The Sociology category has 542 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 7,644 ratings. The most-rated is Blink.
Trauma Farm
Summary
An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field. Brett understands both tall tales and rigorous science as he explores the small mixed farm - meditating on the perfection of the egg and the nature of soil while also offering a scathing critique of agribusiness and the horror of modern slaughterhouses. Whether discussing the uses and misuses of gates, examining the energy of seeds, or bantering with his family, farm hands, and neighbors, he remains aware of the miracles of life, birth, and death that confront the rural world every day. Trauma Farm tells a story that's poetic, passionate, practical, and frequently hilarious, providing an unforgettable portrait of one farm and our separation from the natural world, as well as a commonsense analysis of rural life.
©2011 Brian Brett (P)2013 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.
Walk Out Walk On
Summary
"No One Is Coming to Help. Now What?" In this era of increasingly complex problems and shrinking resources, can we find meaningful and enduring solutions to the challenges we face today as individuals, communities, and nations? Walk Out Walk On, we invite you on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have walked out of limiting beliefs and assumptions and walked on to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need. From Mexico to India, from Columbus, Ohio to Johannesburg, South Africa, we discover that all communities have the intelligence and inventiveness to solve their seemingly insolvable problems. "We discovered a gift inside ourselves," one Brazilian said, "something that was already there."
©2011 Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze (P)2014 Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze
The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads
Summary
Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. In 2016, the Chicago Tribune reported that 10 to 20 percent of donor eggs went to gay men expanding their families via surrogacy, and in many places the numbers were up 50 percent from the previous five years. Having a kid is like coming out all over again, on a daily basis, especially if you have an infant. Was coming out stressful for you? It's about to get more intense and you will have a child watching your every move and listening to your every word. If you stutter or pause, they may pick up on your discomfort and could start to feel like something is wrong about their family unit. The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads is jam-packed with parenting tips and advice to help you build confidence and become the awesome gay dad you were meant to be! Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads. It covers topics like how to find LGBT-friendly pediatricians, how to find LGBT-friendly schools, how to childproof your home with style, how to answer awkward and prying questions about your family from strangers, examples for what two-dad families can do on Mother's Day, and much more. The audiobook also includes parenting tips and advice from pediatricians, school educators, lawyers, and other same-sex parents. Best-selling author Eric Rosswood covers every aspect of fatherhood for gay men in this essential guide to growing your family in the post-DOMA era.
©2018 Eric Rosswood (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Bitter Taste of Dying
Summary
In his first book, author Jason Smith explores the depravity and desperation required to maintain an opiate addiction so fierce, he finds himself jumping continents to avoid jail time and learns the hard way that some demons cannot be outrun. While teaching in Europe, he meets a prostitute who secures drugs for him at the dangerous price of helping out the Russian Mafia; in China he gets his Percocet and Xanax fixes but terrifies a crowd of children and parents at his job in the process; and in Mexico Smith thought a Tijuana jail cell would be the perfect place to kick his Fentanyl habit but soon realizes that the power of addiction is stronger than his desire to escape it. The Bitter Taste of Dying paints a portrait of the modern-day drug addict with clarity and refreshing honesty. With a gritty mixture of self-deprecation and lighthearted confessional, Smith's memoir deftly describes the journey into the harrowing depths of addiction and demonstrates the experience of finally being released from it.
©2015 Jason Smith (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Latest Readings
Summary
In 2010 Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that "if you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do", James moved his library to his house in Cambridge, where he would "live, read, and perhaps even write". James is the award-winning author of dozens of works of literary criticism, poetry, and history, and this volume contains his reflections on what may well be his last reading list. A look at some of James' old favorites as well as some of his recent discoveries, this book also offers a revealing look at the author himself, sharing his evocative musings on literature and family and on living and dying. As thoughtful and erudite as the works of Alberto Manguel and as moving and inspiring as Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, this valediction to James' lifelong engagement with the written word is a captivating valentine from one of the great literary minds of our time.
