Download Most Popular Audiobooks in Nonfiction, Social Sciences

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Title: VangoNotes for Psychology and Life, 18/e

Author: Richard Gerrig, Philip Zimbardo

Narrator: Mark Greene, Amy LeBlanc

Format: Original Recording

Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-24-11

Publisher: Pearson Education, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Study on the go with VangoNotes. Just download chapter reviews from Psychology and Life, 18/e and listen to them on your mp3 player. Now wherever you are -- whatever you're doing -- you can study by listening to the following for each chapter of your textbook:

©2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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Title: The Big Shift

Subtitle: Midlife Opportunity and the Transition to a New Stage of Life

Author: Marc Freedman

Narrator: Walter Dixon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-28-11

Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Marc Freedman, hailed by the New York Times as the voice of aging baby boomers [seeking] meaningful and sustaining work later in life, makes an impassioned call to accept the decades opening up between midlife and anything approximating old age for what they really are: an entirely new stage of life, which he dubs the encore years.

In The Big Shift, Freedman bemoans the fact that the discussion about longer lives in America has been entirely about the staggering economic costs of a dramatically aging society when, in reality, most of the nations 78 million boomers are not getting old - at least not yet. The whole 60- to 80-year-old period is simply new territory, he writes, and the people in this period constitute a whole new phenomenon in the 21st century.

The Big Shift is animated by a simple premise: that the challenge of transitioning to and making the most of this new stagewhile deeply personalis much more than an individual problem; its an urgent social imperative, one affecting all generations. By embracing this time as a unique period of life and providing guidance, training, education, and support to the millions who are in it Freedman says that we can make a monument out of what so many think of as the leftover years. The result could be a windfall of talent that will carry us toward a new generation of solutions for growing problems in areas like education, the environment, and health care.

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Title: The Smart Swarm

Author: Peter Miller

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-12-11

Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 47 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done

In a world where speed and flexibility are valued more than ever, leaders from the corporate boardroom to the military are looking for answers from seemingly unlikely experts - the ones in the grass, in the air, in the lakes, and in the woods. In this innovative audiobook, veteran National Geographic editor Peter Miller explains the basic principles of smart swarms - self-organization, diversity of knowledge, indirect collaboration, and adaptive mimicking - to show how swarm species such as ants, bees, and fish can teach us to tackle some of the most complex conundrums in business, politics, and technology.

By studying ant colonies simple governing rules, computer scientists have written programs to streamline factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes. Termites have inspired climate-control solutions, and the U.S. military is developing a team of robots that behaves like a school of fish. Groups in nature are the real specialists because theyve evolved strategies over millions of years to cope with uncertainty, complexity, and change - the same challenges that make our lives and businesses difficult today.

Leading scientists in fields from biology to physics, social psychology, and business management are all studying smart swarms to unlock their secrets, and Peter Miller takes us on a lively tour to show us how we can, too. A fascinating journey from the critter to the corporation, The Smart Swarm is an eye-opening look at small-scale phenomena with big implications for us all.

Critic Reviews:

"Most people cant fathom that ants, bees, and other social insects have found solutions to some of modern societys most vexing problems. In The Smart Swarm, Peter Miller offers a fascinating and articulate tour of what these creatures can do, how they do it, and the lessons for humans. This audio book is a gem, with a message that is as extraordinarily counterintuitive as it is valuable. (Michael J. Mauboussin, Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and author of Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition)

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Title: Catching Fire

Subtitle: How Cooking made us Human

Author: Richard Wrangham

Narrator: Kevin Pariseau

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-17-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking.

In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be used instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor.

Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A path-breaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins - or in our modern eating habits.

Members Reviews:

Fantastic Evolutionary Psychology and Anthropology

Prof. Richard Wrangham has written several brilliant books on comparative anthropology, and comparative psychology, but this has to be the best. Further, it is excellently read by Kevin Pariseau, which only enhances the arguments and the content. In the end I had to buy the book as well, to refocus on elements of it for my teaching, but that is not to decry the audio book. An excellent antidote to the sad dismissal of cooking as a domestic task in 1970's feminism, and a part explanation for the fascination with competitive cooking on TV - highly recommend.

