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.
"Our Crowd"
Summary
The New York Times bestselling history of the rise of the most powerful and privileged Jewish families in America They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite "100," a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry. "Our Crowd" is the fascinating story of this rarefied society. Based on letters, documents, diary entries, and intimate personal remembrances of family lore by members of these most illustrious clans, it is an engrossing portrait of upper-class Jewish life over two centuries; a riveting story of the bankers, brokers, financiers, philanthropists, and business tycoons who started with nothing and turned their family names into American institutions.
©1967 Stephen Birmingham (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. The Macmillan Company for the letters of Otto Kahn which appeared in "The Many Lives of Otto Kahn" by Mary Jane Mate, © 1963 by Margaret D. Ryan.
Courageous Conversations About Race
Summary
Create a system-wide plan for transforming the district office, schools, and classrooms into places that truly support all students achieving their highest levels! This updated edition of the best seller explains the need for candid, courageous conversations about race so that educators may understand why achievement inequality persists and learn how they can develop a curriculum that promotes true educational equity and excellence. Here's what you'll find in this audiobook: Revised courageous conversation compass Racial autobiographies Case study on St. Paul Public Schools which has stayed on track with the courageous conversation protocol and framework Links to video segments of the author describing the work Activities and checklists for school and district leaders Action and implementation steps
©2015 Glenn E. Singleton (P)2019 Glenn E. Singleton
A Death in Belmont
Summary
In 1963, with the city of Boston already terrified by a series of savage crimes known as the Boston Stranglings, a murder occurred in Belmont, just a few blocks from the house of Sebastian Junger's family, a murder that seemed to fit exactly the pattern of the Strangler. Roy Smith, a black man who had cleaned the victim's house that day, was convicted, but the terror of the Strangler continued. Two years later, Albert DeSalvo, a handyman who had been working at the Jungers' home on the day of the Belmont murder, who had often spent time there alone with Sebastian and his mother, confessed in lurid detail to being the Boston Strangler. By turns exciting and subtle, A Death in Belmont chronicles three lives that collide, and are ultimately destroyed, in the vortex of one of the most controversial serial murder cases in America. The power of the story and the brilliance of Junger's reporting place this book on the short shelf of classics beside In Cold Blood and Helter Skelter.
©2006 Sebastian Junger (P)2006 HarperCollinsPublishers
The Johnstown Flood
Summary
At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.
Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing portrait of life in 19th-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. This is a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are behaving responsibly.
©1968 David McCullough (P)2005 Simon & Schuster Inc. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Prince of Darkness
Summary
In the middle decades of the 19th century Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. He was reportedly the richest African American man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of $250 million in today's currency. In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world, he married a white woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and he generally set his white contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them. An important contribution to American history, Hamilton's life offers a way into considering, from the unusual perspective of a black man, subjects that are usually seen as being quintessentially white, totally segregated from the African American past.
©2015 Shane White (P)2015 Tantor
Fifteen Paths
Summary
Prescriptions for imaginative living in today's noisy and ever-narrowing world. Our social conversation has gone awry. We are surrounded by noise and are retreating to social media bubbles. As conversations across ideological divides become increasingly difficult, we as a society need to rethink what it means to listen, to think, to create, and to be democratically engaged citizens. Fifteen Paths documents the journey of a disillusioned business professor who came to realize that in order to transcend the noise, we need more imaginative expressions and fewer argumentative ones. David Weitzner sought the counsel of 14 iconoclastic artists, including Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Jeff Coffin (Dave Matthews Band), Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Lydia Lunch, and Del the Funky Homosapien. The audiobook offers 15 concrete courses of action to reimagine a socially engaged life and an afterword documenting the surprising outcome of the author's personal journey.
