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.
Fry's English Delight (Series 6)
Summary
National treasure and renowned wit Stephen Fry explores the highways and byways of the English language in these celebrated programmes. In each episode, Fry explores the oddities and celebrates the curiosities of the language we use. His love of words is indulged with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity at all times. From puns and metaphors to clichés and gibberish, this famously witty, incisive and engaging series explores the joys of the English language.
©2013 Stephen Fry (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Come of Age
Summary
In his landmark provocative style, Stephen Jenkinson makes the case that we must birth a new generation of elders, one poised and willing to be true stewards of the planet and its species. Come of Age does not offer tips on how to be a better senior citizen or how to be kinder to our elders. Rather, with lyrical prose and incisive insight, Stephen Jenkinson explores the great paradox of elderhood in North America: how we are awash in the aged and yet somehow lacking in wisdom; how we relegate senior citizens to the corner of the house while simultaneously heralding them as sage elders simply by virtue of their age. Our own unreconciled relationship with what it means to be an elder has yielded a culture nearly bereft of them. Meanwhile, the planet boils, and the younger generation boils with anger over being left an environment and sociopolitical landscape deeply scarred and broken. Taking on the sacred cow of the family, Jenkinson argues that elderhood is a function rather than an identity - it is not a position earned simply by the number of years on the planet or the title “parent” or “grandparent”. As with his seminal book Die Wise, Jenkinson interweaves rich personal stories with iconoclastic observations that will leave listeners radically rethinking their concept of what it takes to be an elder and the risks of doing otherwise. Part critique, part call to action, Come of Age is a love song inviting us - imploring us - to elderhood in this time of trouble. That time is now. We’re an hour before dawn, and first light will show the carnage, or the courage, we bequeath to the generations to come.
©2018 Stephen Jenkinson (P)2018 North Atlantic Books
Same Kind of Different as Me
Summary
Listen to the critically acclaimed number-one New York Times best seller with more than one million copies sold. Same Kind of Different as Me was a major motion picture release by Paramount in fall 2017. A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery. An upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel. A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream. A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it. It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana...and an East Texas honky-tonk...and, without a doubt, inside the heart of God. It unfolds at a Hollywood hacienda...an upscale New York gallery...a downtown dumpster...a Texas ranch. Gritty with betrayal, pain, and brutality, it also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love. Bonus material in this special movie edition includes: A new epilogue with updates on the authors since the release of the original book The amazing story behind the movie, how it got made, and the incredible experiences while filming in Jackson, MS.
©2016 Ron Hall (P)2016 Thomas Nelson
Life After Death
Summary
The definitive memoir by Damien Echols of the "West Memphis Three", who was falsely convicted of committing three murders. Hear this unforgettable account of his 18 years on death row.
©2012 Damien Echols (P)2012 Penguin Audio
The Attention Merchants
Summary
From Tim Wu, author of the award-winning The Master Switch (a New Yorker and Fortune Book of the Year) and who coined the term "net neutrality” - a revelatory, ambitious, and urgent account of how the capture and resale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. Attention merchant: an industrial-scale harvester of human attention. A firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants", contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to the explosion of the mobile web; from AOL and the invention of email to the attention monopolies of Google and Facebook; from Ed Sullivan to celebrity power brands like Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your consideration, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Wu describes the revolts that have risen against the relentless siege of our awareness, from the remote control to the creation of public broadcasting to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants are always growing new heads, even as their means of getting inside our heads are changing our very nature - cognitive, social, political, and otherwise - in ways unimaginable even a generation ago. “A startling and sweeping examination of the increasingly ubiquitous commercial effort to capture and commodify our attention.... We’ve become the consumers, the producers, and the content. We are selling ourselves to ourselves.” (Tom Vanderbilt, The New Republic) “An erudite, energizing, outraging, funny and thorough history.... A devastating critique of ad tech as it stands today, transforming 'don't be evil' into the surveillance business model in just a few short years. It connects the dots between the sale of advertising inventory in schools to the bizarre ecosystem of trackers, analyzers and machine-learning models that allow the things you look at on the web to look back at you.... This stuff is my daily beat, and I learned a lot from Attention Merchants.” (Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing) “Illuminating.” (Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review of Books)
©2016 Tim Wu (P)2016 Random House Audio
Figuring
Summary
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman - and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.
