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.
No One at the Wheel
Summary
The country's leading transport expert describes how the driverless-vehicle revolution will transform highways, cities, workplaces, and laws not just here, but across the globe. Our time at the wheel is done. Driving will become illegal, as human drivers will be demonstrably more dangerous than cars that pilot themselves. Is this an impossible future or a revolution just around the corner? Sam Schwartz, America's most celebrated transportation guru, describes in this audiobook the revolution in self-driving cars. The ramifications will be dramatic, and the transition will be far from seamless. It will overturn the job market for the one in seven Americans who work in the trucking industry. It will cause us to grapple with new ethical dilemmas - if a car will hit a person or a building, endangering the lives of its passengers, who will decide what it does? It will further erode our privacy, since the vehicle can relay our location at any moment. And, like every other computer-controlled device, it can be vulnerable to hacking. Right now, every major car maker here and abroad is working on bringing autonomous vehicles to consumers. The fleets are getting ready to roll, and nothing will ever be the same, and this audiobook shows us what the future has in store.
©2018 Samuel I. Schwartz (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Poor Your Soul
Summary
Guided by the narrative of her mother's tragic loss of a son years earlier, Mira Ptacin confronts an unexpected pregnancy with a child who has no chance of survival outside the womb. At age 28, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she soon embraced the pregnancy and became engaged to Andrew, the father. But five months later, an ultrasound revealed birth defects that would give the child no chance of survival outside the womb. Mira was given three options: terminate her pregnancy, induce early delivery, or wait and inevitably miscarry. Her story is woven together with the story of Mira's mother, who immigrated from Poland (also at the age of 28) and adopted a son, Julian, who would die tragically, bringing her a similar, unimaginable grief. A gorgeous, heartfelt first book by an award-winning essayist and Guernica contributor. An earnest and direct discussion of women's reproductive rights from a personal angle rather than a political one. Author has a robust social presence on Facebook and Twitter and has written for The Atlantic, New York Magazine, McSweeney's, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more.
©2016 Mira Ptacin (P)2016 Recorded Books
Dear Life
Summary
It takes courage to love the things of this world when all of them, without fail, are fleeting, fading, no more than a spark against the darkness of deep time. Yet when everything you have been and done and meant to the world is being prised from your grasp, human connections are the vital medicine. It is other people who make the difference. Rachel Clarke grew up spellbound by her father's stories of practising medicine. Then, as a doctor herself, one who specialised in palliative medicine, she found herself contemplating all her training had taught her in the face of her own beloved father's mortality. Dear Life is the inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking and yet deeply uplifting story of the doctor we would all want to have by our side in a crisis. The hospice where Rachel works is, of course, a world haunted by loss and grief, but it is also teeming with life. If there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world. In a hospice, therefore, there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more smiles, more dignity, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. Dear Life is a love letter - to a father, to a profession, to life itself.
©2020 Rachel Clarke (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK
The Leader's Bookshelf
Summary
For the last several years Adm. James Stavridis and his co-author, R. Manning Ancell, have surveyed over 200 active and retired four-star military officers about their reading habits and favorite books, asking each for a list of titles that strongly influenced their leadership skills and provided them with special insights that helped propel them to success in spite of the many demanding challenges they faced. The Leader's Bookshelf synthesizes their responses to identify the top 50 books that can help virtually anyone become a better leader. Each of the works - novels, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, management publications - are summarized and the key leadership lessons extracted and presented. Whether individuals work their way through the entire list and read each book cover to cover, or read the summaries provided to determine which appeal to them most, The Leader's Bookshelf will provide a road map to better leadership. Highlighting the value of reading in both a philosophical and a practical sense, The Leader's Bookshelf provides sound advice on how to build an extensive library, lists other books worth reading to improve leadership skills, and analyzes how leaders use what they read to achieve their goals.
