The Politics & Government category has 4,793 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 40,708 ratings. The most-rated is A Promised Land.
The War on Normal People
Summary
From entrepreneur Andrew Yang, the founder of Venture for America, an eye-opening look at how new technologies are erasing millions of jobs before our eyes - and a rallying cry for the urgent steps America must take, including Universal Basic Income, to stabilize our economy. The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future - now. One recent estimate predicts 13 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next seven years - jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant. The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. The future looks dire - but is it unavoidable? In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future - one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income - and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism." PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Andrew Yang (P)2018 Hachette Audio
The Audacity of Hope
Summary
In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics: a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of "our improbable experiment in democracy". He also speaks, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this audiobook is Senator Obama's vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. Underlying his stories about family, friends, members of the Senate, and even the president is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. A senator and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and above all a student of history and human nature, Senator Obama has written a book of transforming power.
©2006 Barack Obama (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Summary
"Best Nonfiction Book of the 20th Century" (Time) “It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late 20th century.” (David Remnick, The New Yorker) The Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one abridged volume (authorized by the author). Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. Drawing on his own experiences before, during, and after his 11 years of incarceration and exile, on evidence provided by more than 200 fellow prisoners, and on Soviet archives, Solzhenitsyn reveals with torrential narrative and dramatic power the entire apparatus of Soviet repression, the state within the state that once ruled all-powerfully with its creation by Lenin in 1918. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims - this man, that woman, that child - we encounter the secret police operations, the labor camps and prisons, the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the “welcome” that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness astounding moral courage, the incorruptibility with which the occasional individual or a few scattered groups, all defenseless, endured brutality and degradation. And Solzhenitsyn’s genius has transmuted this grisly indictment into a literary miracle. “The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times.” (George F. Kennan) “Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece.... The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today.” (Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, from the foreword)
©2007 Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
A Warning
Summary
In time for the 2020 presidential election, Anonymous returns to expand on their "must read" (Time), number-one best-selling behind-the-scenes "scathing portrait" (USA Today) of the Trump presidency with new words of warning for Americans everywhere. On September 5, 2018, The New York Times published a bombshell essay and took the rare step of granting its writer anonymity. Described only as "a senior official in the Trump administration", the author provided eyewitness insight into White House chaos, administration instability, and the people working to keep Donald Trump's reckless impulses in check. With the 2020 election on the horizon, Anonymous is speaking out once again. In this book, the original author pulls back the curtain even further, offering a first-of-its-kind look at the president and his record - a must-listen before Election Day. It will surprise and challenge both Democrats and Republicans, motivate them to consider how we judge our nation's leaders, and illuminate the consequences of re-electing a commander in chief unfit for the role. This book is a sobering assessment of the man in the Oval Office and a warning about something even more important - who we are as a people.
©2019 Anonymous (P)2019 Twelve
Apocalypse Never
Summary
Climate change is real, but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die", contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all, there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.
©2020 Michael Shellenberger (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
The New Jim Crow
Summary
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander’s unforgettable argument that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it”. As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is “undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.” Now, 10 years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a 10th-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.
©2010, 2012, 2020 Michelle Alexander (P)2012, 2020 Recorded Books
Invisible Women
Summary
Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias in time, money, and often with their lives. Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women, diving into women's lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor's office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable expose that will change the way you look at the world.
©2019 Caroline Criado Perez (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Threat
Summary
The instant number one New York Times best seller! This program is read by the author. On March 16, 2018, just 26 hours before his scheduled retirement from the organization he had served with distinction for more than two decades, Andrew G. McCabe was fired from his position as deputy director of the FBI. President Donald Trump celebrated on Twitter: "Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy." In The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, Andrew G. McCabe offers a dramatic and candid account of his career and an impassioned defense of the FBI's agents and of the institution's integrity and independence in protecting America and upholding our Constitution. McCabe started as a street agent in the FBI's New York field office, serving under director Louis Freeh. He became an expert in two kinds of investigations that are critical to American national security: Russian organized crime - which is inextricably linked to the Russian state - and terrorism. Under Director Robert Mueller, McCabe led the investigations of major attacks on American soil, including the Boston Marathon bombing, a plot to bomb the New York subways, and several narrowly averted bombings of aircraft. And under James Comey, McCabe was deeply involved in the controversial investigations of the Benghazi attack, the Clinton Foundation's activities, and Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. The Threat recounts in compelling detail the time between Donald Trump's November 2016 election and McCabe's firing, set against a pause-resisting narrative spanning two decades when the FBI's mission shifted to a new goal: preventing terrorist attacks on Americans. But as McCabe shows, right now the greatest threat to the United States comes from within, as President Trump and his administration ignore the law, attack democratic institutions, degrade human rights, and undermine the US Constitution that protects every citizen. Important, revealing, and powerfully argued, The Threat tells the true story of what the FBI is, how it works, and why it will endure as an institution of integrity that protects America.
©2018 Andrew G. McCabe (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
Triggered
Summary
This is the audiobook that the leftist elites don't want you to listen to - Donald Trump, Jr., exposes all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to rampant "political correctness". In Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr., will expose all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to fake accusations of "hate speech". No topic is spared from political correctness. Trump, Jr., writes about the importance of fighting back and standing up for what you believe in. From his childhood summers in Communist Czechoslovakia that began his political thought process, to working on construction sites with his father, to the major achievements of President Trump's administration, Donald Trump, Jr., spares no details and delivers a book that focuses on success and perseverance and proves offense is the best defense.