©2019 David Weitzner (P)2019 Gildan Media, LLC
Smart but Scattered - and Stalled
Summary
Whether you're a young adult who is stalled on the journey to independence or a concerned parent still sharing the family nest, this compassionate book is for you. Providing a fresh perspective on the causes of failure to launch, the expert authors present a 10-step plan that helps grown kids and parents work together to achieve liftoff. Learn why brain-based executive skills, such as planning, organization, and time management are so important to success and what you can do to strengthen them. You get practical tools for figuring out what areas to target, building skills, identifying a desired career path, and making a customized action plan. Vivid stories of other families navigating the same challenges (including father and son Richard and Colin Guare) reveal what kind of parental support is productive - and when to let go. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 The Guilford Press (P)2019 Tantor
Learning in Adulthood
Summary
For nearly three decades, Learning in Adulthood has been the definitive guide in the field of adult education. Now in its fourth edition, this comprehensive volume is fully revised to reflect the latest developments in theory, research, and practice. The authors integrate foundational research and current knowledge to present fresh, original perspectives on teaching and learning in adulthood. Written by internationally-recognized experts, this market-leading guide draws from work in sociology, philosophy, critical social theory, psychology, and education to provide an inclusive overview of adult learning. This book is accessible for listeners new to adult education, yet suitably rigorous for those more familiar with the subject. Content is organized into four practical parts, covering topics such as the social context of adult learning, self-directed and transformational learning, postmodern and feminist perspectives, cognitive development in adulthood, and more. Offering the most comprehensive single-volume treatment of adult learning available, this landmark book offers a wide-ranging perspective on adult learning, synthesizes the latest thinking and work in the field, includes coverage of the sociocultural perspectives of adult learning, and explores the broader social implications of adult education.
©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2020 Tantor
Black Futures
Summary
An archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony A luminous map to navigate an opaque and disorienting present An infinite geography of possible futures What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work - essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more - to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The audiobook presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Listeners will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to insightful infographics. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every listener. This audiobook includes a PDF of contributor biographies from the book. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Kimberly Drew, Jenna Wortham (P)2020 Random House Audio
Becoming Human
Summary
Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the Enlightenment. In so doing, Becoming Human demonstrates that the history of racialized gender and maternity, specifically antiblackness, is indispensable to future thought on matter, materiality, animality, and posthumanism. Jackson argues that African diasporic cultural production alters the meaning of being human and engages in imaginative practices of world-building against a history of the bestialization and thingification of blackness - the process of imagining the Black person as an empty vessel, a non-being, an ontological zero - and the violent imposition of colonial myths of racial hierarchy. What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of "the human".
©2020 New York University (P)2021 Tantor
About Us
Summary
Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are-not as others perceive them - About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers, and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them. Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times "Disability" column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, "Nothing about us without us," this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience - stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond. Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability - from the friend who says "I don't think of you as disabled," to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, "Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?" - the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as "disabled" by the broader public.
©2019 The New York Times Company; Foreword copyright 2019 by Andrew Solomon (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Her Lover's Wife
Summary
New York Times best-selling authors Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris take a new look at Colorado's most notorious crimes, including three of the country's most infamous crimes, which all occurred in the same area of Colorado: the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the Columbine school shooting, and the Aurora movie theater massacre. They also report on an Amish serial killer, a deadly fatal attraction, and a minister's wife whose illicit passion drove her to murder.
©2014 Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris (P)2015 Gregg Olsen
Kind One
Summary
As a teenage girl, Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother's second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm "ninety miles from nowhere." In the shadows of the lush Kentucky landscape, Ginny discovers the empty promises of Linus' "paradise" - a place where the charms of her husband fall away to reveal a troubled man and cruel slave owner. Ginny befriends the young slaves Cleome and Zinnia who work at the farm - until Linus' attentions turn to them, and she finds herself torn between her husband and only companions. The events that follow Linus' death change all three women for life. Haunting, chilling, and suspenseful, Kind One. is a powerful tale of redemption and human endurance in antebellum America. Laird Hunt is the author of several works of fiction and a finalist for the 2010 PEN Center USA Award in Fiction. Currently on the faculty of the University of Denver's creative writing program, he and his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter, Eva Grace.