©2015 Clive James (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
The God Virus
Summary
What makes religion so powerful? How does it weave its way into our political system? Why do people believe and follow obvious religious charlatans? What makes people profess deep faith even as they act in ways that betray that faith? What makes people blind to the irrationalities of their religion yet clearly see those of others? If these questions interest you, this book will give you the tools to understand religion and its power in you, your family and your culture. For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person. In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed. Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted, excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that which the church, priest, or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ, viral, and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand disease and its propagation. Priests told people disease was a result of sin, Satan, evil spirits, etc. With the discovery of microbial actors, scientists gained new tools to study how it spreads. They could study infection strategies, immunity, epidemiology and much more. Suddenly the terrible diseases of the past were understandable. The plagues of Europe, yellow fever, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. were now removed from the divine and placed squarely in the natural world. This book owes a great deal to Richard Dawkins' concept of viruses of the mind, but it seeks to go a step further to personalize the concept of religion as a virus and show how these revolutionary ideas work in everyday life. The paradigm can explain the fundamentalism of your Uncle Ned, the sexual behavior of a fallen megachurch minister, the child rearing practices of a Pentecostal neighbor, why 19 men flew planes into the World Trade Center, or what motivates a woman to blow herself up in the crowded markets of Baghdad. Learn how religion influences sexuality for its own purposes, how and why it protects pedofile priests and wayward ministers and how it uses survivor guilt to propagate and influence and how it might influence a person's IQ.
©2009 Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D. (P)2012 Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D.
When Friendship Hurts
Summary
We’ve all had friendships that have gone bad. Whether it takes the form of a simple yet inexplicable estrangement or a devastating betrayal, a failed friendship can make your life miserable, threaten your success at work or school, and even undermine your romantic relationships. Finally there is help. In When Friendship Hurts, Jan Yager, recognized internationally as a leading expert on friendship, explores what causes friendships to falter and explains how to mend them - or end them. In this straightforward, illuminating book filled with dozens of quizzes and real-life examples, Yager covers all the bases, including: The 21 types of negative friends - a rogues’ gallery featuring such familiar types as the Blood-Sucker, the Fault-Finder, the Promise Breaker, and the Copycat How to recognize destructive friends as well as how to find ideal ones The email effect - how electronic communication has changed friendships for both the better and the worse The misuse of friendship at work - how to deal with a co-worker’s lies, deceit, or attempts at revenge How to stop obsessing about a failed friendship And much more The first highly prescriptive book to focus on the complexities of friendship, When Friendship Hurts demonstrates how, why, and when to let go of bad friends and how to develop the positive friendships that enrich our lives on every level. For everyone who has ever wondered about friends who betray, hurt, or reject them, this authoritative book provides invaluable insights and advice to resolve the problem once and for all.
©2012 Jan Yager (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
In Manchuria
Summary
In the tradition of In Patagonia and Great Plains, Michael Meyer's In Manchuria is a scintillating combination of memoir, contemporary reporting, and historical research, presenting a unique profile of China's legendary northeast territory. For three years Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown of his wife's family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights. Once a commune, Wasteland is now a company town, a phenomenon happening across China that Meyer documents for the first time; indeed, not since Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth has anyone brought rural China to life as Meyer has here. Amplifying the story of family and Wasteland, Meyer takes us on a journey across Manchuria's past, a history that explains much about contemporary China, from the fall of the last emperor to Japanese occupation and Communist victory. Through vivid local characters, Meyer illuminates the remnants of the imperial Willow Palisade, Russian and Japanese colonial cities and railways, and the POW camp into which a young American sergeant parachuted to free survivors of the Bataan Death March. In Manchuria is a rich and original chronicle of contemporary China and its people.
©2015 Michael Meyer (P)2015 Audible Inc.