©2019 Maria Popova (P)2019 Random House Audio
Torn
Summary
As a teenager and young man, Justin Lee felt deeply torn. Nicknamed "God Boy" by his peers, he knew that he was called to a life in the evangelical Christian ministry. But Lee harbored a secret: He also knew that he was gay. In this groundbreaking book, Lee recalls the events - his coming out to his parents, his experiences with the "ex-gay" movement, and his in-depth study of the Bible - that led him, eventually, to self-acceptance. But more than just a memoir, Torn provides insightful, practical guidance for all committed Christians who wonder how to relate to gay friends or family members - or who struggle with their own sexuality. Convinced that "in a culture that sees gays and Christians as enemies, gay Christians are in a unique position to bring peace," Lee demonstrates that people of faith on both sides of the debate can respect, learn from, and love one another.
©2012 Justin Lee (P)2013 Hachette Audio
The Westies
Summary
It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window. Under their reign, Hell's Kitchen becomes a place where death literally rains from the sky. But when Mickey goes down for a murder he didn't commit, he suspects his friend has sold him out. He returns the favor, breaking the underworld's code of silence and testifying against his gang in open court. From one of the writers behind NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street comes an incredible true story of what it means to survive in the world of organized crime, where murder is commonplace.
©2006 T. J. English (P)2017 Tantor
Do Nothing
Summary
“A welcome antidote to our toxic hustle culture of burnout.” (Arianna Huffington) “This book is so important and could truly save lives.”(Elizabeth Gilbert) “A clarion call to work smarter (and) accomplish more by doing less.” (Adam Grant) We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable? Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break? In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost - we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile. Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.
©2020 Celeste Headlee (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide
Summary
Getting an accurate diagnosis is the first step toward reclaiming your life from bipolar disorder. But if you or someone you love is struggling with the frantic highs and crushing lows of this illness, there are still many hurdles to surmount at home, at work, and in daily life. You need current information and practical problem-solving advice you can count on. You've come to the right place. In The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, you will learn: How you can distinguish between early warning signs of bipolar mood swings and normal ups and downs What medications are available, and what their side effects are What you should do when you find yourself escalating into mania or descending into depression How you can tell your coworkers about your illness without endangering your career How you can provide constructive help and support to a loved one with bipolar disorder Trusted authority Dr. David J. Miklowitz offers straight talk, true stories, and proven strategies that can help you achieve greater balance and free yourself from out-of-control moods. The updated second edition of this best-selling guide has the latest facts on medications and therapy, an expanded discussion of parenting issues for bipolar adults, and a new chapter, "For Women Only". PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2011 The Guilford Press (P)2013 Tantor
Human Diversity
Summary
All people are equal but, as Human Diversity explores, all groups of people are not the same - a fascinating investigation of the genetics and neuroscience of human differences. The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas: Gender is a social construct. Race is a social construct. Class is a function of privilege. The problem is that all three dogmas are half-truths. They have stifled progress in understanding the rich texture that biology adds to our understanding of the social, political, and economic worlds we live in. It is not a story to be feared. "There are no monsters in the closet," Murray writes, "no dread doors we must fear opening." But it is a story that needs telling. Human Diversity does so without sensationalism, drawing on the most authoritative scientific findings, celebrating both our many differences and our common humanity. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Charles Murray (P)2020 Twelve
Missoula
Summary
From best-selling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative about a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana - stories that illuminate the human drama behind the national plague of campus rape. Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic surroundings, a lively social scene, and an excellent football team - the Grizzlies - with a rabid fan base. The Department of Justice investigated 350 sexual assaults reported to the Missoula police between January 2008 and May 2012. Few of these assaults were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this Missoula is also typical. A DOJ report released in December of 2014 estimates 110,000 women between the ages of 18 and 24 are raped each year. Krakauer's devastating narrative of what happened in Missoula makes clear why rape is so prevalent on American campuses and why rape victims are so reluctant to report assault. Acquaintance rape is a crime like no other. Unlike burglary or embezzlement or any other felony, the victim often comes under more suspicion than the alleged perpetrator. This is especially true if the victim is sexually active, if she had been drinking prior to the assault - and if the man she accuses plays on a popular sports team. The vanishingly small but highly publicized incidents of false accusations are often used to dismiss her claims in the press. If the case goes to trial, the woman's entire personal life becomes fair game for defense attorneys. This brutal reality goes a long way toward explaining why acquaintance rape is the most underreported crime in America. In addition to physical trauma, its victims often suffer devastating psychological damage that leads to feelings of shame, emotional paralysis, and stigmatization. PTSD rates for rape victims are estimated to be 50 percent - higher than soldiers returning from war.