©2012 Laird Hunt (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Muslim Problem
Summary
A provocative exploration of what it means to be a Muslim today. Why are Muslim men portrayed as inherently violent? Does the veil violate women's rights? Is Islam stopping Muslims from integrating? Across western societies, Muslims are more misunderstood than any other minority. But what does it mean to believe in Islam today, to have forged your beliefs and identity in the shadow of 9/11 and the War on Terror? Exploding stereotypes from both inside and outside the faith, The Muslim Problem shows that while we may think we know all about Islam we are often wrong about even the most basic facts. Bold and provocative, The Muslim Problem is both a wake-up call for non-believers and a passionate new framework for Muslims to navigate a world that is often set against them.
©2021 Tawseef Khan (P)2021 W F Howes
Ancient Mythology: The Realms of the Gods Around the World
Summary
What is it that fascinates us about ancient Gods? Why do some myths persist and some fade away? Why can we not seem to get them out of our heads? If you have ever wondered what ancient civilizations thought of their world, you need look no further than their mythology. Gods, Goddesses, and stories were just a reflection of their worldview. Even if you’re just curious about the kind of stories people made up back in the day, you’re in the right place! Ancient mythology is a vast universe, but in this audiobook, you’re going to learn all about the ancient Greeks, the ancient Indians, Sumerians, and the Norsemen. While the Greeks and Norsemen receive their fair share of attention, less is known about the inhabitants of ancient India. Even less is known of the civilization of Sumer, which incidentally lasted the longest of all! In this audiobook you will learn all about: Greek myths and heroes - Theseus, Perseus, and more How the world was created and what every civilization thought of the world Morality and logic according to the ancients Epics and tales of heroes you’ve never heard of The underworlds the ancients believed in And so much more! Join the people who have been enthralled by this glimpse into a world long forgotten. Buy now!
©2019 Tribe Metrics, LLC (P)2020 Tribe Metrics, LLC
The Promise of Kuan Yin
Summary
The best and most comprehensive book on the most important and best-loved Chinese goddess. Walk down the streets of Chinatown in any American or western European city and look around. She is there. Walk through the downtown streets, look in a shop window. She is there. Go to any city in China and open your eyes. She is there, too. Kuan Yin is the most ubiquitous Chinese deity - and the most loved. She is the living expression of compassion whose gentle face and elegant figure form the center of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Until relatively recently, she was barely known in the West, and few studies had been made of her. Originally published as Kuan Yin by Harper Collins in 1995 (and republished as The Kuan Yin Chronicles by Hampton Roads in 2009), this seminal work explores the origins and evolution of the goddess in ancient China, early Buddhism, Taoism, and shamanism. Religious scholar Martin Palmer and Chinese divination expert Man-Ho Kwok discuss the Kuan Yin myths and stories, and Jay Ramsay provides fresh translations of 100 Kuan Yin poems that function both as literature and divination tools.
©1995, 2009, 2021 Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay, with Man-Ho Kwok (P)2021 Tantor
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Summary
Letters of a Woman Homesteader presents an outstanding first-person account of life on the American frontier. Elinore Pruitt Stewart took up homesteading in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, in 1909, to prove that a woman could ranch. Her captivating letters, sent to a former employer in Denver, reveal the isolation, the beauty, and the joy of working the prairie. The basis for the acclaimed movie Heartland, this charming chronicle is part of our vanished past. Stewart's courage and her delight in the world around her cannot fail to capture the hearts of her listeners.
