Download Most Popular Audiobooks in Nonfiction, Social Sciences

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Title: Reporting at Wit's End

Subtitle: Tales from The New Yorker

Author: St. Clair McKelway

Narrator: John Morgan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-05-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

"Why does A. J. Liebling remain a vibrant role model for writers while the superb, prolific St. Clair McKelway has been sorely forgotten?" James Wolcott asked this question in a recent review of The Complete New Yorker on DVD. Anyone who has read a single paragraph of McKelway's work would struggle to provide an answer.

His articles for The New Yorker were defined by their clean language and incomporable wit, by his love of New York's rough edges and his affection for the working man (whether that work was come by honestly or not). Like Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling, McKelway combined the unflagging curiosity of a great reporter with the narrative flair of a master storyteller. William Shawn, the magazine's long-time editor, described him as a writer with the "lightest of light touches". His style is so striking, Shawn went on to say, that "it was too odd to be imitated".

The pieces collected here are drawn from two of McKelway's books - True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality (1951) and The Big Little Man from Brooklyn (1969). His subjects are the small players who in their particulars defined life in New York during the 36 years McKelway wrote: the junkmen, boxing cornermen, counterfeiters, con artists, fire marshals, priests, and beat cops and detectives. The "rascals".

An amazing portrait of a long forgotten New York by the reporter who helped establish and utterly defined New Yorker "fact writing", Reporting at Wit's End is a long overdue celebration of a truly gifted writer.

Members Reviews:

Less would have been more

As a longtime New Yorker subscriber I have always prized the magazine for its great lineup of writers, past and present. So when I heard of this collection I was excited to make the acquaintance of a writer I was only dimly familiar with. Some of the stories in this collection are witty and wonderful. The incompetent counterfeiter. The various petty criminals, arsonists, and crackpots. But there are a couple of longer stories that mar this collection. Partly because there is no editor to explain the context of these stories, both about the author himself (one a story about his accusation that Chester Nimitz was a traitor and the other a meandering story about a possible kidnapping/murder plot which was most likely either a prank or a delusion) but also because it is harder to really understand the point the author was trying to make. Anyway. Leaving these longer stories out would have left the book a couple of hours shorter, but not appreciably less fascinating. McKelway seems to have been most at home with the oddball criminals and either full blown lunatics or at least quite eccentric characters of the era. There is a real fondness for exploring these troubled souls and, especially in the hapless counterfeiter story, it is hard not to feel some genuine sympathy or even liking for them. Also, McKelway was true to the New Yorker tradition for seamless prose. Even the shorter pieces bear the mark of a master. The only other complaint, a mild one surely, is that the narrator is good at description and narrative, but when assuming a character's voice, especially the female characters, his narration begins to falter badly. An enjoyable book but you may want to fast forward some.

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Title: Sociology AudioLearn Study Guide

Author: AudioLearn Editors

Narrator: AudioLearn Voice Over Team

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-22-13

Publisher: AudioLearn

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Simply put, sociology is the study of groups of people. Sociologists want to know how social groups are formed and how they are maintained. Sociologists are interested in studying the behavior of social groups of all sizes, ranging from groups as small as families to those as large as nations, or the population of the world as a whole. Sociologists are interested in learning about all sorts of groups, including street gangs, worker's cooperatives, high school students, single working mothers, immigrants, and corporate executives. Any time that people come together to pursue common goals, whether for a single day or a lifetime, sociologists want to discover how individuals influence the actions of groups and how groups influence the actions of individuals. In order to do this, sociologists examine the interactions among members of groups as well as the collective actions of groups as they interact with other groups.

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Title: Public Sex

Subtitle: The Culture of Radical Sex

Author: Pat Califia

Narrator: Robin Davies

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-26-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Public Sex collects the best of Pat Califia's work published over the past 20 years. Providing both a chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States, as well as the definitive opinions of America's most consistent and trenchant sexual critic, Public Sex is must-listen material for anyone interested in sexual practices, feminism, censorship, or simply the art of the political essay.

Members Reviews:

A Political, Feminist Gender-Warrior's Classic

Pat (now Patrick) Califia, in one short book, laid out everything, a virtual oracle, that changed our sexual landscape of the past twenty years.

Pat is peerless in terms of articulation, intelligence, and prescience. This writer is a genius, and wish I could pry her from relative quiet of the past few years. Sexual transformation in public life may be a heady and heavy subject, but you're listening to an ace writer and ripping theorist never a snooze or a throwaway moment.

A review of sexual politics in San Francisco

This is a history of gay and sexual lifestyle politics in San Francisco in the 80's and 90's. It is of limited historical interest and at this point pretty dated.

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Title: Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution

Author: Frances D. Burton

Narrator: Michael Scherer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-09-12

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 18 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around four to six million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight, reason, manual dexterity, highly developed social organization, and the capability of experimenting with this new technology. As it first associated with and then began to tame fire, this extraordinary being began to distance itself from its primate relatives, taking a path that would alter its environment, physiology, and self-image.

