Social Science audiobooks

The Road to Wigan Pier

By: George Orwell

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

When Orwell went to the north of England in the thirties to find out how industrial workers lived, he not only observed but shared in their experience. He stayed in cramped, dreary lodgings and subsisted on the scant, cheerless diet of the poor. He went down into the coal mines and walked crouching, as the miners did, through a one- to... Read more

Bob Schieffer's America

By: Bob Schieffer

Narrated by: Bob Schieffer

Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Unbridged CDs * 6 CDs, 7 hours

Wise, rueful, candid, graceful commentaries from one of journalism’s most stylish and respected writers. Read more

Everyday Survival

By: Laurence Gonzales

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Laurence Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the... Read more

Ladies of the Night

By: Gene Simmons

Narrated by: Gene Simmons

Length: 3 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Rock legend, best-selling author, reality television star, accomplished entrepreneur, and renowned ladies' man Gene Simmons presents an entirely original take on a traditionally taboo topic—prostitution. In this informative and entertaining mix of narrative history and Simmons' own unique philosophy, the Kiss frontman delves deep into the legacy... Read more

Crowdsourcing

By: Jeff Howe

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the human race has always outstripped our capacity to harness it. Crowdsourcing ­corrects that—but in doing so, it also unleashes the forces of creative destruction.”
—From Crowdsourcing

First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired article, “crowdsourcing” describes the process... Read more

Ceremony

By: Leslie Marmon Silko

Narrated by: Pete Bradbury

Length: 9 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Leslie Marmon Silko's sublime Ceremony is almost universally considered one of the finest novels ever written by an American Indian. It is the poetic, dreamlike tale of Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo and veteran of World War II. Tormented by shell shock and haunted by memories of his cousin who died in the war, Tayo struggles on his... Read more

Exploring The Mythic Frankenstein

By: Molly Dwyer

Narrated by: Justine Willis Toms

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Molly Dwyer is on a first-name basis with the likes of Goethe, Byron, Aesop, and especially Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein. She takes us inside the minds of these literary icons to explore the seeds of creativity and imagination, and the way story both defines and fashions who we are. Read more

Traffic

By: Tom Vanderbilt

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 13 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? That most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? Or that you can gauge a nation’s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road.

Based on exhaustive... Read more

Traffic - Abridged

By: Tom Vanderbilt

Narrated by: David Slavin

Length: 5 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Driving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This audiobook will make you think about it in a whole new light.

We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic... Read more

Reporting America at War

By: Michelle Ferrari & James Tobin

Narrated by: various narrators

Length: 7 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Now, for the first time, the nation's most respected reporters share their stories as the eyes and ears of the nation to create a fascinating oral history. Some of the most influential journalists of our time, including Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, Peter Arnett and Andy Rooney convey the facts, the brutality and the drama... Read more

Two Lives, One Russia

By: Nicholas Daniloff

Narrated by: Tom Casaletto

Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Nicholas Daniloff's arrest by the KGB in the fall of 1986 made headlines around the world, but the roots of that story ran deeper than anyone knew. Daniloff's imprisonment was in fact an echo of his family's past, for his great-great grandfather, Alexander Frolov, was also a prisoner of the Russian state. In this rich and absorbing book,... Read more

I Never Had It Made - Abridged

By: Jackie Robinson

Narrated by: Ossie Davis

Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A straightforward yet inspiring story of what it took to be the first man of color to break into the white world of professional sports. Jackie Robinson's story is more than a telling of his tremendous talent; it is also a recollection that showcases his tenacious spirit, bravery and the courage of his ideals. From the early influences of family... Read more

No Man's Land

By: Ruth Fowler

Narrated by: Ruth Fowler

Length: 8 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Unabridged CDs * 7 CDs, 8 hours

The gripping, gritty story of a young woman’s plunge into the underbelly of Manhattan’s strip clubs—and how she got back out. Read more

The Drunkard's Walk

By: Leonard Mlodinow

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 9 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

In this irreverent and illuminating audiobook, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in... Read more

Lost in the City

By: Edward P. Jones

Narrated by: Patricia R. Floyd, Peter Jay Fernandez, Cherise...

Length: 10 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Edward P. Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the critically acclaimed novel The Known World. A finalist for the National Book Award, Lost in the City features 15 poignant short stories, each set in Washington, D.C. Far removed from marble monuments and the offices of rich politicians, the nation's capital that Jones captures is... Read more

Me of Little Faith

By: Lewis Black

Narrated by: Lewis Black

Length: 5 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Abridged CDs * 5 CDs, 6 hours

From the hilariously mad-as-hell Daily Show regular and New York Times– bestselling author comes a ferociously funny exploration of religion and faith. Read more

Panic in Level 4

By: Richard Preston

Narrated by: James Lurie

Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Bizarre illnesses and plagues that kill people in the most unspeakable ways. Obsessive and inspired efforts by scientists to solve mysteries and save lives. From The Hot Zone to The Demon in the Freezer and beyond, Richard Preston’s bestselling works have mesmerized readers everywhere by showing them strange worlds of nature they never... Read more

The Prince of Frogtown

By: Rick Bragg

Narrated by: Rick Bragg

Length: 7 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin’ and continued with Ava’s Man, Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson.

He learns, right from the start, that a man who chases a woman... Read more

Creative Conflict-Cultural Transformation

By: Aftab Omer, Ph.D.

Narrated by: Tarra Christoff

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Omer is a truly a global citizen. He was born in Pakistan and has lived in Turkey, India, Hawaii and now lives in Northern California. His research and life experience has led him to study how we need to move from dysfunctional conflicts to creative conflicts. Read more

Candy Girl

By: Diablo Cody

Narrated by: Natalie Moore

Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Decreed by David Letterman (tongue in cheek) on CBS TV's The Late Show to be the pick of "Dave's Book Club 2006," Candy Girl is the story of a young writer who dared to bare it all as a stripper.

At the age of twenty-four, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. She soon managed to find inspiration from... Read more

Gates and Higginbotham: The African-American National Biography

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Renowned African-American writers Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham discuss their joint project, the African-American National Biography. Read more

Girls Like Us

By: Sheila Weller

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 22 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct: King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in... Read more

Bent Hope

By: Tim J Huff

Narrated by: Tim J Huff

Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

The winner of 3 book awards as best book in it's category, Bent Hope was born out of Tim Huff’s first twenty years of unique and extensive work among homeless and street-involved youth and adults, in one of North America’s largest urban centres—Toronto, Canada. Bent Hope is a collection of thoughtful narratives birthed beneath crumbling bridges... Read more

McMafia

By: Misha Glenny

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 15 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Misha Glenny's groundbreaking study of global organized crime is now the inspiration for an 8-part AMC crime drama starring James Norton (War and Peace), Juliet Rylance, and David Strathairn. 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and... Read more