George Lakoff has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!.
The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!
Summary
Since it became an international best-seller in 2004, Don't Think of an Elephant! has been the definitive handbook for progressives who want to articulate their goals and values to voters, understand how conservatives think and why people often vote against their best interests, and frame the political debate. Completely revised and updated to tackle today’s issues, the 10th-anniversary edition not only explains what framing is and how it works but also reveals why, after a brief stint of winning the framing wars in the 2008 elections, the Democrats have gone back to losing them, and what can be done about it. In this powerful new volume, George Lakoff delves into the issues that will dominate the midterm elections in 2014, the coming presidential elections, and beyond. He examines the current progressive and conservative frames on climate change, inequality, immigration, education, abortion, marriage, healthcare, national security, energy, and more. He explores why some issues have been difficult to frame, guides listeners on how to frame complex issues without losing important context, and drives home the important differences between framing and spin. Do you think facts alone can win a debate? Do you think you know what makes a Tea Party follower tick? Do you think you understand how to communicate on key issues that can improve peoples’ lives? Whether you answer yes or no, the insights in Don’t Think of an Elephant! will not only surprise you, but also give you the tools you need to develop frames that work, and eradicate frames that backfire.
©2014 George Lakoff (P)2014 Recorded Books
Moral Politics
Summary
When Moral Politics was first published two decades ago, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff's classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality. Even more so than when Lakoff wrote, liberals and conservatives simply have very different, deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong. Lakoff reveals radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. Moral worldviews, like most deep ways of understanding the world, are unconscious - part of our "hard-wired" brain circuitry. When confronted with facts that don't fit our moral worldview, our brains work automatically and unconsciously to ignore or reject these facts, and it takes extraordinary openness and awareness of this phenomenon to pay critical attention to the vast number of facts we are presented with each day. For this new edition, Lakoff has added a new preface and afterword, extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the Affordable Care Act to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent financial crisis, and the effects of global warming. One might have hoped such massive changes would bring people together, but the reverse has actually happened; the divide between liberals and conservatives has become stronger and more virulent. To have any hope of bringing mutual respect to the current social and political divide, we need to clearly understand the problem and make it part of our contemporary public discourse. Moral Politics offers a much-needed wake-up call to both the left and the right.
©1996, 2002, 2016 George Lakoff (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The Political Mind
Summary
You can't understand 21st-century American politics with an 18th-century brain.... In What's the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why. As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we've so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain - and they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into another - or building a whole new narrative altogether - can be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isn't like changing your body - it's the same thing. But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it. This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.
©2008 George Lakoff (P)2008 Tantor
Don't Think of an Elephant!
Summary
This New York Times best seller is the authoritative guide to comprehending what happened in the 2004 elections and understanding how progressive thinkers can wrest control of America's political dialogue away from the conservatives who have it now. Author George Lakoff, who has become a key advisor to the Democratic Party, asserts that the Republican Party has enjoyed recent success because of the way it expertly "frames" the issues. Using carefully chosen terminology like "tax relief" and "family values", conservatives have cast themselves in a positive light and convinced many Americans to vote against their true beliefs. Now Lakoff shows how progressives can beat conservatives at their own game. Regardless of your political beliefs, Don't Think of an Elephant! will surely open your eyes to the reality of the modern political landscape.
©2004 George Lakoff (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC