Social Science audiobooks

The Dead Beat

By: Marilyn Johnson

Narrated by: Marilyn Johnson

Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world—so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of... Read more

Black Migration From the Jim Crow South

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

In her new book The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor Isabel Wilkerson digs into the 'The Great Migration' that took place from 1915 to 1970, when 6 million African-Americans left the South to go north and west in search of a better life. Jeffrey Brown speaks with the author. Read more

The Grace of Silence

By: Michele Norris

Narrated by: Michele Norris

Length: 5 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

In the wake of talk of a “postracial” America upon Barack Obama’s ascension as president of the United States, Michele Norris, cohost of National Public Radio’s flagship program All Things Considered, set out to write, through original reporting, a book about “the hidden conversation” on race that is unfolding nationwide. She would, she thought,... Read more

To You We Shall Return

By: Joseph M. Marshall III

Narrated by: Joseph M. Marshall III

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

“Grandmother, you who listen and hear all, you from whom all good things come…It is your embrace we feel when we return to you.”This traditional Lakota prayer to Grandmother Earth opens Joseph Marshall III’s newest work, a meditation on our connection to the land and an exhortation to respect it. Using a combination of personal anecdote,... Read more

The Coke Machine

By: Michael Blanding

Narrated by: George K. Wilson

Length: 12 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Ever since its "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" commercials from the 1970s, Coca-Cola has billed itself as the world's beverage, uniting all colors and cultures in a mutual love of its caramel-sweet sugar water. The formula has worked incredibly well, making it one of the most profitable companies on the planet and Coca-Cola the world's... Read more

The Lost Dogs

By: Jim Gorant

Narrated by: Richard Powers

Length: 10 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

This is an inspiring story of survival and our powerful bond with man’s best friend in the aftermath of the nation’s most notorious case of animal cruelty.Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick’s brutal dogfighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed... Read more

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works

By: Nick Bilton

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Are we driving off a digital cliff and heading for disaster, unable to focus, maintain concentration, or form the human bonds that make life worth living? Are media and business doomed and about to be replaced by amateur hour?

The world, as Nick Bilton—with tongue-in-cheek—shows, has been going to hell for a long, long time, and what we are... Read more

Composing a Further Life

By: Mary Catherine Bateson

Narrated by: Sevanne Kassarjian

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Mary Catherine Bateson sees aging today as an "improvisational art form calling for imagination and willingness to learn," and in this ardent, affirming study, she relates the experiences of men and women—herself included—who, upon entering this second adulthood, have found new meaning and new ways to contribute, composing their lives in new... Read more

Has Religious Tolerance Changed in America?

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown moderates a conversation among four religious leaders and experts on the tolerance-or intolerance-of different religions and cultures in America, nine years after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Read more

Fury

By: Koren Zailckas

Narrated by: Koren Zailckas

Length: 10 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of the iconic New York Times bestseller Smashed undertakes a quest to confront her own anger.

In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailc Read more

True Prep - Abridged

By: Lisa Birnbach & Chip Kidd

Narrated by: Lisa Birnbach

Length: 2 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“Wake up, Muffy. We’re back.”

From Lisa Birnbach, the author of The Official Preppy Handbook—and designer Chip Kidd—comes a whole new take on the prep world that Birnbach turned into an international best-selling phenomenon thirty years ago.

True Prep is a contemporary look at how the old guard of natural-fiber-loving, dog-worshipping,... Read more

The Genial Gene

By: Joan Roughgarden

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

Length: 8 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Are selfishness and individuality - rather than kindness and cooperation - basic to biological nature? Does a "selfish gene" create universial sexual conflict? In The Genial Gene, Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book... Read more

Interstate 69

By: Matt Dellinger

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

New Yorker contributor and decade-long staffer Matt Dellinger uses the controversy surrounding Interstate 69 as a lens through which to examine middle America's current political, social, and economic landscape, including hot-button issues like NAFTA and the country's troubled infrastructure. If completed, I-69 will stretch from Canada to Mexico... Read more

Broke, USA

By: Gary Rivlin

Narrated by: Scott Sowers

Length: 12 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Drive By comes a unique and riveting exploration of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing industries—the business of poverty. Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler... Read more

The Vision of the Anointed

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 9 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

In this devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past few decades, Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and more. This is an empirical study in which... Read more

Wind

By: Jan DeBlieu

Narrated by: Mary Woods

Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Siroccos, Santa Anas, chinooks, monsoons … the wind has as many names as moods. Few other forces have so universally shaped the lands and waters of the earth and the patterns of exploration, settlement, and civilization. Few other phenomena have exerted such a profound influence on the history and psyche of humankind. In Wind, Jan DeBlieu brings... Read more

Coping With "Irritable Male Syndrome"

By: Jed Diamond Ph.D.

Narrated by: Justine Willis Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

There exists much information about menopause in women, but very little in menopause (or andropause) for men. Jed Diamond, Ph.D. is a specialist in "Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS)" and how it affects both men and their partners. Read more

The People's Dynasty

By: Robert Shepherd

Narrated by: Robert Shepherd

Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The state-directed opening of the Chinese economy in 1979 led to a number of radical transformations within Chinese society, but Western understanding of these changes is often limited by erroneous assumptions. Offering a clear picture of the vast economic and social forces of modern-day China, Professor Robert J. Shepherd addresses U.S.... Read more

When They Severed Earth from Sky

By: Elizabeth Wayland Barber & Paul T. Barber

Narrated by: Beth Richmond

Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction.This absorbing... Read more

The Grandeur That Was Rome

By: Jennifer Tobin

Narrated by: Jennifer Tobin

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Common perceptions of Ancient Rome are plentiful, whether they take the form of crazy emperors hosting lavish feasts, scenes of chariot races and gladiatorial combat, or processions of conquering armies. But that is only half the story. In this enlightening lecture series, Professor Jennifer Tobin presents a sweeping portrait of Rome, including... Read more

Fighting Poverty in Kenya

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Spencer Michels reports on the story of how a California man sees the chance to increase access to clean water in Kenya through the use of foot-pumps. Read more

A Country for All

By: Jorge Ramos

Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez

Length: 3 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

For decades, fixing the United States’ broken immigration system has been one of the most urgent challenges facing our country, and time and time again, politicians have passed the buck. With anti-immigrant sentiment rising around the country, and presidential elections on the horizon, it’s no surprise immigration reform is on every candidate’s... Read more

This Bitter Earth

By: Bernice L. McFadden

Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor

Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

This powerful sequel to Bernice L. McFadden’s bestselling debut Sugar follows a young African-American woman back to her Arkansas hometown, where she must confront difficult truths about her parentage and a curse in her family’s past.

When Sugar Lacey returns to Short Junction to find the aunts who raised her, she hopes they will be able to tell... Read more

Medieval People

By: Eileen Power

Narrated by: Roe Kendall

Length: 7 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

In this classic of social history, the author describes the lives of five lesser-known men and women of the Middle Ages, as well as one famous one. She draws on account books, records, letters, diaries, and wills to make the life of those times as concrete and comprehensible as our own. There are full-length portraits of Bodo, a Frankish peasant... Read more