Most Likely to Succeed
Summary
From two leading experts in education and entrepreneurship, an urgent call for the radical reimagining of American education so that we better equip students for the realities of the 21st-century economy. Today more than ever, we prize academic achievement, pressuring our children to get into the "right" colleges, have the highest GPAs, and pursue advanced degrees. But while students may graduate with credentials, by and large they lack the competencies needed to be thoughtful, engaged citizens and to get good jobs in our rapidly evolving economy. Our school system was engineered a century ago to produce a workforce for a world that no longer exists. Alarmingly, our methods of schooling crush the creativity and initiative young people need to thrive in the 21st century. In Most Likely to Succeed, best-selling author and education expert Tony Wagner and venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith call for a complete overhaul of the function and focus of American schools, sharing insights and stories from the front lines, including profiles of successful students, teachers, parents, and business leaders. Most Likely to Succeed presents a new vision of American education, one that puts wonder, creativity, and initiative at the very heart of the learning process and prepares students for today's economy. This audiobook offers parents and educators a crucial guide to getting the best for their children and a road map for policymakers and opinion leaders. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2015 Tony Wagner, Ted Dintersmith (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
My Teenage Dream Ended
Summary
“I got off the phone and I tried to calm down, but my mind was racing. Derek was the father of the baby I was carrying inside me. He was my first love, my only true love. We hadn’t spoken in more than two months, but crazily I had still hoped we had a future together - me, him, and our baby, as one happy family. It’s every teenage girl’s dream, isn’t it? You meet a boy, you fall in love, and then one day you have a family and grow old together, happily ever after.” Fans of MTV’s critically acclaimed hit series, Teen Mom, have followed Farrah Abraham’s tumultuous life as a single teen mother. Her fiery, relentless spirit, and her unwavering commitment to getting the best out of life for herself and her daughter, Sophia, in spite of all the drama constantly surrounding her have made her a beloved star and media sensation. Now, in this unflinching, at times heartbreaking, memoir, Farrah reveals the difficult truth about the life that hasn’t been seen on television.
©2012 Farrah Abraham (P)2018 Farrah Abraham
The Rise of The Creative Class
Summary
The national best seller that defines a new economic class and shows how it is key to the future of our cities. The Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today - and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy. Just as William Whyte's 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have-with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living--the Creative Class. The Rise of the Creative Class chronicles the ongoing sea of change in people's choices and attitudes, and shows not only what's happening but also how it stems from a fundamental economic change. The Creative Class now comprises more than 30 percent of the entire workforce. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.
©2003 Richard Florida (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Generation Me
Summary
In this provocative new book, psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge documents the self-focus of what she calls "Generation Me" - people born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Dr. Twenge explores why her generation is tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious. Dr. Twenge reveals how profoundly different today's young adults are - and makes controversial predictions about what the future holds for them and society as a whole. But Dr. Twenge doesn't just talk statistics - she highlights real-life people and stories. With a good deal of irony, humor, and sympathy, she demonstrates that today's young people have been raised to aim for the stars at a time when it is more difficult than ever to get into college, find a good job, and afford a house. Dr. Twenge also presents the often-shocking truths about her generation's dramatically different sexual behavior and mores. Engaging, controversial, prescriptive, and often funny, Generation Me will give boomers new insight into their offspring and help GenMe'ers in their teens, 20s, and 30s finally make sense of themselves and their goals and find their road to happiness.
©2014 Jean M. Twenge, PhD (P)2017 Tantor
A Troublesome Inheritance
Summary
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well. Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times, draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this book involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traits - thrift, docility, nonviolence - have been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These "values" obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews. Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.
©2014 Nicholas Wade (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Death Need Not Be Fatal
Summary
Before he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death - sometimes hilarious and often poignant - and on what will or won't happen after his last breath is drawn. During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the singles bar and was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author, a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow? In Death Need Not Be Fatal, McCourt also trains a sober eye on the tragedies that have shaped his life: the deaths of his sister and twin brothers; the real story behind Angela's famous ashes; and a poignant account of the death of the man who left his mother, brothers, and him to nearly die in squalor. McCourt writes with deep emotion of the staggering losses of all three of his brothers, Frank, Mike, and Alphie. In his inimitable way, McCourt takes the grim reaper by the lapels and shakes the truth out of him. As he rides the final blocks on his Rascal scooter, he looks, too, at the prospect of his own demise with emotional clarity and insight. In this beautifully rendered memoir, McCourt shows us how to live life to its fullest, how to grow old without acting old, and how to die without regret.
©2017 Malachy McCourt (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave - Related by Herself
Summary
This is the story of Mary Prince, who was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for £38 sterling. It is the first account of the life of a black woman ever to be published in the United Kingdom, and it was published at a time when slavery was still legal in the British Colonies. The history of Mary Prince is firsthand testimony of the brutalities of enslavement. Its tone is direct and authentic, which makes this vivid story go straight to the heart. This book immediateley sparked public controversy and eventually played a crucial role in the abolition campaign. "It was night when I reached my new home. The house was large, and built at the bottom of a very high hill; but I could not see much of it that night. I saw too much of it afterwards. The stones and the timber were the best things in it; they were not so hard as the hearts of the owners."