©2019 Donald Trump, Jr. (P)2019 Hachette Audio
A Very Stable Genius
Summary
The instant number-one best seller. “This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency “I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republican presidential nomination and promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet as he undertook the actual work of the commander in chief, it became nearly impossible to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. In fact, there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty - not to the country but to the president himself - and Trump’s north star was always the perpetuation of his own power. With deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, DC, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal the 45th president up close. Here, for the first time, certain officials who felt honor-bound not to divulge what they witnessed in positions of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history. A peerless and gripping narrative, A Very Stable Genius not only reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished but shows how he tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
©2020 Philip Rucker, Carol Leonnig (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Discrimination and Disparities
Summary
Discrimination and Disparities challenges believers in such one-factor explanations of economic outcome differences as discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. It is listenable enough for people with no prior knowledge of economics. Yet the empirical evidence with which it backs up its analysis spans the globe and challenges beliefs across the ideological spectrum. The point of Discrimination and Disparities is not to recommend some particular policy "fix" at the end, but to clarify why so many policy fixes have turned out to be counterproductive, and to expose some seemingly invincible fallacies behind many counterproductive policies. The final chapter deals with social visions and their human consequences.
©2018 Thomas Sowell (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Utopia for Realists
Summary
Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way - and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders all over the world. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history and beyond the traditional left-right divides as he champions ideas whose time has come. Every progressive milestone of civilization - from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy - was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the 15-hour workweek, can become reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can, in fact, make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.
©2017 Rutger Bregman (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Dangerous
Summary
The liberal media machine did everything they could to keep this book out of your hands. Now, finally, Dangerous, the most controversial book of the decade, is tearing down safe spaces everywhere.
©2017 Milo Worldwide, LLC (P)2017 Milo Worldwide, LLC
Escape from Camp 14
Summary
The shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived. North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped - but Shin Dong-hyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and, through the lens of Shin’s life, unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence: he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden’s harrowing narrative of Shin’s life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival. Blaine Harden is a contributor to the Economist and has formerly served as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. He is the author of Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent and A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
©2012 Blaine Harden (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Road to Wigan Pier
Summary
A graphic and biting polemic that still holds a fierce political relevance and impact despite being written over half a century ago. First published in 1937 it charts George Orwell's observations of working-class life during the 1930s in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His depictions of social injustice and rising unemployment, the dangerous working conditions in the mines amid general squalor and hunger also bring together many of the ideas explored in his later works and novels.
©2012 Canongate Books (P)2012 George Orwell
Accessory to War
Summary
An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from the best-selling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions", say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance. "The universe is both the ultimate frontier and the highest of high grounds", they write. "Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it's a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the other. The explorer wants to understand it; the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the right technology - which is more or less the same technology for both parties - nobody can get to it, operate in it, scrutinize it, dominate it, or use it to their advantage and someone else's disadvantage." Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry, and power that will introduce Tyson's millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.
©2018 Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Deficit Myth
Summary
A New York Times best seller The leading thinker and most visible public advocate of modern monetary theory - the freshest and most important idea about economics in decades - delivers a radically different, bold, new understanding for how to build a just and prosperous society. Stephanie Kelton's brilliant exploration of modern monetary theory (MMT) dramatically changes our understanding of how we can best deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure. Any ambitious proposal, however, inevitably runs into the buzz saw of how to find the money to pay for it, rooted in myths about deficits that are hobbling us as a country. Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis. MMT, as Kelton shows, shifts the terrain from narrow budgetary questions to one of broader economic and social benefits. With its important new ways of understanding money, taxes, and the critical role of deficit spending, MMT redefines how to responsibly use our resources so that we can maximize our potential as a society. MMT gives us the power to imagine a new politics and a new economy and move from a narrative of scarcity to one of opportunity. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Stephanie Kelton (P)2020 PublicAffairs
The New Right
Summary
This program is read by the author. The definitive firsthand account of the movement that permanently broke the American political consensus. What do internet trolls, economic populists, white nationalists, techno-anarchists, and Alex Jones have in common? Nothing, except for an unremitting hatred of evangelical progressivism and the so-called “Cathedral” from whence it pours forth. Contrary to the dissembling explanations from the corporate press, this movement did not emerge overnight - nor are its varied subgroups in any sense interchangeable with one another. As united by their opposition as they are divided by their goals, the members of the New Right are willfully suspicious of those in the mainstream who would seek to tell their story. Fortunately, author Michael Malice was there from the very inception, and in The New Right recounts their tale from the beginning. Malice provides an authoritative and unbiased portrait of the New Right as a movement of ideas - ideas that he traces to surprisingly diverse ideological roots. From the heterodox right wing of the 1940s to the Buchanan/Rothbard alliance of 1992 and all the way through to what he witnessed personally in Charlottesville, The New Right is a thorough firsthand accounting of the concepts, characters and chronology of this widely misunderstood sociopolitical phenomenon. Today’s fringe is tomorrow’s orthodoxy. As entertaining as it is informative, The New Right is required listening for every American across the spectrum who would like to learn more about the past, present and future of our divided political culture.
©2019 Michael Malice (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Bullshit Jobs
Summary
From best-selling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”. It went viral. After a million online views in 17 different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are millions of people - HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers - whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.
©2018 David Graeber (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Radium Girls
Summary
The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive - their work - was in fact slowly killing them: They had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering - in the face of death - these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly and instead became determined to fight for justice. Drawing on previously unpublished sources - including diaries, letters, and court transcripts as well as original interviews with the women's relatives - The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring 20s who themselves learned how to roar.
©2017 Kate Moore (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books