©2017 James Stavridis and R. Manning Ancell (P)2017 Tantor
Kitty Genovese
Summary
At last, the true story of a crime that shocked the world.New York City, 1964. A young woman is stabbed to death on her front stoop - a murder The New York Times called “a frozen moment of dramatic, disturbing social change.” The victim, Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, became an urban martyr, butchered by a sociopathic killer in plain sight of thirty-eight neighbors who “didn’t want to get involved.” Her sensational case provoked an anxious outcry and launched a sociological theory known as the “Bystander Effect.”That’s the narrative told by the Times, movies, TV programs, and countless psychology textbooks. But as award-winning author Kevin Cook reveals, the Genovese story is just that, a story. The truth is far more compelling - and so is the victim.Now, on the 50th anniversary of her murder, Cook presents the real Kitty Genovese. She was a vibrant young woman - unbeknownst to most, a lesbian - a bartender working (and dancing) her way through the colorful, fast-changing New York of the ’60s, a cultural kaleidoscope marred by the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, and race riots. Downtown, Greenwich Village teemed with beatniks, folkies, and so-called misfits like Kitty and her lover. Kitty Genovese evokes the Village’s gay and lesbian underground with deep feeling and colorful detail.Cook also reconstructs the crime itself, tracing the movements of Genovese’s killer, Winston Moseley, whose disturbing trial testimony made him a terrifying figure to police and citizens alike, especially after his escape from Attica State Prison.Drawing on a trove of long-lost documents, plus new interviews with her lover and other key figures, Cook explores the enduring legacy of the case. His heartbreaking account of what really happened on the night Genovese died is the most accurate and chilling to date.
©2014 Kevin Cook (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Mind of Vril: Secrets of Human Sociology
Summary
When the noted thinker, author, and philanthropist Valiant Thor dictated this book almost a century ago, he was just settling into his role as commander of the Venusian forces on Earth. He had actually put in many decades on our planet prior to that, although he was not, as they say, truly “in charge”. Being a relative novice at that time, Thor decided to stick to traditional protocol and studiously avoided mentioning the word “Vril” in his book. (It had been decided long before that, by certain Venusian elders, to keep that particular word, and its conceptual underpinnings, secret from Earthlings - at least until the appropriate time.) Although it obviously wasn’t the appropriate time, the term and the belief system behind it were revealed to certain nosy Germans, who had gotten heavily into the occult during World War II. These Nazi necromancers had somehow hacked into the ongoing telemetric stream between Earth and Venus, and illegally downloaded much of the information about Vril. The civilized world has been trying to regain its balance ever since. As a result, the author herein states unequivocally, and for the record, that Vril has nothing to do with Nazism, fascism, racism, hate, or bigotry. Like most Venusians, Thor follows the teachings of Jesus Christ, Tecumseh, Krishna, and Buddha, which generally state that all men are created equal in God’s sight, and are loved equally by God. Today, in 2018, almost everyone has heard about Vril, so Thor has no trouble stating that this book, edited for him by his brilliant human acolyte, Clement Wood, is about one of the key aspects of Vril: the social psychology of human beings. (There are many correlations in this area between Venusians and Earthlings.) Vril is truly the essence of the active verb, the powerful sentence, and the narrative that moves people to action. It is the energy behind the words, which makes the mind react in a positive and uplifting fashion. As the Buddhists say, our words are actions, and should be approached soberly, cautiously, compassionately, and empathetically. Vril is about living life to the fullest, and loving to the fullest. In these current days of extreme political divide, where lying and deception are being spread from on high (much like the Nazis and KKK of old), we need Vril more than ever, to counteract the “Antichrist” evil that seems to be sweeping the world under the false guise of “making America great again". Those of you who understand Vril should have no problem understanding what Thor is saying. May these words, and the positive galaxial inspiration behind them, guide and comfort you as you go about your daily business in our dynamic, infinite, and loving universe.
©1982 Saucerian Press (P)2018 New Saucerian Press
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Summary
Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on morality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.
©2008 Julian Barnes (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Human Network
Summary
Here is a fresh, intriguing, and, above all, authoritative book about how our sometimes hidden positions in various social structures - our human networks - shape how we think and behave, and inform our very outlook on life. Inequality, social immobility, and political polarization are only a few crucial phenomena driven by the inevitability of social structures. Social structures determine who has power and influence, account for why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and enlarge our understanding of patterns of contagion - from the spread of disease to financial crises. Despite their primary role in shaping our lives, human networks are often overlooked when we try to account for our most important political and economic practices. Matthew O. Jackson brilliantly illuminates the complexity of the social networks in which we are - often unwittingly - positioned and aims to facilitate a deeper appreciation of why we are who we are. Ranging across disciplines - psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, and business - and rich with historical analogies and anecdotes, The Human Network provides a galvanizing account of what can drive success or failure in life.