©Domaine public (P)2016 Compagnie du Savoir
Noires sous surveillance
Summary
La vérité a souvent un goût amer. Nous ne savons comment accepter nos histoires. Faut-il s'en tenir aux faits et dire la vérité ? Cet ouvrage monumental si richement documenté est précieux, il nous tire de l'oubli et du silence. Que savons-nous de l'esclavage au Canada ? Que savons-nous de la répression exercée sur les femmes et les hommes noirs ? Que savons-nous du racisme systémique ? Que savons-nous de la détresse des Autochtones, des sans-papiers, des personnes réfugiées ? Enfin fort peu... Parce que l'État construit et déconstruit les récits à travers les institutions. Les citoyen.ne.s sont ainsi condamné.e.s à reproduire une histoire qui nous échappe.L'édition originale anglaise de Noires sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d'État au Canada (Policing Black Lives : State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, Fernwood 2017) a été nommée parmi l'un des « cent meilleurs titres de 2017 » par le Hill Times, et est en nomination pour le Atlantic Book Award.
©2018 Éditions Mémoire d'encrier (P)2019 Vues et Voix
Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
Summary
Grief is a personal journey, never the same for any two people and as unique as your life and your relationships. Although loss is an inevitable part of life, how you approach this fact can make the difference between meaningless pain and the manifestation of understanding and wisdom. This audiobook shares a mindful approach to dealing with grief that can help you make that difference. By walking this mindful path, you will discover that you are capable of transforming and healing the grief you carry and finding the spiritual and emotional resilience you need to move through this challenging time. These mindfulness practices, explained here in simple and practical language, will help you bear your time of grief. But they will do more than that, too. They will guide you to a life more fully lived, with more meaning. These simple practices will help you experience what richness comes from asking deeper questions about loss and about life.
©2005 Sameet Kumar (P)2015 Wetware Media
Out of Our Minds
Summary
There is a paradox. As children, most of us think we are highly creative; as adults many of us think we are not. What changes as children grow up? Organizations across the globe are competing in a world that is changing faster than ever. They say they need people who can think creatively, who are flexible and quick to adapt. Too often they can't find them. Why not? In this provocative and inspiring book, Ken Robinson addresses three vital questions: Why is it essential to promote creativity? Business leaders, politicians and educators emphasize the vital importance of promoting creativity and innovation. Why does this matter so much? What is the problem? Why do so many people think they're not creative? Young children are buzzing with ideas. What happens as we grow up and go through school to make us think we are not creative? What can be done about it? What is creativity? What can companies, schools and organizations do to develop creativity and innovation in a deliberate and systematic way? In this extensively revised and updated version of his best-selling classic, Ken Robinson offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding creativity in education and in business. He argues that people and organizations everywhere are dealing with problems that originate in schools and universities and that many people leave education with no idea at all of their real creative abilities. Out of Our Minds is a passionate and powerful call for radically different approaches to leadership, teaching and professional development to help us all to meet the extraordinary challenges of living and working in the 21st century.
©2011 Ken Robinson (P)2011 Tantor
Ninety Percent of Everything
Summary
On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without all those dots, the world would not work. Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system. Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates. Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an antipiracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.
©2013 Rose George (P)2017 Tantor
A Macat Analysis of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Summary
How do those in power exercise that power over a state's citizens? French thinker Michel Foucault's 1975 work Discipline and Punish looks to answer this question by investigating the prison system. Foucault does not believe that the modern-day system developed out of reformers' humanitarian concerns. He argues that prison both created and then became part of a bigger system of surveillance that extends throughout society. Power is no longer exerted directly through violence. Prisoners who were once executed are now far more likely to be monitored and controlled. And the fear of being constantly watched leads prisoners to self-regulate; to behave in ways those in power approve of. This insidious method has moved way beyond the bounds of the prison walls. It is now a part of many aspects of our lives, inflicted on us in many places. Surveillance - or systematic monitoring - by government institutions produces "docile bodies," which Foucault defines as bodies that can be monitored and psychologically controlled, and that are then trained to self-govern. We have become the sum of what we abstain from doing for fear of being seen, judged, or punished.
©2016 Macat Inc (P)2016 Macat Inc