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Title: Jolly Wicked, Actually

Subtitle: The 100 Words that Make Us English

Author: Tony Thorne

Narrator: John Telfer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-01-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Jolly Wicked, Actually is a wonderfully entertaining compendium of the 100 words and phrases that have, over the last century, become the cornerstones of modern spoken English. Despite attempts by politicians and writers, despite lessons in citizenship enshrined in the national curriculum, we have famously never been able to define for posterity precisely what Englishness is.

Jolly Wicked, Actually takes certain well-loved and crucial expressions such as sorry, nice, common, posh, cuppa and chippy, explores their strange and wonderful origins, and demonstrates with wit and charm how they are emblems essential to all our notions of Englishness.

Members Reviews:

Absolutely fabulous

'Jolly wicked actually' is an excellent book. This book is an absolute gem. The author is extremely adept at conveying nuances of the words & context. The book is very coherent even though it consists of collection of enteries. I'd highly recommend 'Jolly wicked actually' for anybody with a sound interest in language and culture. Very good read.

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Title: Wrong

Author: David H. Freedman

Narrator: George K. Wilson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-10-10

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 36 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Why Experts (Scientists, Finance Wizards, Doctors, Relationship Gurus, Celebrity CEOs, High-Powered Consultants, Health Officials and More) Keep Failing Us - and How to Know When Not to Trust Them

Our investmeents are devastated, obesity is epidemic, blue-chip companies circle the drain, and popular medications turn out to be ineffective and even dangerous. What happened? Didn't we listen to the scientists, economists, and other experts who promised us that if we followed their advice all would be well?

Actually, those experts are a big reason we're in this mess. Their expert counsel usually turns out to be wrong - often wildly so. Wrong reveals the dangerously distorted ways experts come up with their advice and why the most heavily flawed conclusions end up getting the most attention - all the more so in the online era. But there's hope: Wrong spells out the means by which every individual and organization can do a better job of unearthing the crucial bits of right within a vast avalanche of misleading pronouncements.

Members Reviews:

Primer for the Pseudo-Expert Genre

Freedman touches on the expected topics of medicine and finance, but then he almost hedges too much when he attempts to be even handed. Something akin to saying "Experts are widely documented to be as wrong as the guy sitting next to you at work, but" . . . and then the "but" gets drawn out in such a way that he makes it clear that he really doesn't want anyone to be upset with him.

He takes umbrage with an editor no one has ever heard of at a little-read women's health magazine, but ignores the Dalai Lama of pseudo-expert knowledge, Malcolm Gladwell. (Although Gladwell does get a very brief mention in an appendix.) That seems a little cowardly. And then of course there are his own biases to contend with that really are not justified despite his token admission that he too might be wrong. (Note, a firm stance on a topic or opinion would be welcome. Instead he hem-haws around the idea that "experts are bad/experts are the best we have" and then just back-doors his own bias at the end of a given topic so as to seem detached from the subject.)

Once one has read most of the titles in this genre, there begins to be a pattern of thought. One viewpoint is that there is too much information available to the general public and it's not good for us. It's mostly implied at this point, but they are essentially saying that we need some sort of filters or regulation, perhaps some sort of licensing should be required to post something on the internet. (This is actually mentioned in Freedman's book.) Freedman it seems then, is seeking to follow Schwartz, Gladwell, Ariely, et al. in this line of thought on regulated information.

If one is interested in genuine skeptical inquiry without the ideological baggage the best place to start would be any of Nassim Taleb's books in my opinion.

Finally

This book was a long time in coming.

I have long noticed the veritable deluge of information that has come down the pipe in my short life and was often baffled by the contratdictory and almost "fad" like public responses to advice that I distictly remember hearing the opposite to somewhere else or earlier.