©1923 Public Domain (P)2008 Tantor
Forget "Having It All"
Summary
A clear-eyed look at the history of American ideas about motherhood, how those ideas have impacted all women (whether they have kids or not), and how to fix the inequality that exists as a result. After filing a story only two hours after giving birth, and then getting straight back to full-time work the next morning, journalist Amy Westervelt had a revelation: America might claim to revere motherhood, but it treats women who have children like crap. From inadequate maternity leave to gender-based double standards, emotional labor to the "motherhood penalty" wage gap, racist devaluing of some mothers and overvaluing of others, and our tendency to consider women's value only in terms of their reproductive capacity, Westervelt became determined to understand how we got here and how the promise of "having it all" ever even became a thing when it was so far from reality for American women. In Forget "Having It All", Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted - or didn't - through every generation since. Using this historical backdrop, Westervelt draws out what we should replicate from our past (bringing back home economics, for example, this time with an emphasis on gender-balanced labor in the home), and what we must begin anew as we overhaul American motherhood (including taking a more intersectional view of motherhood, thinking deeply about the ways in which capitalism influences our views on reproduction, and incorporating working fathers into discussions about work-life balance). In looking for inspiration elsewhere in the world, Westervelt turned not to Scandinavia, where every work-life balance story inevitably ends up, but to Japan where politicians, in an increasingly desperate effort to increase the country's birth rates (sound familiar?), tried to apply Scandinavian-style policies atop a capitalist democracy not unlike America's, only to find that policy can't do much in the absence of cultural shift. Ultimately, Westervelt presents a measured, historically rooted and research-backed call for workplace policies, cultural norms, and personal attitudes about motherhood that will radically improve the lives of not just working moms but all Americans.
©2018 Amy Westervelt (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Shooting Midnight Cowboy
Summary
A history of the controversial Oscar-winning film that signaled a dramatic shift in American popular culture The director John Schlesinger’s Darling was nominated for five Academy Awards and introduced the world to the transcendently talented Julie Christie. Suddenly the toast of Hollywood, Schlesinger used his newfound clout to film an expensive Eastmancolor adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. Expectations were huge, making the movie’s complete critical and commercial failure even more devastating, and Schlesinger suddenly found himself persona non grata in the Hollywood circles he had hoped to join. Given his recent travails, Schlesinger’s next project seemed doubly daring, bordering on foolish. James Leo Herlihy’s novel Midnight Cowboy, about a Texas hustler trying to survive on the mean streets of 1960s New York, was dark and transgressive. Perhaps something about the book’s unsparing portrait of cultural alienation resonated with him. His decision to film it began one of the unlikelier convergences in cinematic history, centered around a city that seemed, at first glance, as unwelcoming as Herlihy’s novel itself. Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy tells the story of a modern classic that, by all accounts, should never have become one in the first place. The film’s boundary-pushing subject matter - homosexuality, prostitution, sexual assault - earned it an X rating when it first appeared in cinemas in 1969. For Midnight Cowboy, Schlesinger - who had never made a film in the United States - enlisted Jerome Hellman, a producer smarting from a failed marriage, and Waldo Salt, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter with a tortured past. The decision to shoot on location in New York, at a time when the city was approaching its gritty nadir, backfired when a sanitation strike filled Manhattan with garbage fires and fears of dysentery. Much more than a history of Schlesinger’s film, Shooting Midnight Cowboy is an arresting glimpse into the world from which it emerged: a troubled city that nurtured the talents and ambitions of the pioneering Polish cinematographer Adam Holender and the legendary casting director Marion Dougherty, who discovered both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight and supported them for the roles of Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck - leading to one of the most intensely moving joint performances ever to appear on screen. We follow Herlihy himself as he moves from the experimental confines of Black Mountain College to the theaters of Broadway, influenced by close relationships with Tennessee Williams and Anaïs Nin, and yet unable to find lasting literary success. By turns madcap and serious, and enriched by interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others, Shooting Midnight Cowboy is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema but also the story of a country (and an industry) beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.
©2021 Glenn Frankel (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing
Ogopogo
Summary
Did you know that of all the sea monsters, it’s the Ogopogo that is best documented? This means you could be learning more about it in one go than you would with the Loch Ness monster. Remember that these monsters are myths, and proof of their existence is yet to be found. But wouldn’t it be fun to extend your knowledge beyond what you can see?
©2020 Speedy Publishing Canada Ltd (P)2021 Speedy Publishing Canada Ltd