Non-Fiction Picks: Social Science Bestsellers

Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

By: Malcolm Gladwell
Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

“Talking To Strangers is perfect on audio. It reads (listens) like a podcast including audio clips from interviews, etc. Read more

Why Fish Don't Exist

A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

By: Lulu Miller
Narrated by: Lulu Miller
Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

“In this masterful biography turned memoir, Lulu Miller explores the life of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist responsible for naming most fish species worldwide. However, what is so brilliant about this title is how Miller takes us on this journey of scientific and self-discovery; she reckons with our collective past while discovering her own. It... Read more

Hidden Valley Road

Inside the Mind of an American Family

By: Robert Kolker
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Length: 13 hours 8 minutes

“This came out in 2020, and I absolutely did not have the bandwidth to read it then. I revisited it this month via audiobook. Hidden Valley Road's focus is the Galvin family where six of the twelve children develop schizophrenia by the mid 1970s. Kolker expertly weaves together the strands of history of the Galvin's, the disease, and the... Read more

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

By: Carlo Rovelli
Narrated by: Carlo Rovelli
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

“With a deft sensibility associated more often with poetry than theoretical physics, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics not only makes understandable the transcendent physical discoveries of the past century, but also reveals their powerful relevance to the human spirit. A revelatory and concise account of quantum mechanics, relativity, and the... Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

“Part memoir, part native and scientific knowledge, Braiding Sweetgrass is a wonderful work of non-fiction. There is so much to be learned about gratitude in this book, and Kimmerer's poetic-prose will help you find wonder in the world again. Read by the author, it's one book that can teach a bit of something to everyone. Read more

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning

By: Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi
Narrated by: Jason Reynolds
Length: 4 hours 11 minutes

“This “not history, history book” is a remix of Ibram X. Kendi’s adult book, Stamped From the Beginning. In Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds tells the narrative of racism throughout time with a young adult audience in mind. From the first racist, to slavery, to modern politics, Reynolds revelations surrounding the history of... Read more

The Undocumented Americans

By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be... Read more

Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind

By: Yuval Noah Harari
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

“I don't own many books. I read books and give them away. However, I will NOT be giving away my copy of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It's a keeper! Sapiens was an intense read for me. I found myself taking breaks every dozen pages or so. Not because I was bored - just the opposite. I needed time to let the author's perspective on the... Read more

How to Change Your Mind

What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

By: Michael Pollan
Narrated by: Michael Pollan
Length: 13 hours 34 minutes

“Pollan didn’t create the local food movement, but his books brought our attention to it, catapulting the conversation to farmers markets and dinner tables everywhere. In How To Change Your Mind, Pollan has turned his eye to psychedelic drugs. What The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Rules did for food, this book is set to do in the fields of end of... Read more

Killers of the Flower Moon

The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

By: David Grann
Narrated by: Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee & Danny Campbell
Length: 9 hours 4 minutes

“In "Killers of the Flower Moon", David Grann recounts the tragic tale of the Osage Indian Nations decimation and deceit at the hands of their government appointed guardians. Motivated by money, morally corrupt and masterfully manipulative, the true role of these benevolent benefactors, perpetrators of mass murder, is still a mystery today.... Read more

Outliers

The Story of Success

By: Malcolm Gladwell
Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia, learn what sets high achievers apart—from Bill Gates to the Beatles—in this seminal work from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous... Read more

Together

The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World

By: Vivek H. Murthy
Narrated by: Vivek H. Murthy
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

“Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek Murthy is a well-articulated case for supporting human connection from a public health point of view. Murthy provides stories, medical reasoning, and strategies to apply in this playbook for connection. It's a timely read, especially in an environment that has... Read more

The Only Plane in the Sky

An Oral History of September 11, 2001

By: Garrett M. Graff
Narrated by: A Full 45-Person Cast
Length: 15 hours 54 minutes

“This is a book you really need to hear instead of read. I was an adult with 2 children on 9/11 and I learned so much listening to this. This is more than just people recounting what happened to them on that dark day, it is a reenactment from key people told in chronological order. You get the where and learn exactly what they experienced. There... Read more

Catch and Kill

Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

By: Ronan Farrow
Narrated by: Ronan Farrow
Length: 10 hours 43 minutes

“A timely, incredibly important account of the difficulties Farrow faced at NBC while working on the Weinstein expose, which he took to the New Yorker and subsequently won a Pulitzer for. The audiobook is grippingly read by Farrow (though the accents he attempts are... let's go with 'confusing'). It's upsetting, sure, but heartening to see the... Read more

White Fragility

Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Narrated by: Amy Landon
Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white... Read more

The Library Book

By: Susan Orlean
Narrated by: Susan Orlean
Length: 12 hours 8 minutes

“The Library Book by Susan Orleans is ostensibly about the Central Los Angeles library fire in 1986 but it is SO much more! Orleans' incredibly well researched and yet personal history and commentary on the public library system in the United States is fascinating on many levels. The mystery surrounding the fire is a story unto itself with an... Read more

The Great Influenza

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

By: John M. Barry
Narrated by: Scott Brick
Length: 19 hours 24 minutes

In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death... Read more

How to Be an Antiracist

By: Ibram X. Kendi
Narrated by: Ibram X. Kendi
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

“Among the multi-faceted array of antiracist literature newly published in the last two years, Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist stands alone as a definitive source of history and socio-political critique, while offering a new paradigm of thought aimed at paving the way for correcting centuries of social injustice. Hearing this visionary... Read more

The Enneagram of Belonging

A Compassionate Journey of Self-Acceptance

By: Christopher L. Heuertz
Narrated by: Christopher L. Heuertz
Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

For the Enneagram enthusiast looking to deepen their transformation, The Enneagram of Belonging offers an enlightening, enriching path forward.Many have discovered the Enneagram to be a powerful tool for self-understanding, yet knowing ourselves doesn't necessarily mean we accept ourselves. Most of us tend to curate the personality of our type:... Read more

Hood Feminism

Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot

By: Mikki Kendall
Narrated by: Mikki Kendall
Length: 6 hours 57 minutes

“Hood Feminism touches on many subjects that mainstream feminists may not think of as feminist issues. Issues like food and housing insecurity, parenting, and disability rights, among others. Mikki Kendall calls out mainstream feminism as existing only for the advancement of white women, to the detriment of women of color. Some of my biggest... Read more