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Title: THINK Marriages & Families

Author: Jenifer Kunz

Narrator: Mina Sands

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-06-10

Publisher: Pearson Education, Inc.

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

With its magazine design, 15-page chapters, and chapter openers about popular movies, THINK Marriages & Families is the Marriage and Family text your students will read.

THINK Marriages & Families is informed with the latest research and the most contemporary examples, allowing you to bring current events directly into your classroom with little additional work.

Developed with the benefit of extensive student feedback, THINK Marriages & Families will engage your students and deliver the core concepts for the Marriage and Family course in a way that they can actually understand.

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Title: The Social Atom

Subtitle: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You

Author: Mark Buchanan

Narrator: Wesley Mann

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-16-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 29 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

The idiosyncrasies of human decision-making have confounded economists and social theorists for years. If each person makes choices for personal (and often irrational) reasons, how can people's choices be predicted by a single theory? How can any economic, social, or political theory be valid? The truth is, none of them really are.

Mark Buchanan makes the fascinating argument that the science of physics is beginning to provide a new picture of the human or "social atom," and help us understand the surprising, and often predictable, patterns that emerge when they get together. Look at patterns, not people, Buchanan argues, and rules emerge that can explain how movements form, how interest groups operate, and even why ethnic hatred persists. Using similar observations, social physicists can predict whether neighborhoods will integrate, whether stock markets will crash, and whether crime waves will continue or abate.

Brimming with mind games and provocative experiments, The Social Atom is an incisive, accessible, and comprehensive argument for a whole new way to look at human social behavior.

Members Reviews:

Great easy read

This is a great easy to read book looking at human dynamics from a complexity perspective. Often we need to look at underlying patterns common to all systems rather than delving more deeply into an individual's psychology or whatever. The book links the physics of the atomic structure and compares it to human dynamics. It introduces power laws, game theory, fat tail graphs, Pareto's law, fractals, etc. It is a great first book to read.

I was surprised by the comments at the very end about religion. From nowhere there is a discussion about religion as a different way of making sense of the world that has resulted in mass slaughter. He quotes Sam Harris. There is no discussion of any spiritual understandings other than traditional religion.

Buzz Holling's adaptive cycle and Spiral Dynamics could have extended the theme of the book to have been more coherent and explanatory of the ideas

Solid overview of a fascinating field

I've worked in complex systems research for years and have been looking for a book like this. It's a robust, highly readable account of some very important results. Mark has done a terrific job of communicating the results and framing their relevance accurately.

Lots of provocative ideas

I read Buchanan's book, Ubiquity, and thought that book to be profound. This book is not as profound, but still contains lots of provocative ideas. Reasonably well written.

I enjoyed it.

Great read. Good perspective. Buchanan is thoughtful in his metaphors. Grounded in an honest contrarian point of view. Struggles just a little at the end.

EBOOK Greatness

I purchased this book for school as an ebook, the program never faulted and I was actually able to get a few chapters read. Great buy for the price.

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Title: Kitchen Literacy

Subtitle: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back

Author: Ann Vileisis

Narrator: Alex Day

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-24-10

Publisher: Caravan

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 23 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Ask children where food comes from, and theyll probably answer, the supermarket. Ask most adults, and their replies may not be much different. Where our foods are raised and what happens to them between farm and supermarket shelf have become mysteries. How did we become so disconnected from the sources of our breads, beef, cheeses, cereal, apples, and countless other foods that nourish us every day?

Critic Reviews:

"Vileisis gathers it all in one place, weaving a clear, easy-to-read tapestry whose meaning is plain by the end of the book: you are what you eat, so think about what you''ve been eating. This important and eye-opening book uncovers the machinery behind the modern food industry." (

Library Journal)

Members Reviews:

Fabulous book -- anemic performance

If you could sum up Kitchen Literacy in three words, what would they be?

