Listen to New Releases Audiobooks in Nonfiction, Social Sciences

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Title: Quarterly Essay 48: After the Future: Australia's New Extinction Crisis

Author: Tim Flannery

Narrator: Tim Flannery

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-12-12

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

When it comes to the natural world, Australia is home to a disproportionately large share of the world's riches. That means we Australians are caretakers of a unique natural heritage in a land which tolerates few mistakes. So how are we doing?

In Quarterly Essay 48 Tim Flannery says: we're often failing nature. In the clash between money and conservation, money usually wins. State governments have begun allowing mining and other incursions into national parks. A new wave of extinctions is taking place. Politically, conservationists and conservatives are at odds.

But why? Surely conservatives and conservationists should be able to find common cause when it comes to preserving our natural heritage? And given that we have never known more about how to protect biodiversity, shouldn't it be possible to halt the march of extinctions?

This essay is both a wake-up call to the consequences of unrestrained development, and an examination of the underlying thinking - the view of the natural world that sees it as something either to be put to use or traded off. By contrast, Flannery asks, how might we best understand, conserve and co-exist with the natural world?

Critic Reviews:

This Quarterly Essay is written and narrated by Australian of the Year Tim Flannery.

Members Reviews:

A fierce sequel to The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of Australia

Flannery's (1994) ecological history of Australia focused primarily on the past, but QE48 focuses primarily on the future. In this essay Flannery tears into Australians - both within and outside the government - who refuse to deal with the loss of ecological and species diversity in his continent. That major argument applies to head-in-the-sand North Americans just as well, but a second and equally important argument that is especially Australian concerns the disruption of fire regimes established many millennia ago by Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherers. Their continent-wide use of regulated fire to limit damage by wildfires and enhance ecological diversity and food productivity in arid habitats was totally destroyed by European colonizers who did not understand the delicate ecological balance the Aboriginal people had achieved. Now wildfires are vast and virtually uncontrolable in much of Australia. Until and unless this problem is solved, the continent most likely will continue its descent into the inferno. Flannery demands that his countrymen and women pay attention to this reality. His style is as fiery as his subject matter and he makes no attempt to be politically correct. If you are sympathetic to his argument and style, you will find this to be an exciting essay; if you prefer to keep your head in the sand, it may be even more important for you to read it.

Real science on species diversification.

"Love" is not the right word. I respect Tim Flannery because of his proper scientific observations and reasoning. This is an essay everyone should read.

an expert analysis, a plea for action

In many ways this is a difficult essay. While Flannery commendably builds on the landmark Future Eaters hypothesis and accurately portrays the current state of environmental conservation in Australia at a landscape level, including a frank assessment of government and scientific responses, his arguments are familiar and liable to be dismissed by myopic commentators and self interest groups.

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Title: How We Eat

Subtitle: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food

Author: Leon Rappoport

Narrator: Walter Dixon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-11-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Tracing culinary customs from the Stone Age to the stovetop range, from the raw to the nuked, this book elucidates the factors and myths shaping Americans' eating habits. The diversity of food habits and rituals is considered from a psychological perspective. Explored are questions such as 'Why does the working class prefer sweet drinks over bitter?', 'Why do the affluent tend to roast their potatoes?', and 'What is so comforting about macaroni and cheese anyway?'

The many contradictions of Americans' relationships with food are identified: food is both a primal source of sensual pleasure and a major cultural anxiety; Americans adore celebrity chefs, but no one cooks at home anymore; the gourmet health food industry is soaring, yet a longtime love affair with fast food endures. The future of food is also covered, including speculation about whether traditional meals will one day evolve into the mere popping of a nutrition capsule.

Members Reviews:

This is a scientific report on wheels

This was a list of scientific reports on the way people eat and why. It is not intended from my opinion to give any useful information or Technics on stopping the eating habit as it only assigns a very little to this topic and its conclusion is nothing extraordinary and could be well a cheap diet program advice.