©2015 Jon Krakauer (P)2015 Random House Audio
Eating in the Light of the Moon
Summary
Weaving a rich tapestry of multicultural myths, ancient legends, and simple folktales, Anita Johnston, PhD, inspires women to free themselves from disordered eating by discovering the metaphors that are hidden in their own life stories. "Storytellers speak in the language of myth and metaphor," Johnston explains. "They tell us a truth that is not literal but symbolic. If we hear the stories with only the outer ear, they can seem absurd and untrue, but when listened to with the inner ear, they convey a truth that can be understood and absorbed on a deeply personal level. In this way stories help us connect with our inner world, to the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth, and to the power of our intuitive wisdom." An immensely enjoyable book, Eating in the Light of the Moon is filled with practical exercises and profound insights. Twenty chapters explore different themes of self-discovery and empowerment on core issues such as intuition, symbolism, feelings, sexuality, and recovery.
©1996 Anita A. Johnston (P)2016 Tantor
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
Summary
The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together in one volume, with a new preface, two best sellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, by an "important humorist in the classic tradition" (The New York Times Book Review) who is "the natural successor to Dorothy Parker" (British Vogue). In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life - its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining.
©1994 Fran Lebowitz (P)2012 Random House Audio
How to Think
Summary
How to Think is a contrarian treatise on why we're not as good at thinking as we assume - but how recovering this lost art can rescue our inner lives from the chaos of modern life. As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us - political, social, religious - Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided but because the people involved simply aren't thinking. Most of us don't want to think, Jacobs writes. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that's a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias. In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking - forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, "alternative facts", and information overload - and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It's impossible to "think for yourself".) Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C. S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.
©2017 Alan Jacobs (P)2017 Random House Audio
Women Who Think Too Much
Summary
From one of the nation's preeminent experts in the study of women and emotion, here is a breakthrough new book based on the author's award-winning research. It's not a surprise that our fast-paced, overly analytical culture is pushing people - especially women - to spend countless hours thinking about negative ideas, feelings, and experiences. Renowned psychologist Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema calls this overthinking. Her groundbreaking research shows that an increasing number of women - more than half of those in her extensive study - are doing it too much and too often, hindering their ability to lead a satisfying life. Overthinking can be anything from fretting about big questions such as "What am I doing with my life?" to losing sleep over a friend's innocent comment. It is causing women to feel sad, anxious, or seriously depressed, and she challenges the assumption that constantly expressing and analyzing our emotions is a good thing. In Women Who Think Too Much, Nolen-Hoeksema provides concrete strategies that can be used to escape these negative thoughts, move to higher ground, and avoid future traps.
