Social Science audiobooks

The Power Broker: Volume 3 of 3

By: Robert A. Caro

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 20 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping of twentieth-century New York.  One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century.

Robert Caro's... Read more

Real Queer America

By: Samantha Allen

Narrated by: Samantha Allen

Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving" narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states (New York Times Book Review), offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America.
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's... Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Narrated by: Monique Gray Smith

Length: 7 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces... Read more

The Witches Are Coming

By: Lindy West

Narrated by: Lindy West

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice,... Read more

The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition

By: Sonya Renee Taylor

Narrated by: Sonya Renee Taylor

Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestseller! "To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves. . . . 'The body is not an apology' is the mantra we should all embrace."
—Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum

Humans are a varied and... Read more

Being Mortal

By: Atul Gawande

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 9 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 New York Times Bestseller

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable... Read more

Shit, Actually

By: Lindy West

Narrated by: Lindy West

Length: 7 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

**Your Favorite Movies, Re-Watched**
New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from... Read more

Heavy

By: Kiese Laymon

Narrated by: Kiese Laymon

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times*

*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, BuzzFeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times... Read more

Weathering

By: Dr. Arline T Geronimus

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Length: 13 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Fusing science and social justice, renowned public health researcher Dr. Arline T. Geronimus offers an urgent and necessary book exploring the ways in which systemic injustice erodes the health of marginalized people.
  America has woken up to what many of its citizens have known for centuries and to what public health statistics have evidenced... Read more

Mating in Captivity

By: Esther Perel

Narrated by: Esther Perel

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York City therapist examines the paradoxical relationship between domesticity and sexual desire and explains what it takes to bring lust home.One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union... Read more

Ace

By: Angela Chen

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, about romance and... Read more

Women and Other Monsters

By: Jess Zimmerman

Narrated by: Vanessa Moyen

Length: 6 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of feminism

The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we... Read more

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

By: Nathan Thrall

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, The New Republic, and the Financial Times.

Immersive and gripping, an intimate story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing,... Read more

Genesis

By: Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Craig Mundie

Narrated by: Byron Wagner

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more dynamic and ubiquitous, it is dramatically empowering people in all walks of life while also giving rise to urgent questions about the future of humanity—a historic challenge whose contours and consequences are revealed by three eminent thinkers in Genesis.

As it absorbs data, gains agency, and... Read more

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

By: Shoshana Zuboff

Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella

Length: 24 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the... Read more

The Future Is Disabled

By: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Narrated by: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and... Read more

The Other Wes Moore

By: Wes Moore

Narrated by: Wes Moore

Length: 6 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.

The... Read more

Big Friendship

By: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Narrated by: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Length: 5 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.

Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their... Read more

Loud

By: Drew Afualo

Narrated by: Drew Afualo

Length: 6 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

The empowering, inspiring, patriarchy-smashing first book by podcast star Drew Afualo.

Drew Afualo is best known as the internet’s “Crusader for Women” and is at the head of a new generation of entertainment’s rising stars. Loud is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir. It makes it clear that behind her... Read more

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler

Narrated by: Judith Butler

Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.

"A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein

"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine

From a global icon, a bold, essential... Read more

The Sum of Us

By: Heather McGhee

Narrated by: Heather McGhee

Length: 11 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE... Read more

Burn Book

By: Kara Swisher

Narrated by: Kara Swisher

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Instant New York Times Bestseller

From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

“Swisher, the bad-ass journalist and OG chronicler of Silicon Valley…takes no prisoners in this highly readable look at the evolution... Read more

Loving Corrections

By: adrienne maree brown

Narrated by: adrienne maree brown

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times–bestselling author adrienne maree brown knows we need each other more than ever and offers a practice for holding collective power, righting wrongs, and generating true belonging. Ethical, pondering, and wondrous, adrienne maree brown’s Loving Corrections is a collection of love-based adjustments and reframes to grow our movements... Read more

Good and Mad

By: Rebecca Traister

Narrated by: Rebecca Traister

Length: 10 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

*Updated with a new introduction*

Journalist Rebecca Traister’s New York Times bestselling exploration of the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement is “a hopeful, maddening compendium of righteous feminine anger, and the good it can do when wielded efficiently—and collectively” (Vanity... Read more