©2019 Matthew O. Jackson (P)2019 Recorded Books
The Baby Matrix
Summary
In the movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus offers two pills to Neo - if he takes the blue pill, he will go on with life as he has before, believing what he has always believed. If he takes the red pill, he will find out what the “matrix” really is, and many of his earlier beliefs will be shattered. When it comes to taking a hard look at a specific set of beliefs about parenthood and reproduction that has driven our society for generations, The Baby Matrix is the red pill. What is this set of beliefs? Pronatalism. At its core, it’s the belief that having children should be the central focus of every adult’s life. In this audiobook, Laura Carroll explains how pronatalist beliefs have become so embedded that they have come to be seen as “true”. She examines how they affect us individually and collectively and not in a positive way and why we can no longer afford to leave pronatalist assumptions unquestioned. Carroll scrutinizes seven major pronatalist assumptions and offers alternative mind-sets that reflect realities, true reproductive freedom, and reproductive responsibility in today's society. Whether you are already a parent, want to be a parent, or don’t want children, you will never think about parenthood in the same way. The Baby Matrix is a must-listen for anyone interested in psychology, sociology, anthropology, parenting issues, environmentalism, and social justice. But most of all, it's for anyone, parent or not, who reveres the truth and wants the best for themselves, their families, and our world. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 Laura Carroll (P)2019 Laura Carroll
The Grieving Garden
Summary
Every year, some two million parents in the US suffer the death of a son or daughter. The unnatural sequence of the child's preceding the parent in death creates a wrenching loss and overwhelming emotional and spiritual disorientation. Most of these bereaved parents find relief from their isolation only in the company of others like themselves. The Grieving Garden offers support, understanding, and, ultimately, comfort and hope from those who have sowed the same tears over the death of a child. The Grieving Garden is a ground-breaking book that invites bereaved parents into personal conversations with a diverse group of fathers and mothers who share the same loss. The text is free of distracting and heavy-handed editorializing, "expert" opinion, or unwanted advice. Instead, readers are welcomed into a community of common understanding-one they may enter at will, at their own pace, for reassurance and hope.
©2008 Suzanne Redfern and Susan K. Gilbert (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
City of Scoundrels
Summary
When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place. It began on a balmy Monday afternoon when a blimp in flames crashed through the roof of a busy downtown bank, incinerating those inside. Within days, a racial incident at a hot, crowded South Side beach spiraled into one of the worst urban riots in American history, followed by a transit strike that paralyzed the city. Then, when it seemed as if things could get no worse, police searching for a six-year-old girl discovered her body in a dark North Side basement. City of Scoundrels captures the tumultuous birth of the modern American city, with all of its light and dark aspects in vivid relief.
©2012 Gary Krist (P)2012 Random House
Troubled
Summary
An award-winning journalist’s breathtaking mosaic of the tough-love industry and the young adults it inevitably fails. In the middle of the night, they are vanished. Each year thousands of young adults deemed out of control - suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety, and rage - are carted off against their will to remote wilderness programs and treatment facilities across the country. Desperate parents of these “troubled teens” fear it’s their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever. Acclaimed journalist Kenneth R. Rosen knows firsthand the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out at these programs. He lived it. In Troubled, Rosen unspools the stories of four graduates on their own scarred journeys through the programs into adulthood. Based on three years of reporting and more than one hundred interviews with other clients, their parents, psychologists, and health-care professionals, Troubled combines harrowing storytelling with investigative journalism to expose the disturbing truth about the massively profitable, sometimes fatal, grossly unchecked redirection industry. Not without hope, Troubled ultimately delivers an emotional, crucial tapestry of coming of age, neglect, exploitation, trauma, and fraught redemption.