©2003 Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (P)2003 Macmillan Audio
The Secrets of My Life
Summary
In this remarkable memoir, former Olympian and Kardashian family member Caitlyn Jenner reveals shocking and heartbreaking stories from her journey to become a transgender woman and fight for the LGBTQ+ community. Imagine denying your core and soul. Then add to it the most impossible expectations that people have for you because you are the personification of the American male athlete. Bruce Jenner, the celebrated Olympic icon and later the patriarch of one of the most famous families in the world, seemed to be living a dream life of success, fame, and prosperity. But the all-American image and million-dollar smile belied a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria, and it wasn't until the sensational Diane Sawyer interview that the public mask of Bruce Jenner was finally retired, and through the memorable Vanity Fair piece by Buzz Bissinger, that Caitlyn Jenner was introduced to the world and set free to exist on her own terms. Since then, Caitlyn has undertaken an arduous emotional and physical odyssey to achieve the completeness she always felt was missing. In The Secrets of My Life, Caitlyn reflects on the inner conflict she experienced growing up in an era of rigidly defined gender identities and the cruel irony of being hailed by an entire nation as the ultimate symbol of manhood. She recounts her Olympic triumph, her rise to fame, and relates how her sense of frustration and shame grew with the passing years and the lengths to which she had to go to conceal her true self. Caitlyn in turn uncovers the toll that these personal struggles had on her three marriages and, subsequently, the relationships with her children. She also talks candidly about her life in the public eye as a member of the Kardashian clan, what led to her decision to become Caitlyn, and how she, her family, the transgender community, and the rest of the world has since embraced her new life. Filled with incredibly personal and moving stories of struggle and victory, of anxiety and fear, and, finally, of surrender and acceptance, The Secrets of My Life reveals the real Caitlyn Jenner by tracing her long and eventful journey to becoming herself.
©2017 Caitlyn Jenner (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Fair Play
Summary
A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick "A hands-on, real talk guide for navigating the hot-button issues that so many families struggle with." (Reese Witherspoon) Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way.... It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family - and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was...underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than 500 men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner. "Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space - as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.
©2019 Eve Rodsky (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Obsession
Summary
In Obsession, John Douglas once again takes us fascinatingly behind the scenes, focusing his expertise on predatory crimes, primarily against women. With a deep sense of compassion for the victims and an uncanny understanding of the perpetrators, Douglas looks at the obsessions that lead to rape, stalking, and sexual murder through such cases as Ronnie Shelton, the serial rapist who terrorized Cleveland, and New York's notorious "Preppie Murder". But Douglas also looks at obsession on the other side of the moral spectrum: his own career-long obsession with hunting these predators. Douglas shows us how we can all fight back and protect ourselves, our families, and loved ones against the scourge of the violent predators in our midst. The first step is insight and understanding, and no one is better qualified to penetrate obsession than John Douglas.
©1998 Mindhunters, Inc. All rights reserved. (P)2019 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
More than a Woman
Summary
The author of the international best seller How to Be a Woman returns with another “hilarious neo-feminist manifesto” (NPR) in which she reflects on parenting, middle-age, marriage, existential crises - and, of course, feminism. A decade ago, Caitlin Moran burst onto the scene with her instant best seller, How to Be a Woman, a hilarious and resonant take on feminism, the patriarchy, and all things womanhood. Moran’s seminal book followed her from her terrible 13th birthday through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, and beyond - and is considered the inaugural work of the irreverent confessional feminist memoir genre that continues to occupy a major place in the cultural landscape. Since that publication, it’s been a glorious 10 years for young women: Barack Obama loves Fleabag, and Dior make “FEMINIST” T-shirts. However, middle-aged women still have some nagging, unanswered questions: Can feminists have Botox? Why isn’t there such a thing as “Mum Bod”? Why do hangovers suddenly hurt so much? Is the camel-toe the new erogenous zone? Why do all your clothes suddenly hate you? Has feminism gone too far? Will your To Do List ever end? And who's looking after the children? As timely as it is hysterically funny, this memoir/manifesto will have listeners laughing out loud, blinking back tears, and redefining their views on feminism and the patriarchy. More than a Woman is a brutally honest, scathingly funny, and absolutely necessary take on the life of the modern woman - and one that only Caitlin Moran can provide.
©2020 Caitlin Moran (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers