Social Science audiobooks

We Are Not Such Things

By: Justine van der Leun

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 19 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Justine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class.The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa. The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August... Read more

Playing Dead

By: Elizabeth Greenwood

Narrated by: Arden Hammersmith

Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

A darkly comic foray into the world of men and women who fake their own deaths, the consultants who help them disappear, and the private investigators who’ll stop at nothing to bring them back to life.

“A delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace.” —Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of... Read more

The Givers

By: David Callahan

Narrated by: Ryan Gesell

Length: 13 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

An inside look at the secretive world of elite philanthropists--and how they're quietly wielding ever more power to shape American life in ways both good and bad.

While media attention focuses on famous philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Charles Koch, thousands of donors are at work below the radar promoting a wide range of causes. David... Read more

Neuroplasticity

By: Moheb Costandi

Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon

Length: 3 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Fifty years ago, neuroscientists thought that a mature brain was fixed like a fly in amber, unable to change. Today, we know that our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes. This concept of neuroplasticity has captured the imagination of a public eager for self-improvement -- and has inspired countless Internet entrepreneurs... Read more

The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales

By: Erika Eichenseer, Franz Xaver von Schonwerth & ...

Narrated by: Heather Wilds

Length: 7 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerth's work was lost—until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu­scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time,... Read more

The Horror of It All

By: Adam Rockoff

Narrated by: R. C. Bray

Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Horror films have simultaneously captivated and terrified audiences for generations, racking up billions of dollars at the box office and infusing our nightmares with unrelenting zombies, chain saw–wielding madmen, and myriad incarnations of ghosts, ghouls, and the devil himself. Despite evolving modes of storytelling and the fluctuating... Read more

Unruly Places

By: Alastair Bonnett

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

At a time when Google Maps can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite's remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, it's hard to imagine there's any uncharted ground left on the planet. In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical... Read more

Getting Life

By: Michael Morton

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 9 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

On August 13, 1986, just one day after his thirty-second birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple's bed—and the Williamson County Sherriff's office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of... Read more

Excellent Sheep

By: William Deresiewicz

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation's brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.



Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with... Read more

Scandals of Classic Hollywood

By: Anne Helen Petersen

Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren’t always the saints that we make them out to be.




Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book... Read more

The Narcissism Epidemic

By: Jean M. Twenge, PhD & W. Keith Campbell, PhD

Narrated by: Randye Kaye

Length: 12 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Narcissism—an inflated view of the self—is everywhere. Public figures say it's what makes them stray from their wives. Parents teach it by dressing children in T-shirts that say "Princess." Teenagers and young adults hone it on Facebook, and celebrity newsmakers have elevated it to an art form. And it's what's making people depressed, lonely,... Read more

The Next America

By: Paul Taylor & Pew Research Center

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 8 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past.



America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our... Read more

The Humor Code

By: Peter McGraw & Joel Warner

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

Length: 8 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Dr. Peter McGraw, founder of the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, teamed up with journalist Joel Warner on a far-reaching search for the secret behind humor. Their journey spanned the globe, from New York to Japan, from Palestine to the Amazon. Meanwhile, the duo conducted their own humor experiments along the way—to... Read more

The Disaster Artist

By: Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

Narrated by: Greg Sestero

Length: 11 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau's scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, "I have to do a scene with this guy." That impulse changed both of their lives. Wiseau seemed never to have read the rule book on interpersonal relationships (or... Read more

Gaining Ground

By: Forrest Pritchard

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

One fateful day in 1996, after discovering that five freight cars' worth of glittering corn have reaped a tiny profit of $18.16, young Forrest Pritchard vows to save his family's farm. What ensues—through hilarious encounters with all manner of livestock and colorful local characters—is a crash course in sustainable agriculture. Pritchard's... Read more

Ingenious

By: Jason Fagone

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars... Read more

Discipline & Punish

By: Michel Foucault

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 13 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a man condemned of attempting to assassinate the King of France was drawn and quartered in a grisly spectacle that suggested an unmediated duel between the violence of the criminal and the violence of the state. This groundbreaking book by Michel Foucault, the most influential philosopher since Sartre, compels us... Read more

The Book of Immortality

By: Adam Leith Gollner

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Length: 15 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Raised an atheist, Adam Leith Gollner was struck by mankind's tireless efforts to cheat aging and death. In a narrative that pivots between profundity and hilarity, he brings us into the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality. From a Jesuit priest on his deathbed to anti-aging researchers at Harvard, Gollner—sorting... Read more

The Book of Woe

By: Gary Greenberg

Narrated by: David Drummond

Length: 13 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

For more than two years, author and psychotherapist Gary Greenberg has embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM)—the American Psychiatric Association's compendium of mental illnesses and what Greenberg calls "the book of woe."



Since its debut in 1952,... Read more

Unaccountable

By: Marty Makary, M.D.

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 7 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Dr. Marty Makary is codeveloper of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's bestselling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked in many of the best hospitals in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that routinely leaves surgical... Read more

The Men on My Couch

By: Dr. Brandy Engler & David Rensin

Narrated by: Abby Craden

Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

When Dr. Brandy Engler opened her sex therapy practice for women in Manhattan, she got a big surprise. Most of the calls were from men. They wanted to talk about womanizing, porn addiction, impotence, prostitutes—and most of all, love.



Her patients were everyday guys from all walks of life. Among them were David, the Wall Street hotshot and... Read more

The Revenge of Geography

By: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 13 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their... Read more

Superman Is Jewish?

By: Harry Brod

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Zeddy Lawrence once said, "It may not be true in all cases, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb. If the word 'man' appears at the end of someone's name you can draw one of two conclusions: a) they're Jewish, as in Goldman, Feldman, or Lipman; or b) they're a superhero, as in Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man."

In Superman Is Jewish? Harry Brod... Read more

The Richer Sex

By: Liza Mundy

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 8 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

A revolution is under way. Within a generation, more households will be supported by women than by men. In The Richer Sex, Liza Mundy shows how this reality will transform the sexual, dating, marriage, and work habits of men and women worldwide.

This flip in the economic order is inevitable, and Mundy demonstrates why it will also be a good thing... Read more