Social Science audiobooks

The End of Big

By: Nicco Mele

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 9 hours

Abridged: No

Radical connectivity—our ability to connect instantly, constantly, and globally—is altering the exercise of power with dramatic speed and reshaping our biggest institutions. Governments, corporations, centers of knowledge, and expertise are eroding before the power of the individual. In some cases this is a positive development, but as Mele... 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 Invisible Girls

By: Sarah Thebarge

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

A girl scarred by her past. A refugee mother uncertain of her future. Five little girls who brought them together. After nearly dying of breast cancer in her twenties, Sarah Thebarge fled her successful career, her Ivy League education, and a failed relationship on the East Coast and started over in Portland, Oregon. She was hoping to quietly... Read more

My Beloved Brontosaurus

By: Brian Switek

Narrated by: Brian Switek

Length: 6 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

A Hudson Booksellers Staff Pick for the Best Books of 2013

One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring Science Books

A Bookshop Santa Cruz Staff Pick

Dinosaurs, with their awe-inspiring size, terrifying claws and teeth, and otherworldly abilities, occupy a sacred place in our childhoods. They loom over museum halls, thunder through movies, and are a... Read more

Great Time Coming

By: David Falkner

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 15 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

David Falkner, noted author of five previous books about baseball, deftly portrays the rise to stardom of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play on a major-league team in baseball's modern era. As Falkner traces the development of Robinson's natural skill and tireless dedication, he focuses on the strengths that earned Robinson a... Read more

Decision-Making Lessons for Teens in Trouble

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on efforts to keep young people from returning to New York's Rikers Island once they've served their time. A privately financed pubic program utilizes evidence-based behavioral therapy to imbue teens with a sense of greater control over their lives and decisions. Read more

Media Control

By: Noam Chomsky

Narrated by: Noam Chomsky

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the... Read more

Superstorm Sandy

By: William Westhoven

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 3 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

WRITTEN AS A FUND-RAISING VEHICLE, THE AUTHOR PLEDGES TO DONATE ALL PAID ROYALTIES FROM THIS BOOK TO THE NONPROFIT HURRICANE SANDY NEW JERSEY RELIEF FUND. Written and published within a month of the worst storm to ever hit the New Jersey-New York area, "Superstorm Sandy: A Diary in the Dark" is a first-person account of one New Jersey's... Read more

Texas Murders

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Law enforcement officials in Kaufman County, Texas, are investigating whether a white supremacist prison gang can be linked to the recent murders of assistant district attorney Mark Hasse and district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia. Judy Woodruff interviews Tanya Eiserer of The Dallas Morning News. Read more

Keeping Hope Alive

By: Dr. Hawa Abdi

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for over 20 years in Somalia.

Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn... Read more

Down the Up Escalator

By: Barbara Garson

Narrated by: Jeanine Kane

Length: 8 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

One of our most incisive and committed journalists—author of the classic All the Livelong Day—shows us the real human cost of our economic follies.The Great Recession has thrown huge economic chal┬¡lenges at almost all Americans save the superaffluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up... Read more

Top Dog

By: Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

Narrated by: Po Bronson

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

New York Times Bestseller Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's work changes the national dialogue. Beyond their bestselling books, you know them from commentary and features in the New York Times, CNN, NPR, Time, Newsweek, Wired, New York, and more. E-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts are filled with demands to read their reporting... Read more

The General

By: Ahmed Errachidi & Gillian Slovo

Narrated by: Amerjit Deu & Gillian Slovo

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

On 11 September 2001, in a café in London, Ahmed Errachidi watched as the twin towers collapsed. He was appalled by the loss of innocent life. But he couldn’t possibly have predicted how much of his own life he too would lose because of that day.

In a series of terrible events, Ahmed was sold by the Pakistanis to the Americans in the diplomatic... Read more

Drunk Tank Pink

By: Adam Alter

Narrated by: Tristan Morris

Length: 7 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

An illuminating look at the way the thoughts we have and the decisions we make are influenced by forces that aren't always in our control

Why are people named Kim, Kelly, and Ken more likely to donate to Hurricane Katrina victims than to Hurricane Rita victims? Are you really more likely to solve puzzles if you watch a light bulb illuminate? How... Read more

Race Rules - Abridged

By: Michael Eric Dyson

Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson

Length: 3 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: Yes

As a former welfare father who is also an ordained Baptist minister and a Princeton Ph.D., Michael Eric Dyson is one of those rare intellectuals who act not only as interpreters between black and white America but as bridges between the academy and the street. In this brave, bracing, and vastly readable book, he identifies the hidden rules that... Read more

Toms River

By: Dan Fagin

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 18 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • Winner of The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award • “A new classic of science reporting.”—The New York Times

The riveting true story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution, Toms River melds hard-hitting investigative reporting, a fascinating scientific detective story, and an unforgettable... 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

Twelve Years a Slave

By: Solomon Northup

Narrated by: Louis Gossett

Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

In this riveting landmark autobiography that reads like a novel, Academy Award and Emmy winner Louis Gossett, Jr., masterfully transports us to 1840s New York, Louisiana, and Washington, DC, to experience the kidnapping and twelve-year bondage of Solomon Northup, a free man of color.Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, was an immediate... Read more

Snake Oil

By: Reverend Becca Stevens

Narrated by: Reverend Becca Stevens

Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

"In the world of snake oils, you have to see the world a little differently. Where others see poverty, you see riches; where others see weeds, you see flowers; where others see sickness, you see openness."

Becca Stevens calls herself a "snake oil seller": She takes natural oils, mixes them with a good story, sells them in an open market and... Read more

Infinite Progress

By: Byron Reese

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 10 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

For years we’ve been inundated with bleak forecasts about the future. But in this electrifying new book, author Byron Reese debunks the pessimistic outlook as dangerous, and shows instead how technology will soon create a dramatically better world for every person on earth, beyond anything we have dared to imagine.

With the art of a storyteller,... Read more

5 Dinge, die Sterbende am meisten bereuen

By: Bronnie Ware

Narrated by: Maja Byhahn

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Was zählt am Ende wirklich? auf dem Sterbebett, wenn klar wird, dass das Leben sich dem Ende zuneigt? Nach vielen Reisen durch die ganze Welt, auf der Suche nach dem, was dem Leben Sinn gibt, findet die Australierin Bronnie Ware eine neue Aufgabe. Sie begleitet Sterbende in den letzten Wochen ihres Lebens. In ihrem Hörbuch erzählt sie von... Read more

Contagious

By: Jonah Berger

Narrated by: Keith Nobbs

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller that explains why certain products and ideas become popular.

“Jonah Berger knows more about what makes information ‘go viral’ than anyone in the world.” —Daniel Gilbert, author of the bestseller Stumbling on Happiness

What makes things popular? If you said advertising, think again. People don’t listen to... Read more

Gun Guys

By: Dan Baum

Narrated by: Richard Kind

Length: 14 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Here is armed America—a land of machine-gun gatherings in the desert, lederhosened German shooting societies, feral-hog hunts in Texas, and Hollywood gun armories. Whether they’re collecting antique weapons, practicing concealed carry, or firing an AR-15 or a Glock at their local range, many Americans love guns—which horrifies and fascinates... Read more

More or Less

By: Jeff Shinabarger

Narrated by: Kelly Ryan Dolan

Length: 6 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

What is enough? From cleaning out closets to avoiding the grocery store for weeks at a time, Jeff Shinabarger is on a journey to find out what is “enough” in every aspect of life. Follow his community as they ponder one question: what would happen if we created a culture in which we gave away whatever was more than enough for us? How would our... Read more