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Title: Against Security

Subtitle: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger

Author: Harvey Molotch

Narrator: Clinton Wade

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-03-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Remember when an unattended package was just that, an unattended package? Remember when the airport was a place that evoked magical possibilities, not the anxiety of a full-body scan? In the post-9/11 world, we have become focused on heightened security measures, but do you feel safer? Are you safer?

Against Security explains how our anxieties about public safety have translated into command-and-control procedures that annoy, intimidate, and are often counterproductive. Taking listeners through varied ambiguously dangerous sites, the prominent urbanist and leading sociologist of the everyday, Harvey Molotch, argues that we can use our existing social relationships to make life safer and more humane. He begins by addressing the misguided strategy of eliminating public restrooms, which deprives us all of a basic resource and denies human dignity to those with no place else to go. Subway security instills fear through programs like "See Something, Say Something" and intrusive searches that have yielded nothing of value. At the airport, the security gate causes crowding and confusion, exhausting the valuable focus of TSA staff. Finally, Molotch shows how defensive sentiments have translated into the vacuous Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site and massive error in New Orleans, both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Throughout, Molotch offers thoughtful ways of maintaining security that are not only strategic but improve the quality of life for everyone.

Against Security argues that with changed policies and attitudes, redesigned equipment, and an increased reliance on our human capacity to help one another, we can be safer and maintain the pleasure and dignity of our daily lives.

Members Reviews:

A brilliant analysis of security and design.

Where does Against Security rank among all the audiobooks youve listened to so far?

The most intelligent and thought provoking work on Audible.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

A brilliant interdisciplinary analysis of security and design.

What does Clinton Wade bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

An articulate and compelling voice that captures the excellent writing of the book.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I couldn't stop listening the first time. I had to listen for a second time to better understand some of the theoretical framework - it is a truly mind expanding work.

This guy loves to hear himself think

Would you try another book from Harvey Molotch and/or Clinton Wade?

Observations and suggestions from an author who grounds his thoughts vis-a-vis the application of security in anecdotal observations. Poorly researched with little substantiation for the suggested changes. Not recommend

Has Against Security turned you off from other books in this genre?

no, I am an avid reader of all things security

Would you be willing to try another one of Clinton Wades performances?

a little too monotone for me.

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Title: Paperweight, Volume 2

Author: Stephen Fry

Narrator: Stephen Fry

Format: Abridged

Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-20-12

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

A hilarious collection of the many articles written by Stephen Fry for magazines, newspapers, and radio. It includes selected wireless essays of Donald Trefusis, the ageing professor of philology brought to life in Fry's novel The Liar, and the best of Fry's weekly column for the Daily Telegraph.

Members Reviews:

Excellent

More from Stephen Fry, great light listening always funny, and I agree with so many things he says.

Fry cooks a delight

Little bits of Stephen Fry.

Some nibbles are entertaning, even enthralling. Some don't hold my interest but that's OK as they're all short and sweet

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Title: Quarterly Essay 24: No Fixed Address

Subtitle: Nomads and the Fate of the Planet

Author: Robyn Davidson

Narrator: Robyn Davidson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-12

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

After many thousands of years, the nomads are disappearing, swept away by modernity. Robyn Davidson has spent a good part of her life with nomadic cultures - in Australia, northwest India, Tibet and the Indian Himalayas - and she herself calls three countries home. In the last Quarterly Essay for 2006, she draws on her unique experience to delineate a vanishing way of life.

In a time of environmental peril, Davidson argues that the nomadic way with nature offers valuable lessons. Cosmologies such as the Aboriginal Dreaming encode irreplaceable knowledge of the natural world, and nomadic cultures emphasise qualities of tolerance, adaptability, and human interconnectedness. She also explores a notable paradox: That even as classical nomadism is disappearing, hypermobility has become the hallmark of modern life. For the privileged, there is an almost unrestricted freedom of movement and an ever-growing culture of transience and virtuality. "No Fixed Address" is a fascinating and moving essay, part lament, part evocation, and part exhilarating speculative journey.