©2021 Kenneth R. Rosen. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Helping Children Succeed
Summary
In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough introduced us to research showing that personal qualities like perseverance, self-control, and conscientiousness play a critical role in children's success. Now, in Helping Children Succeed, Tough takes on a new set of pressing questions: What does growing up in poverty do to children's mental and physical development? How does adversity at home affect their success in the classroom, from preschool to high school? And what practical steps can the adults who are responsible for them - from parents and teachers to policy makers and philanthropists - take to improve their chances for a positive future? Tough once again encourages us to think in a brand new way about the challenges of childhood. Rather than trying to "teach" skills like grit and self-control, he argues, we should focus instead on creating the kinds of environments, both at home and at school, in which those qualities are most likely to flourish. Mining the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, Tough provides us with insights and strategies for a new approach to childhood adversity - one designed to help many more children succeed.
©2016 Paul Tough (P)2016 Tantor
Many Love
Summary
“A fast-paced debut.... A candid, modern take on polyamory for fans of memoirs and graphic novels, and anyone interested in stories of dating, love, and romance.” (Library Journal) After trying for years to emulate her boomer parents’ 40-year and still-going-strong marriage, Sophie realized that maybe the love she was looking for was down a road less traveled. In this bold, graphic memoir, she explores her sexuality, her values, and the versions of love our society accepts and practices. Along the way, she shares what it’s like to play on Tinder side-by-side with your boyfriend, encounter - and surmount - many types of jealousy, learn the power of female friendship, and other amazing things that happened when she stopped looking for “the one”. In a lot of ways, Many Love is Sophie’s love letter to everyone she has ever cared for. Witty and insightful, this debut provides a memorable glimpse into an unconventional life.
©2018 Sophia Johnson (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Real Love in Marriage
Summary
“With marriage down and divorce up, it’s tough to get and stay married these days. But therapist Greg Baer says you can have a happy marriage by learning to love your partner unconditionally...practicing Real Love.” (Chicago Tribune) Why do more than half of all marriages end in divorce? And why is there so much unhappiness in the marriages that survive? Greg Baer offers the solutions for a long-lasting marriage in his anticipated follow-up to Real Love: The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love and Fulfilling Relationships. No matter how many wounds have been inflicted in a marriage, Greg Baer believes that they can be healed, giving both partners the sense of fulfillment and joy they’ve always wanted. With practical anecdotes and exercises throughout, Baer shows you: Why our spouses are not the root cause of how we feel and behave The truth about why we get angry with our spouses and argue with them How to eliminate - not just manage - anger and conflict How to identify what we need to change about ourselves How you and your partner can both get what you want out of the marriage How you can break the cycles of expectation and disappointment How to prevent divorce, and how to know when it’s the right option There are no quick solutions to fixing a marriage. With Greg Baer as your guide, you can begin to heal the wounds of the past and cultivate the lifelong commitment to stay with your partner while learning how to unconditionally love him or her. “With illustrations from real couples, guidelines for better communication, and exercises for the reader, Baer goes at the problem of finding and maintaining Real Love from all angles.” (Ladies’ Home Journal)
©2006 Penguin Group, USA (P)2007 Greg Baer
Six Degrees of Separation
Summary
In a Fifth Avenue apartment high above Central Park, a weathy art dealer and his wife are trying to interest a moneyed friend in a $2 million investment when an unexpected young guest arrives - and changes their lives forever. Veering effortlessly from hilarity to pathos, this dazzling play was lauded by The New York Times as "transcendent, magical, and a masterwork." Performed by a full cast starring Alan Alda, Swoosie Kurtz, and Chuma Hunter-Gault.
(P)2000 L.A. Theatre Works, All Rights Reserved
Bad Call
Summary
An adrenaline-fueled read that will stay with you long after the you listen to the last sentence, Bad Call is a "compulsively readable, totally unforgettable"* memoir about working on a New York City ambulance in the 1960s. (*James Patterson) Bad Call is Mike Scardino's visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers he spent working as an "ambulance attendant" on the mean streets of late-1960s New York. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett's hot dogs, young Mike spends his days speeding from one chaotic emergency to another. His adventures take him into the middle of incipient race riots, to the scene of a plane crash at JFK airport and into private lives all over Queens, where New Yorkers are suffering, and dying, in unimaginable ways. Learning on the job, Mike encounters all manner of freakish accidents (the man who drank Drano, the woman attacked by rats, the man who inflated like a balloon), meets countless unforgettable New York characters, falls in love, is nearly murdered, and gets an early and indelible education in the impermanence of life and the cruelty of chance. Action-packed, poignant, and rich with details that bring Mike's world to technicolor life, Bad Call is a gritty portrait of a bygone era as well as a bracing reminder that, though "life itself is a fatal condition," it's worth pausing to notice the moments of beauty, hope, and everyday heroism along the way.
