The Social Sciences category has 3,302 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 32,502 ratings. The most-rated is Homo Deus.
Shadows of the Workhouse
Summary
When twenty-two-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the direst section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood';s most vivid chronicler. Woven into the ongoing tales of her life in the East End are the true stories of the people Worth met who grew up in the dreaded workhouse, a Dickensian institution that limped on into the middle of the twentieth century. Though these are stories of unimaginable hardship, what shines through each is the resilience of the human spirit and the strength, courage, and humor of people determined to build a future for themselves against the odds. This is an enduring work of literary nonfiction, at once a warmhearted coming-of-age story and a startling look at people's lives in the poorest section of postwar London.
©2005 Jennifer Worth (P)2014 HighBridge Company
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
Summary
A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century A.D., John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research, as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English - and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for. (And no, it's not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition.)
©2008 John McWhorter (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Inferior
Summary
What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew. For hundreds of years, it was common sense: Women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades scientists - most of them male, of course - claimed to find evidence to support this. Whether looking at intelligence or emotion, cognition or behavior, science has continued to tell us that men and women are fundamentally different. Biologists claim that women are better suited to raising families or are, more gently, uniquely empathetic. Men, on the other hand, continue to be described as excelling at tasks that require logic, spatial reasoning, and motor skills. But a huge wave of research is now revealing an alternative version of what we thought we knew. The new woman revealed by this scientific data is as strong, strategic, and smart as anyone else. In Inferior, acclaimed science writer Angela Saini weaves together a fascinating - and sorely necessary - new science of women. As Saini takes listeners on a journey to uncover science's failure to understand women, she finds that we're still living with the legacy of an establishment that's just beginning to recover from centuries of entrenched exclusion and prejudice. Sexist assumptions are stubbornly persistent: even in recent years, researchers have insisted that women are choosy and monogamous while men are naturally promiscuous or that the way men's and women's brains are wired confirms long-discredited gender stereotypes. As Saini reveals, however, groundbreaking research is finally rediscovering women's bodies and minds. Inferior investigates the gender wars in biology, psychology, and anthropology and delves into cutting-edge scientific studies to uncover a fascinating new portrait of women's brains, bodies, and role in human evolution.
©2017 Angela Saini (P)2017 Random House Audio
Attachment in Psychotherapy
Summary
This eloquent book translates attachment theory and research into an innovative framework that grounds adult psychotherapy in the facts of childhood development. Advancing a model of treatment as transformation through relationship, the author integrates attachment theory with neuroscience, trauma studies, relational psychotherapy, and the psychology of mindfulness. Vivid case material illustrates how therapists can tailor interventions to fit the attachment needs of their patients, thus helping them to generate the internalized secure base for which their early relationships provided no foundation. Demonstrating the clinical uses of a focus on nonverbal interaction, the book describes powerful techniques for working with the emotional responses and bodily experiences of patient and therapist alike.
©2007 The Guilford Press (P)2017 Tantor
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Summary
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope, and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries, and governments and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones, and virtual assistants to 3-D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wearable sensors, and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3-D printed liver are already in development. Imagine "smart factories" in which global systems of manufacturing are coordinated virtually or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society, and individuals. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future - one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; in which progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frameworks that advance progress.
©2017 Klaus Schwab (P)2017 Random House Audio
You Can't Touch My Hair
Summary
A New York Times Best Seller "A must-read...Phoebe Robinson discusses race and feminism in such a funny, real, and specific way, it penetrates your brain and stays with you." (Ilana Glazer, cocreator and costar of Broad City) A hilarious and timely essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from upcoming comedy superstar and 2 Dope Queens podcaster Phoebe Robinson Being a black woman in America means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities every day. Comedian Phoebe Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: She's been unceremoniously relegated to the role of "the black friend", as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she's been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel ("isn't that...white people music?"); she's been called "uppity" for having an opinion in the workplace; she's been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. The. Time. Now she's ready to take these topics to audio - and she's going to make you laugh as she's doing it. Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is "Queen. Bae. Jesus" to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, 2 Dope Queens, to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, You Can't Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise. One of Glamour's "Top 10 Books of 2016" Featured on Refinery 29's list of "The Best Books of 2016 So Far" Read by the author, and featuring additional narration by Jessica Williams and John Hodgson
©2016 Phoebe Robinson (P)2016 Penguin Audio
The King Within
Summary
In this pioneering contribution to the emerging men's movement, Robert Moore, a Jungian psychoanalyst and Douglas Gillette, a mythologist, examine the inner King - one of the four archetypes on the male psyche. The inner King integrates power and nurturing, firmness and caring, courage and creativity, self-affirmation and self-sacrifice. From his central position between the world of imagination and the world of action, the King within challenges every man to take up his own scepter, to dream and to make them come true. The King Within both responds to the needs being formulated by the men's movement and addresses the larger questions of male psychology.
