Social Science audiobooks

Anti-Americanism

By: Jean-François Revel

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

After the 9/11 attack on the United States, the brief moment of global sympathy for America soon began giving way to blame. In France and other quarters of Europe, and elsewhere in the world, it was said that the Americans had brought this violence upon themselves. The United States was a “cowboy” nation disinclined to abide by the will of the... Read more

The Denial of Death

By: Ernest Becker

Narrated by: Raymond Todd

Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the “why” of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie: man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing... Read more

The Golden Mountain

By: Irene Kai

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping story of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture—except for one, the author. Her story tells of growing up in Hong Kong and of her transition to New York City, where she struggled to meld the American dream with her ethnic background.... Read more

The Reluctant Metrosexual

By: Peter Hyman

Narrated by: Peter Hyman

Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the author, an essayist and stand-up comedian, this collection of hilarious essays is about a single guy attempting to live on the right side of hip.If Peter Hyman is a metrosexual, a straight man with gay tastes, then he is one reluctantly, being loath to hitch himself to an au courant cultural trend unless doing so would get him a... Read more

A Call to Heroism

By: Peter H. Gibbon

Narrated by: Brian Emerson

Length: 8 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

What do we look for in our heroes of today? And what are we to expect of heroes in our uncertain future? In this book, Gibbon traces the evolution of our collective vision of greatness from the age of our founders to today’s celebrity-obsessed media age.Among history’s exemplary men and women who have sacrificed for causes greater than... Read more

Commander of the Exodus

By: Yoram Kaniuk

Narrated by: William Sutherland

Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most inventive, brilliant novelists in the Western world,” Yoram Kaniuk turns his hand to nonfiction to bring us his most important work yet. It is the story of Yossi Harel, a modern-day Moses who defied the blockade of the British Mandate to deliver more than 24,000 displaced Holocaust survivors to... Read more

Compassion versus Guilt, and Other Essays

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: Michael Kevin

Length: 6 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Sociologist-economist Sowell, a noted conservative, draws this collection of essays from his Scripps-Howard syndicated column and his contributions to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.Sowell offers opinions on social and foreign policy, law, education, and race, criticizing the trend of American politics since... Read more

A Conflict of Visions

By: Thomas Sowell

Narrated by: Michael Edwards

Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conlficts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern.In this book, which the author calls a "culmination of thirty years of work in the history of ideas," Sowell attempts to explain the ideological difference between liberals and conservatives as a... Read more

The Soul of the Indian and Seven Native American Tales

By: Charles Alexander Eastman

Narrated by: Scott Peterson

Length: 2 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Charles Alexander Eastman, an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of the great divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote eleven books attempting to reconcile the two cultures. Although he was a convert to Christianity, Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to his existence and to the... Read more

Days of Obligation

By: Richard Rodriguez

Narrated by: Michael Anthony

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A series of ten essays span the five centuries of history, from Hernan Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to San Francisco's AIDS epidemic.Richard Rodriguez explores the conflicts of race, religion, and cultural identity for Mexican-Americans across the landscape of his beloved California—as well as the impact this history had on him.Rodriguez... Read more

Who Stole Feminism?

By: Christina Hoff Sommers

Narrated by: Kristen Underwood

Length: 13 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Philosophy professor Christina Sommers exposes a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments... Read more

The Chain Gang

By: Richard McCord

Narrated by: Richard McCord

Length: 11 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the biggest under-told stories of the past twenty years is the swallowing up of small independent newspapers by large corporations. This is the dramatic account of two battles waged by Richard McCord with his independent newspapers against the Gannett Company, one of the country's largest newspaper chains.In Santa Fe, New Mexico, McCord... Read more

Unfinished People

By: Ruth Gay

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 10 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Nearly three million Jews came to America from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I, filled with the hope of life in a new land. Most were young, single, uneducated, and unskilled; many were children or teens. They were, in a sense, unfinished citizens of either the old or the new world.Within two generations, these... Read more

The Genius Factory - Abridged

By: David Plotz

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the former editor of Slate and CEO of Atlas Obscura comes the unbelievable story of “the Nobel Prize sperm bank” and the children it produced—“a superb book about the quest for genius and, ultimately, family” (Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Talking to Strangers).
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ROCKY MOUNTAIN... Read more

The Hardness Factor - Abridged

By: Steven Lamm

Narrated by: Steven Lamm

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

A diet, exercise, and supplement regimen to help men achieve optimal sexual fitnessSexual fitness goes hand in hand with overall health: Good sex means a man is most probably in good condition. The Hardness Factor is a comprehensive guide to sexual fitness for men, pointing the way to an enhanced self image, better sex, and improved health, and... Read more

Newjack

By: Ted Conover

Narrated by: Ted Conover

Length: 11 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is the story of Conover's rookie year as a guard at Sing Sing. It is a nerve-jangling account of his passage into the storied prison and the culture of its guards—both fresh-faced "newjacks" like Conover and brutally hardened veterans. As he struggles to be a good officer, Conover angers inmates, dodges blows, works... Read more

Garlic and Sapphires

By: Ruth Reichl

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 10 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and... Read more

Dying to Cross

By: Jorge Ramos

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

In what is indicative of the strained and even desperate times in which we live, comes a tragic story about the death of 19 people, the final hours of their incredible ordeal, and the network of individuals (and countries) who profit from what is considered by many nothing less than modern-day slavery.On May 13, 2003, at least 73 people boarded... Read more

Garlic and Sapphires - Abridged

By: Ruth Reichl

Narrated by: Ruth Reichl

Length: 4 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Includes an interview with the author and recipe cards!

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double... Read more

Jonathan Livingston le Goéland

By: Richard Bach

Narrated by: Patrice Laffont

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Décidément, Jonathan Livingston n'est pas un goéland comme les autres. Sa passion : voler toujours plus haut et plus vite pour être libre. Mais ce marginal qui ne se contente pas de voler pour se nourrir ne plaît guère à la communauté de goélands. Condamné par les siens à vivre le reste de ses jours au-delà des falaises en solitaire, Jonathan... Read more

Space Between the Stars

By: Deborah Santana

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

Length: 11 hours

Abridged: No

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana–a thirty-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a white mother and a black father–the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King–her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

In this... Read more

The Disappointment Artist

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Jonathan Lethem

Length: 3 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

In a volume he describes as “a series of covert and no-so-covert autobiographical pieces,” Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsession—in his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these “voyages out... Read more

Emperors and Idiots

By: Mike Vaccaro

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 13 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Yankees. The Boston Red Sox. For a hundred years, no two teams have locked horns as fiercely or as frequently – and no two seasons frame the colossal battle more perfectly than 2003 and 2004. Now, with incredible energy and access, leading sports columnist Mike Vaccaro chronicles the history of the greatest rivalry in sports, and... Read more

Emperors and Idiots - Abridged

By: Mike Vaccaro

Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie

Length: 5 hours

Abridged: Yes

The New York Yankees. The Boston Red Sox. For a hundred years, no two teams have locked horns as fiercely or as frequently – and no two seasons frame the colossal battle more perfectly than 2003 and 2004. Now, with incredible energy and access, leading sports columnist Mike Vaccaro chronicles the history of the greatest rivalry in sports, and... Read more