Based on her extensive research with nonhuman primates, anthropologist Frances Burton details the stages of the conquest of fire and the systems it affected. Her study examines the natural occurrence of fire and describes the effects light has on human physiology. She constructs possible variations of our earliest human ancestor and its way of life, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence of the earliest human-controlled fires to explore the profound physical and biological impacts fire had on human evolution.

Critic Reviews:

"With great detail and concise arguments, this well-sourced work will fascinate armchair scientists with an interest in anthropology and evolution." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

More than Fire

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I think the author went off on a few tangents that were not necessary or beneficial to providing more points for the importance of fire in human evolution. It seems like there were a few chapters focusing on fire itself while the others filled in some more details about human evolution like the importance of language and the environment in which adaptations occurred.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Spoiler Alert: humans evolved!

What three words best describe Michael Scherers voice?

Clear but dry

Do you think Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

I'm not sure about a follow-up book but the concepts can definitely expand as more archaeological evidence is found.

Any additional comments?

As a student of anthropology I found this book to be insightful into a field I want to work in. It is by no means a tell all in human evolution but it does look at a small sliver of what lead to the modern human. It is obvious that fire was important but concepts like the impact on melatonin production in the body was a concept I found very interesting.

Not bad

What made the experience of listening to Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution the most enjoyable?

The vast amount of information from various scientific disciplines. A true eye-opener.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution?

It's difficult to pick one.

Have you listened to any of Michael Scherers other performances? How does this one compare?

No, I have not but I'm going to.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

It's not that kind of book

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Título: La ceremonia del porno [Porn Ceremony]

Autor: Javier Montes, Andrés Barba

Narrador: Antonio Abenójar

Formato: Unabridged

Duración: 6 hrs and 1 min

Idioma: Español

Fecha de publicación: 07-25-12

Editor: Audiomol

Calificaciones: 3.5 de 5 de 2 votos

Categorías: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Resumen del editor:

De Sade a Santa Teresa, de Bataille a Barthes, de Madonna a Martin Amis, pasan por este ensayo quienes han hablado sobre el asunto a lo largo de su Historia. Pornófilos y pornófobos se han enfrentado en guerras sin cuarte que quizá llegan ahora a una tregua indefinida: con las nuevas tecnologías, del porno en red a la webcam, el antiguo consumidor se está convirtiendo en productor y en sujeto porno. Y el consumo masivo de pornografía en países y sociedades oficialmente represores (de la América profunda a Irán o Afganistán) nos dice que quizá estemos llegando a una nueva fase en las relaciones privadas y colectivas con la pornográfico.

Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

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Título: Los Pueblos Indios de Mexico Hoy [The Indigenous Peoples of Mexico Today]

Autor: Carlos Montemayor

Narrador: Alfredo Huereca

Formato: Unabridged

Duración: 4 hrs and 7 mins

Idioma: Español

Fecha de publicación: 05-14-12

Editor: Recorded Books

Calificaciones: 4.5 de 5 de 5 votos

Categorías: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Resumen del editor:

Derrotados por la conquista, evangelizados y sometidos al vasallaje de la corona española durante tres siglos, declarados inexistentes por el liberalismo decimonónico y despojados de sus tierras comunales, por lo que se volvieron agraristas en la revolución de 1910, y oprimidos por el paternalismo indigenista contemproáneo, al despuntar el siglo XXI, ¿qué son hoy los pueblos indios de México?

Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

Opiniones de los miembros:

muy bueno

excelente información. Me encantó. una breve historia y una explicación para la mente moderna muy buena

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Title: Distrust That Particular Flavour

Author: William Gibson

Narrator: Robertson Dean

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-31-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Though primarily known as a novelist, over 30 years William Gibson has also built up a reputation as one of our most entertaining and insightful critics of contemporary culture. He is widely credited with having described the internet and cyberspace before any such things existed.

Distrust that Particular Flavour brings together for the first time his writings on a wide variety of contemporary subjects: the differing cultures of Japan and Singapore; music and the movies; what's wrong with the internet; the interactive relationship between writers and readers; and many others. Also included in the book is a fascinating autobiographical sketch: his upbringing in the South, the early death of his parents and his escape into books; and the move to Canada to avoid the draft. Over the years Gibson has been eagerly commissioned by Wired, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and other influential journals, as well as tiny publishers, online sources and magazines that no longer exist. These collected writings grant readers a privileged view into the mind of a writer whose thinking has shaped not only a generation of writers but our entire culture.

Members Reviews:

Enlightening

This is one of the best books I've ever 'read'. William Gibson's insight into post post modernism is unsurpassed. This is a work of non-fiction, a collection of essays which reflect on the current 'state of things', globally speaking, in a way that I have skirted around myself in my mind but could never could quite put my finger on it, as it were. Gibson sheds light on it all and it will likely clarify your already existing suspicions. Buy it!

Superbly written but...