©1992 Robert Moore (P)2009 Phoenix
A Room of One's Own
Summary
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
©2011 CSA Word (P)2011 CSA Word
How to Create a Mind
Summary
Ray Kurzweil, the bold futurist and author of the New York Times best seller The Singularity Is Near, is arguably today’s most influential technological visionary. A pioneering inventor and theorist, he has explored for decades how artificial intelligence can enrich and expand human capabilities. Now, in his much-anticipated How to Create a Mind, he takes this exploration to the next step: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works, then applying that knowledge to create vastly intelligent machines. Drawing on the most recent neuroscience research, his own research and inventions in artificial intelligence, and compelling thought experiments, he describes his new theory of how the neocortex (the thinking part of the brain) works: as a self-organizing hierarchical system of pattern recognizers. Kurzweil shows how these insights will enable us to greatly extend the powers of our own mind and provides a road map for the creation of super-intelligence - humankind’s most exciting next venture. We are now at the dawn of an era of radical possibilities in which merging with our technology will enable us to effectively address the world’s grand challenges. How to Create a Mind is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books in many years - a touchstone for any consideration of the path of human progress.
©2012 Ray Kurzweil (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
WomanCode
Summary
A holistic health coach helps you rebalance your hormones, create easier periods, preserve your fertility, and revitalize your sex drive. Alisa Vitti will teach you how to support the chemical conversation of your entire endocrine system, from your head to your ovaries. With a few easy strategies and changes to your diet and lifestyle, you can not only solve hormone-related problems, but have the energy, mental focus, and stable moods to be your best self. Simply put, once you support the flow of your hormones, you create flow in your life. In WomanCode, you will learn how to connect the dots between your symptoms, your biochemistry, and food. This prescriptive program over the past decade has successfully helped thousands of women regulate their periods, clear up their skin, lose weight, alleviate PMS, get pregnant naturally, have more successful IVF, restore their energy, improve their moods, and have better sex. Vitti's revolutionary five-step program gives you the insight and tools you need to: Work in harmony with your body's natural rhythms Minimize the impact of toxins in the environment, your diet, and the products that you use Target and support the parts of your endocrine function (blood sugar, adrenals, elimination, or reproduction) that need attention tap into the immensely transformative power of your feminine energy Passionately and strategically, the WomanCode protocol gives women from their teenage years to perimenopause the keys to unlock their hormone health. Giving a brain to ovaries explanation of what is going on inside your endocrine system, Vitti can help your whole body thrive. Now that you have turned on your healing power, you are better able to power up your purpose in life. If we're in the flow of our internal rhythm, we'll also attract effortless opportunities, enjoy moments of creative expression, and connect intimately with others - that's when we're in the flow of our power, our life-force energy, and our fullest potential. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2013 Alisa Vitti (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers
Vagina
Summary
An astonishing work of cutting-edge science and cultural history that radically reframes how we understand the vagina - and consequently, how we understand women - from one of our most respected cultural critics and thinkers, Naomi Wolf, author of the modern classic The Beauty Myth. When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers, much to her own astonishment, an increasing body of scientific evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but an intrinsic component of the female brain - and thus has a fundamental connection to female consciousness itself. Utterly enthralling and totally fascinating, Vagina: A New Biography draws on this set of insights about "the mind-vagina connection" to reveal new information about what women really need, and considers what a sexual relationship - and a relationship to the self - transformed by these insights could look like. Exhilarating and groundbreaking, Vagina: A New Biography combines rigorous science, explained for lay listeners, with cultural history and deeply personal considerations of the role of female desire in female identity, creativity, and confidence, from interviewees of all walks of life. Heralded by Publishers Weekly as one of the best science books of the year, it is a provocative and deeply engaging book that elucidates the ties between a woman's experience of her vagina and her sense of self; her impulses, dreams, and courage; and her role in love and in society in completely new and revelatory ways sure to provoke impassioned conversation. A brilliant and nuanced synthesis of physiology, history, and cultural criticism, Vagina: A New Biography explores the physical, political, and spiritual implications of this startling series of new scientific breakthroughs for women and for society as a whole, from a writer whose conviction and keen intelligence have propelled her works to the tops of bestseller lists, and firmly into the realms of modern classics.
©2012 Naomi Wolf (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Joyous Body
Summary
"Each one of us is a triumvirate being - at once the union of the body, soul, and all that lies within." For any that exprience disharmony amongst these three vital aspects, Dr. Clarissa Estes reveals a path back to wholeness. Join her with the Joyous Body for the third volume of her masterwork on the Wise Woman archetype. This empowering six-session program shares original and old family stories, poems and psychological commentary on the challenges, remedies and ancient knowings of the female body, "that which is not a dumb servant but a divine human traveler and consort."
©2011 Clarissa Pinkola Estes (P)2011 Sounds True
The Language Instinct
Summary
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.
