Social Science audiobooks

The Third Chapter

By: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

In the twenty-first century, a developmental phase of life is emerging as significant and distinct, capturing our interest, engaging our curiosity, and expanding our understanding of human potential and development. Demographers talk about this new chapter in life as characterized by people—those between ages fifty and seventy-five—who are... Read more

The Empathy Gap

By: J. D. Trout

Narrated by: J. D. Trout

Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawing on his sweeping and innovative research, philosopher and cognitive scientist J. D. Trout recruits the latest findings in psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience to answer the question: How can we make better personal decisions and design social policies that improve the lives of everyone?We are touched when faced with the... Read more

The Next 100 Years

By: George Friedman

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 9 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

A fascinating, eye-opening, and often shocking look at what lies ahead for the United States—and the world—from one of our most incisive futuristsGeorge Friedman has become a leading expert in geopolitical forecasting, sought after for his unmatched grasp of both historical and contemporary trends. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman turns his eye... Read more

Elsewhere, U.S.A.

By: Dalton Conley

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 6 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while... Read more

The Hole in Our Gospel

By: Richard Stearns

Narrated by: Tommy Cresswell

Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF US? Is our faith just about going to church, studying the Bible and avoiding the most serious sins—or does God expect more? Have we embraced the whole gospel or a gospel with a hole in it? Ten years ago, Rich Stearns came face-to-face with that question as he sat in a mud hut in Rakai, Uganda, listening to the... Read more

Forecast

By: Stephan Faris

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 7 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

While reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and he began to wonder what current and impending—and largely unanticipated—crises such changes have in store for the world.

Forecast provides the answers.

Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has... Read more

Factory Girls

By: Leslie T. Chang

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 14 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly... Read more

Things I've Been Silent About

By: Azar Nafisi

Narrated by: Naila Azad

Length: 13 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

I started making a list in my diary entitled “Things I Have Been Silent About.” Under it I wrote: “Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I wrote about repressive laws and executions, about public and political abominations. Eventually I drifted into writing about... Read more

Things I've Been Silent About - Abridged

By: Azar Nafisi

Narrated by: Azar Nafisi

Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: Yes

I started making a list in my diary entitled “Things I Have Been Silent About.” Under it I wrote: “Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I wrote about repressive laws and executions, about public and political abominations. Eventually I drifted into writing about... Read more

A Woman's Worth - Abridged

By: Marianne Williamson

Narrated by: Marianne Williamson

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: Yes

With A Woman's Worth, Marianne Williamson turns her charismatic voice--and the same empowering, spiritually enlightening wisdom that energized her landmark work, A Return to Love-- to exploring the crucial role of women in the world today. Drawing deeply and candidly on her own experiences, the author illuminates her thought-provoking positions... Read more

The Sun and the Moon

By: Matthew Goodman

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 12 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful and surprisingly true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Purporting to reveal discoveries of a famous British astronomer, the series described such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and... Read more

Spoken Word Club

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Through verse, members of the Spoken Word Club at the Santa Fe Indian School articulate identities both modern and traditional, and maintain links to the past through native language and culture. Read more

Reclaiming The Feminine

By: Gail Straub

Narrated by: Justine Willis Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Gail Straub has the vision and experience to help us understand what it means to be feminine and empowered in the twenty-first century. In her ongoing quest to mine the greatest truths from every era, she’s found answers that let her strike a balance between contemporary roles and the archetypes that call to us from a deeper place. Read more

Why We Suck - Abridged

By: Denis Leary

Narrated by: Denis Leary

Length: 4 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Abridged CDs * 4 CDs, 5 hours

“Denis Leary snarls as naturally as most actors smile,” says one critic of the writer and comic. In Why We Suck, Leary snarls to brilliant effect. With his patented highspeed ranting and killer comic instinct, Denis Leary has become a beloved antihero whose bracing invective and outrageous riffs have earned him a... Read more

How to Read a Person Like a Book

By: Gerard I. Nierenberg & Henry H. Calero

Narrated by: Various

Length: 39 minutes

Abridged: No

How to Read a Person Like a Book teaches listeners how to understand the strangers, friends, work colleagues around them by reading their body language. Read more

Letters to a Young Sister

By: Hill Harper

Narrated by: Kevin R. Free

Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of two NAACP awards for his writing, bestselling author Hill Harper is an acclaimed actor known for his role on CSI: NY. A Brown University and Harvard Law School alum, Harper is also a passionate public servant. In this book he offers comforting advice for today's youth through his own wisdom as well as that of such luminaries as... Read more

Measuring Our Gross National Happiness

By: Anne Muller & Tashi Wangchuk

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Tashi Wangchuk and Anne Muller share how applying a few simple values-based principles, each of us can make Gross National Happiness a reality in our own lives and in our communities. Read more

Reawakening the Spirituality of Men

By: Matthew Fox, Ph.D.

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Matthew Fox, Ph.D. has had his finger on the pulse of Western Spirituality for decades. When he casts his keen eye on the state of spirituality among men in the twenty-first century, you can be sure he’ll discern the unspoken woundedness, yearning, and passion of the modern warrior. Read more

The Wordy Shipmates

By: Sarah Vowell

Narrated by: Sarah Vowell

Length: 7 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestselling author Sarah Vowell explores the Puritans and their journey to America in The Wordy Shipmates. Even today, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Vowell investigates what that means -- and what it should mean. What was this great political enterprise all about? Who were these people who are considered the... Read more

Feminism and The Future of Women

By: Estelle Freedman

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Since the time of the abolitionists, no movement has so politicized social life in the United States as feminism. Responsible for wide-ranging legislation, such as women's right to vote and the right to an abortion, feminists have fought their way to the center of the country's political dialogue and made themselves a major presence there. But... Read more

The Incas

By: Terence N. D'Altroy

Narrated by: Denis Judd

Length: 7 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

The Incas were a small ethic group from the southern Peruvian highlands who created the greatest empire ever seen in the independent Americas--an empire of 10 to 12 million people. Inca history, largely presented to us by the conquering Spanish, reveals a rich culture of stunning achievement. In many ways, Inca life was defined by its unique... Read more

Mudbound

By: Hillary Jordan

Narrated by: Joseph Collins, Ezra Knight, Brenda Pressley, P...

Length: 9 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The International BestsellerNow a major motion picture from Netflix, directed by Dee Rees, nominated in four categories for the Academy Awards.In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place... Read more

Among Schoolchildren

By: Tracy Kidder

Narrated by: Stephen Yankee

Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's classic, "brilliantly illuminated" account of education in America (The New York Times Book Review). Mrs. Zajac is feisty, funny, and tough. She likes to call herself an "old-lady teacher." (She is thirty-four.) Around Kelly School, she is infamous for her discipline: "She is mean, bro," says one of her... Read more

Stubborn Twig

By: Lauren Kessler

Narrated by: Christine Williams

Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Stubborn Twigis the true story of immigrants making their way in a new land, a moving saga about the promise and perils of becoming an American.Masuo Yasui arrived in America in 1903 with big dreams and empty pockets. He worked on the railroads, in a cannery, and as a houseboy before settling in Oregon to open a store, raise a large family, and... Read more