Robert Wright has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 275 ratings. The most-rated is Why Buddhism Is True.
Why Buddhism Is True
Summary
From one of America's greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain. But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are discovering only now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly - and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people. In Why Buddhism Is True, Wright leads listeners on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true - which is to say, a way out of our delusion - but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.
©2017 Robert Wright. All rights reserved. (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Moral Animal
Summary
Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.
©1995 Robert Wright (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
The Evolution of God
Summary
In this sweeping narrative, which takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism but to future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking reexamination of the past and a visionary look forward.
©2009 Robert Wright (P)2009 Tantor
Nonzero
Summary
At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless. Ingeniously employing game theory the logic of "zero-sum" and "non-zero-sum" games, Wright isolates the impetus behind life's basic direction: the impetus that, via biological evolution, created complex, intelligent animals and then, via cultural evolution, pushed the human species toward deeper and vaster social complexity. In this view, the coming of today's interdependent global society was "in the cards" - not quite inevitable, perhaps, but, as Wright puts it, "so probable as to inspire wonder." So probable, indeed, as to invite speculation about higher purpose, especially in light of "the phase of history that seems to lie immediately ahead: a social, political, and even moral culmination of sorts." In a work of vast erudition and pungent wit, Wright takes on some of the past century's most prominent thinkers, including Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins. He finds evidence for his position in unexpected corners, from native American hunter-gatherer societies and Polynesian chiefdoms to medieval Islamic commerce and precocious Chinese technology; from conflicts of interest among a cell's genes to discord at the World Trade Organization. Wright argues that a coolly scientific appraisal of humanity's three-billion-year past can give new spiritual meaning to the present and even offer political guidance for the future. Nonzero will change the way people think about the human prospect.
©1999 Robert Wright (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
The Kitchen Front
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives. Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest - and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all - even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart? * This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF that contains recipes from the book. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Jennifer Ryan (P)2021 Random House Audio
How Mindfulness Can Heal the World
Summary
One of the most trusted voices in science-based spirituality offers a powerful antidote for our culture of division. In a time when we have more technologies than ever for connecting, why is our world so divided? One main factor is the phenomenon of “tribalism” - the human tendency to become so identified with a group that we become blind to the ideas, qualities, and even humanity of others. “Most of us are part of the problem of tribalism”, says best-selling author Robert Wright. “Natural selection engineered the human mind to be susceptible to this way of thinking.” Yet there is hope for us individually and as a species - and it starts with the ancient prescription of mindfulness. With How Mindfulness Can Heal the World, Wright presents a deeply informative and practical audio workshop filled with insights and guided practices to help us evolve beyond tribal thinking, including: What drives tribalism? The underlying psychology and evolution of “us and them.” How mindfulness addresses the roots of tribalism and helps us see ourselves and the world clearly. Overcoming confirmation bias, cultivating objectivity, practicing empathy and compassion, and much more. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Robert Wright (P)2020 Sounds True