...I really struggled with Robertson Dean's narration. I'm not quite sure if the problem is something to do with the audio compression used on this recording but it sounds more like high-end speech synthesis than a professional voice actor. I've read the book and it's a truly engaging piece of writing but this audio version just doesn't work for me - it becomes a monotonous droning and simply doesn't get past my internal 'noise filter'. I think this is the first time I've ever had this problem with an Audible title and none of the other books narrated by Dean give me this problem - he's a very compelling reader. I'd be interested to learn if this is 'just me' thing or do others have the same issue?

A book of talks and articles...

A book of talks and articles, there are bits that are repeated but other bits are genuinely interesting. if you want to hear about William Gibson it is great and there are lots of interesting topics that I will probably go and research after reading this. I think I will appreciate sci-fi more after having read this, but in itself, it is only pretty good.

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Title: Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail

Subtitle: The 6 Enduring Principles of High Achievement

Author: Rom Brafman

Narrator: Rene Ruiz

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-27-11

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 44 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

IN COUNTLESS STUDIES, PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE DISCOVERED A SURPRISING FACT:

For decades they assumed that people who face adversity - a difficult childhood, career turbulence, sudden bouts of bad luck - will succumb to their circumstances. Yet over and over again they found a significant percentage are able to overcome their life circumstances and achieve spectacular success.

How is it that individuals who are not supposed to succeed manage to overcome the odds? Are there certain traits that such people have in common? Can the rest of us learn from their success and apply it to our own lives?

In Succeeding When Youre Supposed to Fail, Rom Brafman, psychologist and coauthor of the bestselling book Sway, set out to answer these questions. In a riveting narrative that interweaves compelling stories from education, the military, and business and a wide range of groundbreaking new research, Brafman identifies the six hidden drivers behind unlikely success. Among them:

Critic Reviews:

Advance praise for Succeeding When Youre Supposed to Fail: From the business world to the battlefield, this book will take you inside the moments that differentiate success from failure. One of the most engaging books I have read in the last decade. (Tom Rath, author of Strengthsfinder 2.0)

Some high risk kids who are supposed to fail instead turn out to shine with success. The secret of this amazing resilience has been scientifically investigated by psychologists. Now Rom Brafman brings you the three secrets of resilience in the stories of these amazing people who tunnel through adversity and into success. Now these secrets can be yours. This book will change lives. (John M. Gottman, Ph.D., coauthor of The seven Principles for Making Marriage Work)

Critical Acclaim for Sway: A provocative new book about the psychological forces that lead us to disregard facts or logic and behave in surprisingly irrational ways. (New York Times)

Members Reviews:

Outstanding!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail takes a close look at people who had everything in life stacked against them, and yet somehow succeeded. By looking at not only the stories, but years of research, the book examines six characteristics these people share.

It's inspiring and life-changing.

Brafman describes these people, who can seemingly tunnel through the chaos that is their lives and come out the other end, as

Simple, adaptable, concrete!

Liked the simple and concrete way of telling things. I work as a coach and find this very useful in my work.

Story inspiring, Narrator great

The story was inspiring. Overcoming the odds is always inspiring to me. I particularly loved the narrator's gentleness as he told the story. So many narrators seem to be talking AT me rather than just portraying the story, but Rene Ruiz isn't like that. I'm going to check out more of his books.

Discovery of Paradigm for business survival

If you could sum up Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail in three words, what would they be?

Insightful, succent, provoctavie

Whats the most interesting tidbit youve picked up from this book?

Service to making life better for the people they service.

Any additional comments?

It will probably take 50 years for the principles to be widely accepted.

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Title: From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies

Subtitle: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food

Author: Arlene Voski Avakian, Barbara Haber

Narrator: Margaret Durante

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-13-11

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

In recent years, scholars from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to food to gain a better understanding of history, culture, economics, and society. The emerging field of food studies has yielded a great deal of useful research and a host of publications. Missing, however, has been a focused effort to use gender as an analytic tool. This stimulating collection of original essays addresses that oversight, investigating the important connections between food studies and women's studies. Applying the insights of feminist scholarship to the study of food, the thirteen essays in this volume are arranged under four headings - the marketplace, histories, representations, and resistances. Essays analyze the influence of large corporations in determining what came to be accepted as proper meals in the United States, including what mothers were expected to feed their babies. Also how women have held families together by keeping them nourished, from the routines of an early nineteenth-century New Englander to the plight of women who endured the siege of Leningrad. The book is published by University of Massachusetts Press.

Critic Reviews:

"Students of culinary and feminist studies won't want to miss the unusual history (in this book)." (The Bookwatch)

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Title: The Invisible Line

Author: Daniel Sharfstein

Narrator: Jeff Woodman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-06-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Acclaimed journalist Daniel J. Sharfstein cuts through centuries of myth to deliver this groundbreaking work. Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, three American families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolvedhow the definitions of black and white changed over time.

Critic Reviews:

One of those rare books that make history come alive. (Lawrence Friedman)

Members Reviews:

Incredible book extremely we'll read

Absolutely fascinating and amazing research and amazing stories. The very first chapter is a tiny bit challenging because it takes place in the mid-1700s and the content is very unfamiliar, but after that the book soars One of the most thought-provoking and interesting books I have heard in years.