Social Science audiobooks

Broad Strokes

By: Bridget Quinn

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 5 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Historically, major women artists have been excluded from the mainstream art canon. Aligned with the resurgence of feminism in pop culture, Broad Strokes offers an entertaining corrective to that omission. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of fifteen brilliant female artists in this smart, feisty, educational, and... Read more

30 Days a Black Man

By: Bill Steigerwald

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 12 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the ten million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South.Escorted through the South’s parallel black... Read more

Queen of Bebop

By: Elaine M. Hayes

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 13 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Queen of Bebop brilliantly chronicles the life of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of women’s and civil rights.Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of... Read more

Undocumented

By: Aviva Chomsky

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo

Length: 7 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

A longtime immigration activist explores what it means to be an undocumented American in this “impassioned and well-reported case for change” (New York Times).
 
In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on... Read more

At Mt. Vernon, remembering the enslaved people who built America

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 3 minutes

Abridged: No

A tour guide at George Washington's Mt. Vernon, who is also a distant relation of a person who was enslaved at the Virginia estate, offers his perspective about American history, slavery and the founding fathers. This story was produced by as part of the NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs program. Read more

The Many Lives of Catwoman

By: Tim Hanley

Narrated by: Rachel Dulude

Length: 8 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

For more than seventy-five years, Catwoman has forged her own path in a clear-cut world of stalwart heroes, diabolical villains, and damsels in distress. Her relentless independence across comic books, television, and film set her apart from the rest of the superhero world. When female-led comics were few and far between, Catwoman headlined her... Read more

Progress

By: Johan Norberg

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Length: 6 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

From an examination of official data from such institutions as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg paints a portrait of a better future ahead.It’s on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we’re bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is—financial... Read more

Solitude

By: Michael Harris

Narrated by: Kerry Shale

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

"Kerry Shale's reading delivers lots of information clearly as Harris discusses technological developments that threaten our solitude today. While much of Harris's book is critical of those developments, Shale also captures Harris's humor and occasional indignance." — AudioFile Magazine

With a foreword by Nicholas Carr, author of the Pulitzer... Read more

The Girl at the Baggage Claim

By: Gish Jen

Narrated by: Caroline McLaughlin

Length: 7 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a provocative and important study of the different ideas Easterners and Westerners have about the self and society and what this means for current debates in art, education, geopolitics, and business.

Never have East and West come as close as they are today, yet we are still baffled by one another. Is our... Read more

The Hello Girls

By: Elizabeth Cobbs

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 12 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the story of how America's first women soldiers helped win World War I, earned the vote, and fought the U.S. Army. In 1918, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, demanded female... Read more

White Working Class

By: Joan C. Williams

Narrated by: Liisa Ivary

Length: 3 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite―journalists, managers, and establishment politicians―are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having “something approaching rock star... Read more

The Culture of Narcissism

By: Christopher Lasch

Narrated by: Barry Press

Length: 10 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

When The Culture of Narcissism was first published, it was clear that Christopher Lasch had identified something important: what was happening to American society in the wake of the decline of the family over the last century.



The book quickly became a bestseller. This edition includes a new afterword, "The Culture of Narcissism Revisited." Read more

Boys Adrift

By: Leonard Sax

Narrated by: Allan Robertson

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it.

Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working... Read more

Corsets and Codpieces

By: Karen Bowman

Narrated by: Susan Duerden

Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Have you ever wondered why we wear the type of clothes we do? Packed with outlandish outfits, this exciting history of fashion trends reveals the flamboyant fashions adopted (and discarded) by our ancestors.
In the days before cosmetic surgery, people used bum rolls and bombastic breeches to augment their figures, painted their faces with... Read more

Off the Cliff

By: Becky Aikman

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

A lively and revealing behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of history's most controversial and influential movies, drawing on exclusive interviews with the cast and crew.

“You’ve always been crazy,” says Louise to Thelma, shortly after she locks a police officer in the trunk of his car. “This is just the first chance you’ve had to express... Read more

From Carl Gustav Jung’s Archetypes Of The Collective Unconscious To Individual Archetypal Patterns

By: Andrey Davydov & Olga Skorbatyuk

Narrated by: Kevin Iggens

Length: 1 hour 10 minutes

Abridged: No

All suppositions presented in this lecture have brought us to a better understanding of contents of the unconscious sphere of human psyche. Even if we were to accept Jung's theory of "dividing human psyche," we think it would be one’s personal unconscious, which contains very definite individual structure or system meant to define his personal... Read more

Rebuilding a Chicago neighborhood by forging connections to the Muslim community

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

The South Side of Chicago has long been plagued with some of the highest crime rates in the nation, but a man of faith is trying to transform the area by focusing on the everyday needs of those who live there. Jeffrey Brown visits the neighborhood with Rami Nashashibi, founder of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, to see how his efforts are... Read more

Generation Me

By: Jean M. Twenge, PhD

Narrated by: Randye Kaye

Length: 12 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In this provocative new book, psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge documents the self-focus of what she calls "Generation Me"—people born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Dr. Twenge explores why her generation is tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious.



Dr. Twenge reveals how... Read more

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

By: Anne Helen Petersen

Narrated by: Anne Helen Petersen

Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

**One of NPR’s Best Books of 2017** 

“Petersen's gloriously bumptious, brash ode to nonconforming women suits the needs of this dark moment. Her careful examination of how we eviscerate the women who confound or threaten is crucial reading if we are ever to be better.”—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of All the Single... Read more

El Color de la Justicia

By: Michelle Alexander, Carmen Valle & Ethel Odriozola

Narrated by: Adriana Sananes

Length: 17 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

The "Bible of a social movement" (San Francisco Chronicle) to end mass incarceration in the United States--now available in a Spanish language edition En este revolucionario trabajo que ha permanecido por mas de dos anos en la lista de los libros mas vendidos del New York Times, Michelle Alexander argumenta que "no hemos erradicado las castas... Read more

Prince Harry: The Inside Story

By: Duncan Larcombe

Narrated by: Richard Trinder

Length: 10 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Prince Henry of Wales has emerged as the unexpected jewel in the crown of the modern British monarchy. Despite his unruly antics, for which he’s made headlines all over the world, Harry’s popularity rivals that of the Queen herself. Heartthrob and loveable rogue, he has won the public’s heart. Duncan Larcombe’s insightful... Read more

Little Black Book

By: Otegha Uwagba

Narrated by: Otegha Uwagba

Length: 1 hour 36 minutes

Abridged: No

‘Little Black Book is THE book of the year for working women with drive’ Refinery 29 The essential career handbook for creative working women. ‘A compact gem’ Stylist Little Black Book: A Toolkit For Working Women is the modern career... Read more

Hidden History

By: Donald Jeffries

Narrated by: Lars Mikaelson

Length: 18 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Learn about all the secrets our government has kept for the past fifty years.The US government has spent half the time covering up conspiracies as it has spent helping the American people. In Hidden History, you will see the amount of effort over the past fifty years that our government has dedicated to lying and covering up the truth to the... Read more

Stay Interesting

By: Jonathan Goldsmith

Narrated by: Jonathan Goldsmith

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

What makes a life truly interesting? Is it the people you meet? The risks you take? The adventures you remember?

Jonathan Goldsmith has many answers to that question. For years he was a struggling actor in New York and Los Angeles, with experiences that included competing for roles with Dustin Hoffman, getting shot by John Wayne, drinking with... Read more