©2018 Mike Scardino (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Charity and Sylvia
Summary
Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in 19th-century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age 20. She spent the next decade of her life traveling throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends, and becoming the subject of gossip wherever she lived. At age 29, still defiantly single, Charity visited friends in Weybridge, Vermont. There she met a pious and studious young woman named Sylvia Drake. The two soon became so inseparable that Charity decided to rent rooms in Weybridge. In 1809, they moved into their own home together, and over the years, came to be recognized, essentially, as a married couple. Revered by their community, Charity and Sylvia operated a tailor shop employing many local women, served as guiding lights within their church, and participated in raising their many nieces and nephews. Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of their extraordinary 40-four year union. Drawing on an array of original documents including diaries, letters, and poetry, Cleves traces their lives in sharp detail. Providing an illuminating glimpse into a relationship that turns conventional notions of same-sex marriage on their head, and reveals early America to be a place both more diverse and more accommodating than modern society might imagine, Charity and Sylvia is a significant contribution to our limited knowledge of LGBT history in early America.
©2014 Oxford University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.
A Macat Analysis of Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation
Summary
Politics as a Vocation examines what makes good political leaders and explores the effects of political action on modern societies. On one level it summarizes the political scholarship of one of the founding fathers of social science. On another it reflects a leading German academic and political activist's practical concerns about the future at a time of great volatility following defeat in World War I. Weber investigates the bases of modern politics, touching on the role of bureaucracy in government and the rise of organized political parties. He advocates strong, ethical leadership, although some have claimed this inadvertently laid the intellectual groundwork for the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Originally delivered as a lecture before being published as an essay, Politics as a Vocation is still an important work for understanding political processes. And over a century after its publication, Max Weber remains a seminal figure in the social sciences.
©2016 Macat Inc (P)2016 Macat Inc
Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back
Summary
Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is a collection of candid stories from grieving dads that were interviewed over a two-year period. The audiobook offers insight from fellow members of, in the haunting words of one dad, "this terrible, terrible club," which consists of men who have experienced the death of a child.
This audiobook is a collection of survival stories by men who have survived the worst possible loss and lived to tell the tale. They are real stories that pull no punches and are told with brutal honesty. Men that have shared their deepest and darkest moments. Moments that included thoughts of suicide, self-medication, and homelessness. Some of these men have found their way back from the brink, while others are still standing there, stuck in their pain. The core message of Grieving Dads is "you're not alone." It is a message that desperately needs to be delivered to grieving dads who often grieve in silence due to society's expectations.
Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is an audiobook that no grieving dad or anyone who cares for him should be without. As any grieving parent will tell you, there are no words to describe the hell one experiences after the death of a child. Many men have no clue how to deal with or understand the myriad of emotional, mental, and physical responses experienced after the death of a child.
Stories appearing in the audiobook have been carefully selected to represent a cross-section of fathers, as well as a diverse portrayal of loss. This approach helps reflect the full spectrum of grief, from the early days of shock and trauma to the long view after living with loss for many years. Any bereaved father will find brotherhood here and will feel that someone understands them. While there is plenty of raw emotion in this audiobook, the stories are not exercises in self-pity, nor are they studies in grief. They are survival stories instead. Some are testimonies to hope. Some are gut-wrenching accounts of overwhelming despair. But all of them are real-life stories from real-life grieving dads, and they show that even if one reaches his physical and emotional bottom, it is possible (although not easy) to live through that pain and find one’s way to the other side of grief.
Most dads in this audiobook found themselves in a state of physical, mental, and emotional collapse after the death of their child. As if the losses alone weren’t enough to drive these men to the brink, most try to deal with their grief according to the conventional wisdom so many men are brought up with, which perversely, increases their suffering all the more. We all know the party line about how men are "supposed" to deal with loss or even disappointment: toughen up, get back to work, take it like a man, support your wife, don’t talk about your emotions, don’t lose control, and if you must cry - by all means, do so in private.
©2012 Kelly Farley (P)2018 Kelly Farley