Social Science audiobooks

The Cheating Culture

By: David Callahan

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

In this provocative audiobook author David Callahan examines the cheating epidemic-at work, in school, on the ballfield and everywhere else-that is the new American plague. Now more than ever, people are bending rules and breaking laws to get what they want. From the Enron scandal to the dot-com collapses to the plagiarism that has rocked the... Read more

The Histories

By: Caius Cornelius Tacitus

Narrated by: James Adams

Length: 10 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Caius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman orator and public official, is considered one of the greatest historians as well as one of the greatest prose stylists of the Latin language. In The Histories, he describes and interprets the period in which he lived, beginning with the political situation that followed Nero's death in AD 69 and ending with the... Read more

The Logic of Life

By: Tim Harford

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune... Read more

A History of the Jews

By: Paul Johnson

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 28 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation. It shows the impact of Jewish character on the world: their genius, imagination and, most of all, their ability to persevere despite severe persecutions. Compelling insights into events and individuals are chronologically... Read more

The Logic of Life - Abridged

By: Tim Harford

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune... Read more

Gang Leader for a Day

By: Sudhir Venkatesh

Narrated by: Reg Rogers & Stephen J. Dubner

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic... Read more

Creating a World without Poverty

By: Muhammad Yunus

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Over the last few decades, free markets have swept the globe and brought positive change. Nevertheless, traditional capitalism cannot solve problems of inequality and poverty because of its view of people as one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit. In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including spiritual, social,... Read more

Fighting for Air

By: Eric Klinenberg

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 11 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

This groundbreaking investigative work by a critically acclaimed sociologist exposes the corporate takeover of local news and what it means for all Americans.Early in the morning of January 18, 2002, a train derailment near Minot, North Dakota, sent a cloud of poisonous gas drifting toward the small town. Minot's fire and rescue departments were... Read more

My Life as a Traitor

By: Zarah Ghahramani

Narrated by: Marjanne Dorée

Length: 7 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981, two years after Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to establish the Islamic Republic. Her life changed suddenly in 2001 when, after having taken part in student demonstrations, she was arrested—literally snatched off the street by secret police—and charged with "inciting crimes against the people of... Read more

Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs

By: Barbara Mertz

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

In this updated version of the classic of popular Egyptology, Barbara Mertz combines a doctorate in Egyptology at the famed Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago with a life-long enthusiasm for ancient Egypt. Her love of the subject is contagious and makes her the perfect guide to ancient Egypt for the student, the layman, and those... Read more

The Native African American Cultural Development Guide

By: Georgette Georgette

Narrated by: TJ Pryor-Wells

Length: 2 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

In Washington D.C., during his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech, Dr. Martin L. King Jr. introduced the world to his dream.  The passion of his dream was so intense that it still echoes throughout the World.  With a dream big enough to influence listeners for over four decades, do you ever wonder what became of the children of the dream?  The... Read more

Gap Year Volunteer

By: Jenny Ng

Narrated by: Sarah Herman

Length: 1 hour 5 minutes

Abridged: No

You want to see the world - but you also want to help make it a better place. With so many aid opportunities on every continent, how do you find the one that's right for you? Whether you want to care for tropical birds in Costa Rica, work with disadvantaged children in Morocco, or raise money for research projects in the UK, this handy audiobook... Read more

Mirage

By: Nina Burleigh

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 10 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Little more than two hundred years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of much myth and speculation–and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt.

It was not until 1798, when an unlikely band of scientific... Read more

Like Judgment Day

By: Michael D'Orso

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 14 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Stunning and powerful, Like Judgment Day is the hauntingly true story of the Rosewood massacre. Michael D'Orso's compelling journalistic prose reads like the most vivid novel as he describes the earth-shattering events of January 1923 and its survivors' patient, 70-year quest for justice. When a black man was accused of attacking a white woman... Read more

Trip Wire

By: Charlotte Carter

Narrated by: Lizzie Cooper Davis

Length: 5 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

On author Charlotte Carter's debut Cook County mystery, the New York Times said she "blends street savvy with wry urbanity and delivers a truly modern big-city crime tale." This suspenseful novel goes back to Chicago after the social and political upheavals of the Summer of Love, when three unassuming sleuths began working on a startling new case. Read more

Carpe Diem

By: Harry Mount

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 5 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

In this lighthearted guided tour of Latin, journalist and former Latin tutor Harry Mount breathes life back into the greatest language of all, drawing on everything from a Monty Python grammar lesson to Angelina Jolie's tattoos. Filled with fascinating tidbits and humorous asides, Carpe Diem will delight the word lovers who made Eats, Shoots and... Read more

Listening Is an Act of Love - Abridged

By: Dave Isay

Narrated by: Dave Isay & StoryCorps Participants

Length: 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From more than ten thousand interviews, StoryCorps—the largest oral history project in the nation's history—presents a tapestry of American stories, told by the people who lived them to the people they love. 

StoryCorps began with the idea that everyone has an important story to tell. And since 2003, this remarkable project has been collecting... Read more

A Slave No More

By: David W. Blight

Narrated by: Arthur Morey & Dominic Hoffman

Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama... Read more

A Slave No More - Abridged

By: David W. Blight

Narrated by: David W. Blight, Richard Allen & Dion Graham

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama... Read more

A Practical and Accessible Strategy On Global Warming

By: David Gershon

Narrated by: Craig Hamilton

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Climate scientists tell us that we have less than ten years to dramatically cut our carbon emissions before we reach a point of no return. Yet most of the large-scale solutions on the table will take far longer than that to implement. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention, and among the climate change pioneers there are those who... Read more

Leading Ladies - Abridged

By: Kay Bailey Hutchison

Narrated by: Kay Bailey Hutchison

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In a series of skillfully drawn biographical portraits, United States Senator and bestselling author Kay Bailey Hutchison examines the lives of sixty-three pioneers in military service, journalism, public health, social reform, science, and politics—all American women. Mixing historical portraits with modern success stories, Senator Hutchison... Read more

The Difficult Second Book - Abridged

By: Chris Moyles

Narrated by: Chris Moyles

Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Brought to you by Penguin.


Superman was a hero. Clark Kent was a geek.

Spiderman saved lives. Peter Parker sold photographs to his local paper.

Chris Moyles entertains 8 million people each week on BBC Radio 1. Then he goes home and plays Xbox on his sofa, while wearing only his underpants.

Welcome to the real world of Chris Moyles.

The Difficult... Read more

The Terror Dream

By: Susan Faludi

Narrated by: Beth McDonald

Length: 12 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling... Read more

Children of Jihad

By: Jared Cohen

Narrated by: Jason Collins

Length: 9 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

Defying foreign government orders and interviewing terrorists face-to-face, a young American tours hostile lands to learn about Middle Eastern youth—and uncovers a subculture that defies every stereotype.Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a... Read more