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Titolo: Razza e Storia e altri studi di Antropologia

Autore: Claude Lévi-Strauss

Narratore: Eugenio Farn

Formato: Abridged

Durata: 3 hrs and 44 mins

Lingua: Italiano

Data di pubblicazione: 03-29-12

Editore: Il Narratore s.r.l.

Categoria: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Riepilogo Editore:

L'opera raccoglie alcuni saggi dell'antropologo Claude Lévi-Strauss, famoso per aver applicato il metodo dell'indagine strutturalista agli studi antropologici. Temi ricorrenti nell'opera di Lévi-Strauss sono l'analisi dei meccanismi che condizionano il funzionamento del pensiero umano a livello universale (indipendentemente da differenze di razza, storia, geografia, cultura e società) e il concetto dei tre livelli fondamentali della comunicazione sociale: la comunicazione delle donne; la comunicazione dei beni e dei servizi; la comunicazione dei messaggi. In "Razza e Storia" lo studioso propone uno sguardo oggettivo e privo di pregiudizi a popoli distanti nel tempo e nello spazio e definisce secondo la sua concezione strutturalista i concetti di "razza", "cultura", "etnocentrismo", ecc. Con il saggio "La famiglia" lo studioso presenta una rapida panoramica delle varie strutture familiari nelle diverse culture. In "Babbo Natale suppliziato" prendendo spunto da un singolare fatto di cronaca, propone un'interpretazione antropologica di un mito occidentale.

©2007 il Narratore audiolibri (P)2007 il Narratore audiolibri

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Title: Helpless

Subtitle: Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us

Author: Christie Blatchford

Narrator: Kathleen Gati

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-06-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

It officially began on February 28, 2006, when a handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. Over the course of the spring and summer of that first year, the criminal actions of the occupiers included throwing a vehicle over an overpass; the burning down of a hydro transformer, which caused a three-day blackout; the torching of a bridge; and the hijacking of a police vehicle. During the very worst period, ordinary residents living near the site had to pass through native barricades, show native-issued "passports", and were occasionally threatened with body searches and routinely subjected to threats.

Much of this lawless conduct occurred under the noses of the Ontario Provincial Police, who, often against their own best instincts, stood by and watched: They too had been intimidated. Arrests, where they were made, weren't made contemporaneously, but weeks or months later. The result was to embolden the occupiers and render non-native citizens vulnerable and afraid. Eighteen months after the occupation began, a home builder named Sam Gualtieri, working on the house he was giving his daughter as a wedding present, was attacked by protesters and beaten so badly he will never fully recover from his injuries.

The occupation is now in its fifth year. Throughout, Christie Blatchford has been observing, interviewing, and investigating with the tenacity that has made her both the doyen of Canadian crime reporters and a social commentator beloved for her uncompromising sense of right and wrong. In Helpless she tells the full story for the first time - a story that no part of the press or media in Canada has been prepared to tackle with the unflinching objectivity that Christie Blatchford displays here. This is a book whose many revelations, never before reported, will shock and appall.

But the last word should go to the author: "This book is not about aboriginal land claims. The book is not about the wholesale removal of seven generations of indigenous youngsters from their reserves and families - this was by dint of federal government policy or the abuse dished out to many of them at the residential schools into which they were arbitrarily placed or the devastating effects that haunt so many today. This book is not about the dubious merits of the reserve system, which may better serve those who wish to see native people fail than those who want desperately for them to succeed. I do not in any way make light of these issues, and they are one way or another in the background of everything that occurred in Caledonia. What Helpless is about is the failure of government to govern and to protect all of its citizens equally."

Members Reviews:

No Better Crime Writer in North America

Biting, cutting edge writing the rips bare the establishment that let down a community and indicts the Ontario Provincial Police brass who proved gutless in the face of a crisis.

It is about time we can get access to Ms Blatchford's work on audio. Her style is compelling and she pulls no punches.

