Length: 27 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

For the centennial of his birth, the defining wunderkind of modern entertainment gets his due in a groundbreaking new biography of his early years—from his first forays in theater and radio to the inspiration and making of Citizen Kane.No American artist or entertainer has enjoyed a more dramatic rise than Orson Welles. In this magisterial... Read more

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

By: James Agee

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 15 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

A landmark work of American photojournalism “renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality” (New York Times)In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a... Read more

First Bite

By: Bee Wilson

Narrated by: Alison Larkin

Length: 13 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

We do not come into the world with an innate sense of taste and nutrition; as omnivores, we have to learn how and what to eat, how sweet is too sweet, and what food will give us the most energy for the coming day. But how does this education happen? What are the origins of taste?In First Bite, the beloved food writer Bee Wilson draws on the... Read more

Negroland

By: Margo Jefferson

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Soon to be a television series by New York Times bestselling essayist Roxane Gay At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac—here is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of Margo Jefferson’s rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with... Read more

Devoured

By: Sophie Egan

Narrated by: Ann Richardson

Length: 12 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

A provocative look at how and what Americans eat and why—a flavorful blend of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Salt Sugar Fat, and Freakonomics that reveals how the way we live shapes the way we eat.Food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche,... Read more

Sex Object

By: Jessica Valenti

Narrated by: Jessica Valenti

Length: 4 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

NPR Great Read of 2016Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and... Read more

The Lynching

By: Laurence Leamer

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history—the Ku Klux Klan.On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of... Read more

The Boys in the Bunkhouse

By: Dan Barry

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

With this Dickensian tale from America’s heartland, New York Times writer and columnist Dan Barry tells the harrowing yet uplifting story of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability, and the heroic efforts of those who helped them to find justice and reclaim their lives.In the tiny Iowa farm town of... Read more

The Bitch is Back

By: Cathi Hanauer

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

Length: 11 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

More than a decade after the New York Times bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young woman, nine of the original contributors are back—along with sixteen captivating new voices—sharing their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family,... Read more

The World According to Star Wars

By: Cass R. Sunstein

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

""Star Wars is the ultimate mythological tale of our age, a hero's journey that is a tribute to the beauty of human freedom as well as an exploration of its dark complexities. In this gem of a book, the brilliant Cass Sunstein uses the series to explore profound questions about being a parent, a child, and a human. It will change the way you... Read more

Lessons on the Way to Heaven

By: Michael Fechner

Narrated by: Tim Gregory

Length: 5 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Once you hear this new book, you can't go back to your old life.

Texas businessman Mike Fechner had it all. Money. Investments. Prestige.
 Until he did the unthinkable. He sold his company and poured his life’s earnings into a ministry for the poor.
 With a strong faith in God at his core, this millionaire-turned-missionary envisioned a long future... Read more

Charlie Mike

By: Joe Klein

Narrated by: Holter Graham

Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

This true story of two decorated combat veterans who find a new way to save their comrades and heal their country is “a great look at two of the best veteran organizations going and the incredible humans who make the effort work” (Jon Stewart).

In Charlie Mike, a true account that “reads like a novel” (Publishers Weekly) and “explodes like a... Read more

Andy and Don

By: Daniel de Visé

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

A lively and revealing biography of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, this “humorous, informative, and poignant book” celebrates the powerful real-life friendship behind one of America’s most iconic television programs and “shows how the magic was created” (Library Journal).

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts first met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy... Read more