©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Ice Man
Summary
Richard "The Ice Man" Kuklinski led a double life beyond anything ever seen on The Sopranos, becoming one of the most notorious professional assassins in American history while hosting neighborhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey. Now, after 240 hours of face-to-face interviews with Kuklinski and his wife and daughters, author Philip Carlo tells his extraordinary story. Kuklinski was Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's partner in the killing of Paul Castellano at Spark's Steakhouse. John Gotti hired him to kill the neighbor who accidentally ran over his child. For an additional price, he would make victims suffer; he conducted this sadistic business with cold-hearted intensity, never disappointing his customers. By his own estimate, he killed over 200 men, taking enormous pride in his variety and ferocity of technique. Kuklinski's story, once known, captivated the public and became the subject of three HBO documentaries about which the New York Times raved, "Few viewers are ever likely to forget this thoroughly chilling portrait. As for possible movie competition, it would work on the level of The Silence of the Lambs."
©2006 Philip Carlo (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Summary
Tom Wolfe - one of the 20th century’s foremost voices in cultural criticism - went from local news reporter to international icon in 1968, with the publication of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now voiced with vivacity and vigor by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels, the non-fiction swan-dive delves into the world of hippies, hedonism, and everything in between. To most, Ken Kesey is best known as the author of the celebrated novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But for Tom Wolfe, Ken was the leader of the Merry Pranksters, a band of counter-culture bohemians who traveled cross-country in a far-out, brightly painted school bus they dubbed Furthur. The Pranksters were known for drug-fueled escapades, none more famous than the so-called “Acid Test”, wherein a party full of people would take LSD in an effort to escape the banality of reality and connect on a higher, subconscious plane. As Wolfe follows the group down their nonconformist rabbit hole, he’s led on a wild trip through the backwaters of the 1960s, encountering the era’s living legends - from The Grateful Dead to Allen Ginsberg - along the way.
©1968 Tom Wolfe (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Unlearn
Summary
Progress is a constant state of learning and unlearning. Writer, curator and producer Liv Little questions our modern understanding of big subjects – consent, race, transness, disability and body image – by learning more about their past. Unlearn addresses a series of uniquely modern dilemmas: how did we get to the point where couples verify consent to have sex with each other via an app? How has our language about trans issues become so problematic and challenging? Is it possible for us to unpick the toxic understanding we have of our own body image? Liv talks to contributors from across generational lines about what they’ve learnt and unlearnt during their lifetime in relation to these subjects. Has the progress that was made by each generation been positive? Or has it set us up for a more complicated present and future? And if progress is a constant state of unlearning the knowledge that’s passed on from generation to generation, what comes next? Produced by Wisebuddah for Audible Originals. This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all 5 episodes to your Library now.
©2019 Audible, Ltd. (P)2019 Audible, Ltd.
Superior
Summary
2019 Best-Of Lists: 10 Best Science Books of the Year (Smithsonian Magazine) · Best Science Books of the Year (NPR's Science Friday) · Best Science and Technology Books from 2019 (Library Journal) An astute and timely examination of the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences. Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 title The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races. If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real. As our understanding of complex traits like intelligence, and the effects of environmental and cultural influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between "races" - to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions - stubbornly persists. At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science - and a powerful reminder that, biologically, we are all far more alike than different.
©2019 Angela Saini (P)2019 Random House Audio
Why Gender Matters
Summary
A revised and updated edition (with more than 70% new material) of the classic book about innate differences between boys and girls and how best to parent and teach girls and boys successfully, with new chapters on sexual orientation and on transgender and intersex kids. Back in 2005, the first edition of Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls—how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they process emotions and take risks differently. Dr. Sax argued that in failing to recognize these hardwired differences between boys and girls, we ended up reinforcing damaging stereotypes, medicalizing misbehavior, and failing to help kids to reach their full potential. In the intervening decade, the world has changed, with an avalanche of new research which supports, deepens, and expands Dr. Sax's work. This revised and updated edition includes new findings about how boys and girls interact differently with social media and video games; a new discussion of research on gender non-conforming, LGB, and transgender kids, new findings about how girls and boys see differently, hear differently, and even smell differently; and new material about the medicalization of misbehavior.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Leonard Sax
Innocent
Summary
Innocent is the shocking true story of little Molly and Kit, siblings, aged three years and 18 months, who are brought into care as an emergency after suffering non-accidental injuries. Aneta and Filip, the children’s parents, are distraught when their children are taken into care. Aneta maintains she is innocent of harming them, while Filip appears bewildered and out of his depth. It’s true the family has never come to the attention of the social services before, and little Kit and Molly appear to have been well looked after, but Kit has a broken arm and bruises on his face. Could it be they were a result of a genuine accident, as Aneta is claiming? Both children become sick with a mysterious illness while experienced foster carer Cathy is looking after them. Very worried, she asks for more hospital tests to be done. They’ve already had a lot. When Cathy’s daughter, Lucy, becomes ill too she believes she has found the cause of Kit and Molly’s illness, and the parents aren’t to blame. However, nothing could be further from the truth, and what comes to light is far more sinister and shocking.
©2019 Cathy Glass (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Beauty Myth
Summary
The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
©2002, 1991 Naomi Wolf (P)2013 Audible, Inc.