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Title: VangoNotes for Cultural Anthropology, 3rd Canadian Edition

Author: Barbara Miller, Penny Van Esterik, John Van Esterik

Narrator: Brett Barry, Alyson Silverman

Format: Original Recording

Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-08-11

Publisher: Pearson Education, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

Study on the go with VangoNotes. Just download chapter reviews from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd Canadian Edition 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: In Search of Black America

Subtitle: Discovering the African-American Dream

Author: David Dent

Narrator: Dion Graham

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-11-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 15 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

From noted journalist and professor David Dent comes this poignant and fascinating survey of contemporary African-American life. In Search of Black America is compilation of eclectic personalities and rare insights. Dent spent five years researching and travelling across the continent interviewing Americas black middle-class. Filled with stories of real people and real places, this book examines the many ways in which blacks have carved out their own niche and emerged from the shadow of a racist history. With Dion Grahams thoughtful, informative narration, In Search of Black America provides a major contribution to the ongoing discourse on race in America.

Members Reviews:

A mind expanding journey through black America

Though this book is quite dated (most of the stories taking place in the mid 1990's), the range of different characters and perspectives is mind expanding. The author travels to historically black towns and spends time with some fascinating characters from the black middle, upper and working class. From the art collecting doctors in Detroit to the bounty hunter from New Jersey to the rodeo promoter from Chicago, the author gets a wide range of perspectives on being black in America. It's a cast of human beings that defy catagories and stereotypes and are sure to expand your outlook on race relations and racial politics in America.

Perspectives

Overall this was a good book. As a black man in his 20s, I really enjoyed hearing so many different perspectives as toward how people are with their blackness.

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Title: The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

Author: Bernard DeVoto

Narrator: John Greenman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-15-11

Publisher: Iambik Audio Inc.

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Sciences

Publisher's Summary:

One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVotos The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink - properly. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awardwinning author turns his shrewd wit on the spirits and attitudes that cause his stomach to turn and his eyes to roll (Warning: this book is NOT for rum drinkers). DeVoto instructs his readers on how to drink like gentlemen and sheds new light on the simple joys of the cocktail hour. With an introduction by Daniel Handler.

Critic Reviews:

"[The Hour] has long been regarded as a classic . . . Strait is the gate and narrow is the way to Mr. DeVoto's magic cocktail kingdom." (The New York Times)

"DeVoto insists in delightfully snooty language that there are only two cocktails, the slug of whisky and the perfectly-measured martini." (The New Yorker Book Bench blog)

"In terms of the cult of happy hour, this may be the best tome ever written, and if you like to shake and stir at all, it is an essential volume to keep on your bar cart." (The Daily Beast)

Members Reviews:

Wonderful -- if read with a light heart

One doesn't often get the chance to use the word "irascible", but this book begs for it. DeVoto has firmly held beliefs about cocktails (there are two of them) and woe unto any who disagree. His tone and style here remind me of H.L Mencken. And like Mencken, I'm sure DeVoto can infuriate people. But remember, it's a book about cocktail hour.and like Mecken, DeVoto has been dead since the mid 1950's.. So there's really not much point in getting upset.

At least one reviewer calls this book "a great rant". That is a great description.

If you can't lighten up and read this book for fun, don't buy it.

If you can enjoy a rant that is well written by an irascible author, then pour yourself a drink (one of the two permitted by DeVoto) and have your dictionary nearby and enjoy.

... glorious tome harks back to a time when a good rant was a respected and a great rant was ...

This glorious tome harks back to a time when a good rant was a respected and a great rant was celebrated. This great rant is to be celebrated.

Hilarious little book!

Superb summary of several crucial principles in life: 1) The cocktail hour is 6pm. 2) There are really only two drinks that men should imbibe, 3) Drink gin with water (not tonic), and 4) never drink rum. Hilarious, priceless little book!

a good old fashioned drink

To those of us who enjoy a retro cocktail and the finest hour of the day; this work should be on your shelf.

As bracing as a bourbon straight up with a tall glass of ice water on the side after a long day, this is a most enjoyable read.

It is dated, but just what I was looking ...

It is dated, but just what I was looking for. I could not put it down. I plan to reread it soon.