Thoroughly researched.

How could the performance have been better?

I have finally found the antidote to Scott Brick whose delivery of every sentence is charged with apocalyptic urgency, whether the book deals with deadly epidemic or tulip planting techniques.

In contrast, Alex Day's funereal delivery is somnolent in the extreme. Using my audible app, I have increased the speed to 1.5 and can now reach the end of sentences before having forgotten the beginnings. She also has a slight lisp... not upleasant.

But for goodness sake, learn to pronounce the words properly! Nothing does more to ruin a good book than an incorrectly pronounced word. She seems to have particular trouble with words beginning in "A." With very little effort I jotted down the following mis-pronounced words: Acumen, Automaton, Apposite, Arsenical. Thank goodness she didn't have to read "archetype. I feel certain she would have pronounced the "ch" as in "cheese"and I would have run screaming from the room.

Great Book--Amateur Performance

Where does Kitchen Literacy rank among all the audiobooks youve listened to so far?

The content of the audiobook was fascinating. I really enjoyed the history of foods, food preservation, and an account of the slippery slope down to processed foods.

How could the performance have been better?

The performance, on the other hand, was just short of dreadful. I felt like I was listening to one of my middle school students reading. I mean--really--if you are going to record a book, at least learn to pronounce words of more than a few syllables.

A Bird's Eye View

I enjoyed this walk through American food history. It gives an excellent overview of how we have come to our current food situation. As some reviewers have already noted, it can be a little dry, but if you are already interested in the content, the history of factory farming, you will find this book enlightening. It could go deeper in areas, but is a good primer.

The narrator!! Gah! She sounds like a kindergarten or ESL teacher. Sheee speeeaks sooo sloooowly, and has puts very long gaps in awkward parts of the sentences. It really does the book a disservice. The information and facts are already a little dry, so the narration could really kill this book for some. Luckily, I also have an option on my audible app to speed it up a bit.

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Title: Distracted

Subtitle: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

Author: Maggie Jackson

Narrator: Christine Carroll

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-16-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 18 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Do you text during family dinners or read e-mails during meetings? Does your spouse learn about your day from Facebook? Do you get news about the world by scanning online headlines while also doing something else?

Welcome to the land of distraction. Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. Our attention is scattered among the beeps and pings of a push-button world. We are less and less able to pause, reflect, and deeply connect.

In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively, or cultivate meaningful relationships. Jackson warns of what can happen when we lose our ability to sustain focus and erode our capacity for deep attention - the building blocks of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. The implications for a healthy society are stark. Societal ADD will adversely affect parenting, marriages, personal safety, education, and even democracy. And yet we can recover our powers of focus through a renaissance of attention. Neuroscience is just now decoding the workings of attention, with its three pillars of focus, awareness, and judgment, and revealing how these skills can be shaped and taught.

In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its losses, Jackson offers us a compelling wake-up call, an adventure story, and reasons for hope. Put down your smart phone and prepare for an eye-opening journey. We can and must learn to focus attention in this Twitter culture.

Critic Reviews:

"Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attentionthe building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's relevant and permanent....Jackson has produced a well-rounded and well-researched account of the travails facing an ADD society and how to reinvigorate a renaissance of attention." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Horrible

Never gets to the point. She just keeps rambling random things until you force your attention out

some brilliant insights buried in wandering story

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Ms. Jackson begins with some bold and startling claims, shows us a brief glimpse of some intellectual gem level observations, then gets lost in a series of meandering narratives, only a few of which seem to be connected to her original thesis. Reads too much like a collection of magazine articles lacking structure overall. The vocal narration, while professional and well produced, is for this listener far too "chirpy". Its a mismatch of big, profound thesis against a voice much better suited to much lighter subjects. I found this jarring and almost undermining the seriousness of the content.

I endured it...

The author has done her homework. She presents many references worthy of tracking down, but for me it was too broad and over-written.