Social Science audiobooks

Ask a Mexican

By: Gustavo Arellano

Narrated by: William Dufris, James Herrera & Christine Marshall

Length: 8 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

An irreverent, hilarious, and informative look at Mexican American culture is taken by a rising star in the alternative media, as well as a new kid on the block in such mainstream venues as NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Today, and The Colbert Report. Gustavo Arellano has compiled the best questions about Mexican Americans from readers of his Ask a... Read more

On the Shoulders of Giants

By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Raymond Obstfeld

Narrated by: Richard Allen

Length: 10 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

From 1920 to 1940, the Harlem Renaissance produced a bright beacon of light that paved the way for African Americans all over the country. The unapologetic writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, the fervent fiction and poetry of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, the groundbreaking art of Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson, and... Read more

Leap!

By: Sara Davidson

Narrated by: Renée Raudman

Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Thirty years ago, Sara Davidson wrote the phenomenal bestseller Loose Change, the definitive book about the boomer generation's coming-of-age. Now this witty social observer has again turned her discerning eye to her contemporaries, with Leap! a no-holds-barred, illuminating, and hopeful look at the choices and challenges we face and the roads... Read more

The Edge of Disaster

By: Stephen Flynn

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Americans have been shocked in the past few years to discover how vulnerable our nation is to disaster, be it terrorist attack or act of God. But what's truly shocking, argues leading security expert Stephen Flynn, is how little we have learned from the cataclysms of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to catastrophe, America is... Read more

Sex on the Brain

By: Daniel G. Amen, MD

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 8 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

"The vast majority of love and sex occurs in the brain. Your brain decides who is attractive to you, how to get a date, how well you do on the date, what to do with the feelings that develop, how long those feelings last, when to commit, and how well you do as a partner and a parent. Your brain helps you be enthusiastic in the bedroom or drains... Read more

Tripping the Prom Queen

By: Susan Shapiro Barash

Narrated by: Shelly Frasier

Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Tripping the Prom Queen is an investigation of the dark secret of female friendships-the deep vein of female rivalry. Based on interviews with women across the social spectrum, Susan Shapiro Barash has exploded the myth that women are generally supportive of one another. In fact, the competition between women is more vicious precisely because it... Read more

The Murderer Next Door

By: David M. Buss

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 10 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

As acclaimed psychological researcher and author David Buss writes, "People are mesmerized by murder. It commands our attention like no other human phenomenon, and those touched by its ugly tendrils never forget." Though we may like to believe that murderers are pathological misfits and hardened criminals, the vast majority of murders are... Read more

Food Fight

By: Mckay Jenkins

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Are GMOs really that bad?  A prominent environmental journalist takes a fresh look at what they actually mean for our food system and for us.

In the past two decades, GMOs have come to dominate the American diet. Advocates hail them as the future of food, an enhanced method of crop breeding that can help feed an ever-increasing global population... Read more

Life as Jamie Knows It

By: Michael Berube

Narrated by: Brian Roberts

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

The story of Jamie Bérubé’s journey to adulthood and a meditation on disability in American life

Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves the Beatles, pizza, and making lists. When he is asked in his preschool class what he would like to be when he grows up, he... Read more

The Cancer Whisperer

By: Sophie Sabbage

Narrated by: Sophie Sabbage

Length: 6 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The self-published sensation and UK bestseller that has helped thousands touched by cancer.

“I have cancer. Cancer does not have me.”

Sophie Sabbage was forty-eight years old, happily married, and mother to a four-year-old daughter when she was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Since that shocking diagnosis, she has been on a remarkable... Read more

The Creative Spark

By: Agustín Fuentes

Narrated by: Agustín Fuentes

Length: 10 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth?
 
Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agustín... Read more

A Path Out of Poverty

By: Paul Farmer

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
—Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist and artist

World-renowned physician and public health pioneer Dr. Paul Farmer has long been devoted to caring and advocating for the world's... Read more

Writings on the Wall

By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Raymond Obstfeld

Narrated by: Ben Adduchio

Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Bestselling author, basketball legend and cultural commentator Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explores the heart of issues that affect Americans today.
Since retiring from professional basketball as the NBA's all-time leading scorer, six-time MVP, and Hall of Fame inductee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a lauded observer of culture and society, a New York... Read more

The Darkening Web

By: Alexander Klimburg

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 14 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

“A prescient and important book. . . . Fascinating.”—The New York Review of Books


No single invention of the last half century has changed the way we live now as much as the Internet. Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared... Read more

Water Tossing Boulders

By: Adrienne Berard

Narrated by: Moe Egan

Length: 6 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told

On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale,... Read more

Madness Rules the Hour

By: Paul Starobin

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

From Lincoln's election to secession from the Union, this compelling history explains how South Carolina was swept into a cultural crisis at the heart of the Civil War.

"The tea has been thrown overboard -- the revolution of 1860 has been initiated." -- Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1860

In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the... Read more

It's Up to the Women

By: Eleanor Roosevelt

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 5 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

In this timeless account from Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady shares her advice for hardworking women as they make their mark on an ever-changing America.

"Eleanor Roosevelt never wanted her husband to run for president. When he won, she . . . went on a national tour to crusade on behalf of women. She wrote a regular newspaper column.... Read more

From Cradle to Stage

By: Virginia Grohl

Narrated by: Virginia Grohl

Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Written by Virginia Grohl, the mother of Dave Grohl—former Nirvana drummer and current frontman for the Foo Fighters—From Cradle to Stage shares stories and exclusive photos featuring mothers of rock icons, the icons themselves, and their Behind the Music-style relationships

While the Grohl family had always been musical-the family sang together... Read more

Beauty Sick

By: Renee Engeln

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

Length: 11 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

An award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg.Today’s young women face a... Read more

Black Detroit

By: Herb Boyd

Narrated by: James Shippy

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric.Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as... Read more

The Third Reconstruction

By: The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II & Jonatha...

Narrated by: Chase Bradley

Length: 5 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.

Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state... Read more

A Woman on the Edge of Time

By: Jeremy Gavron

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

A son’s search for his mother, a feminist pioneer—and a casualty of her timeIn London, 1965, a brilliant young woman—a prescient advocate for women’s rights—has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a suicide note, two young sons, and a soon-to-be-published book: The Captive Wife. No one had ever imagined that Hannah Gavron might take her... Read more

Another Day in the Death of America

By: Gary Younge

Narrated by: Mirron Willis

Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

On an average day in America, seven young people aged nineteen or under will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during the course of a single day in the United States. It could have been any day, but Younge has chosen November 23, 2013. From... Read more

Ten Restaurants That Changed America

By: Paul Freedman

Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka

Length: 13 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

From Delmonico’s to Sylvia’s to Chez Panisse, a daring and original history of dining out in America as told through ten legendary restaurantsCombining a historian’s rigor with a foodie’s palate, Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself.Whether... Read more