14 Best Cultural, Social Science Books
Cultural, Social Science is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Cultural, Social Science audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 14 Cultural, Social Science audiobooks below.
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Field Notes from a Waterborne Land
- By: Parimal Bhattacharya
- Narrator: Anindya Chakravorty
- Length: 10 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: HarperCollins India
- Publish date: April 13, 2022
- Language: English
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4.53(17 ratings)
4.53(17 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDIn the late 2000s, when the three-decade-long Left Front rule in West Bengal was crumbling, Parimal Bhattacharya began to travel outside the well-trodden urban centres to different parts of the region – from the Sundarbans to tribalIn the late 2000s, when the three-decade-long Left Front rule in West Bengal was crumbling, Parimal Bhattacharya began to travel outside the well-trodden urban centres to different parts of the region – from the Sundarbans to tribal Jangalmahal, from the outskirts of Kolkata to villages on the Bangladesh border, from the floodplains of the Hooghly to the forests of Simlipal in neighbouring Odisha.
There, he encountered: a woman who was branded a witch because she was listed in the census as literate; an island that vanished famously, only to resurface; a paralysed communist who dreams about the death of a river; a forest community who believe they are descendants of the Harappans; an old millworker and his wife who fight the ghosts of a dead industrial town with laughter; a fisherman uprooted by a river eleven times in twenty years; and many more. This book documents the missing narratives of these ‘other’ Bengalis, the largely invisible majority beyond the bhadralok that the rest of India knows.
Moving between the personal and the political, and between travelogue, journal and memoir, Field Notes from a Waterborne Land takes the reader on a journey across a fascinating land peopled with unforgettable characters.
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Black Rednecks and White Liberals
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrator: Hugh Mann
- Length: 11 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
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4.37(6138 ratings)
4.37(6138 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDBlack Rednecks and White Liberals is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell. This explosive new book challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, Jews, Germans andBlack Rednecks and White Liberals is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell.
This explosive new book challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, Jews, Germans and Nazis, slavery, and education. Through a series of essays, Sowell presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many mistaken and dangerous actions, policies, and trends. He presents eye-opening insights into the development of the ghetto culture—a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves “friends” of blacks—which is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity, and he reexamines the tragic institution of slavery. The reasons for the venomous hatred of Jews, and other groups like them in countries around the world, are also explored, as are misconceptions of Nazi Germany.
Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as such historic interpreters of American life as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted.
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The Man in the Dog Park
- By: Cathy A. Small
- Narrator: Karen White
- Length: 6 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDThe Man in the Dog Park offers the listener a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship with a homeless man who became her coauthor, Cathy A. Small takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to beThe Man in the Dog Park offers the listener a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship with a homeless man who became her coauthor, Cathy A. Small takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to be homeless.
Interviews and encounters with dozens of homeless people lead us into a world that most have never seen. We travel as an intimate observer into the places that many homeless frequent, including a community shelter, a day-labor agency, a panhandling corner, a pawn shop, and a HUD housing office. Through these personal stories, we witness the obstacles that homeless people face and the ingenuity it takes to negotiate life without a home.
The Man in the Dog Park points to the ways that our own cultural assumptions and blind spots are complicit in US homelessness and contribute to the degree of suffering that homeless people face. At the same time, Small, Kordosky, and Moore show us how our own sense of connection and compassion can bring us into touch with the actions that will lessen homelessness and bring greater humanity to the experience of those who remain homeless.
The raw emotion of The Man in the Dog Park will forever change your appreciation for, and understanding of, a life so many deal with outside of the limelight of contemporary society.
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Race and Culture
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrator: Tom Weiner
- Length: 10 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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4.3(764 ratings)
4.3(764 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0020.95 USDThomas Sowell is one of America’s leading voices on matters of race and ethnicity. In his book Inside American Education he surveyed the ills of American education from the primary grades to graduate school with “an impressive range ofThomas Sowell is one of America’s leading voices on matters of race and ethnicity. In his book Inside American Education he surveyed the ills of American education from the primary grades to graduate school with “an impressive range of knowledge and acuity of observation,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Now in his book Race and Culture he asks the question: “What is it that allows certain groups to get ahead?” The answer will undoubtedly create debates for years to come.
The thesis of Race and Culture is that productive skills are the key to understanding the economic advancement of particular racial or ethnic groups, as well as countries and civilizations—and that the spread of those skills, whether through migration or conquest, explains much of the advancement of the human race. Whether this body of skills, aptitudes, and disciplines is called “culture” or “human capital,” it explains far more than politics, prejudice, or genetics. Rather than draw on the experience of one country or one era of history, Race and Culture encompasses dozens of racial and ethnic groups, living in scores of countries around the world, over a period of centuries. Due to its breadth and scope, this study is able to test alternative theories empirically on a vast canvas in space and time. Its conclusions refute much, if not most, of what is currently believed about race and about cultures.
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The Patterning Instinct
- By: Jeremy Lent
- Narrator: Derek Perkins
- Length: 19 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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4.25(538 ratings)
4.25(538 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDThis fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers andThis fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trailblazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.
Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today’s cultural norms.
Uprooting the tired cliches of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped.
By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.
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To Govern the Globe
- By: Alfred W. McCoy
- Narrator: Dan Woren
- Length: 15 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.23(57 ratings)
4.23(57 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDIn a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes–from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050–has produced aIn a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes–from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050–has produced a relentless succession of rising empires and fading world orders.
During the long centuries of Iberian and British imperial rule, the quest for new forms of energy led to the development of the colonial sugar plantation as a uniquely profitable kind of commerce. In a time when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing urgency, the book explains how the plantation’s extraordinary profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for over four centuries.
After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future.
By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of their lives–2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond.
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Lost in Summerland
- By: Barrett Swanson
- Length: 10 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: May 18, 2021
- Language: English
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4.23(166 ratings)
4.23(166 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDA trip with his brother to a New York psychic community becomes a rollicking tour through the world of American spiritualism. At a wilderness retreat in Ohio, men seek a cure for toxic masculinity, while in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, antiwarA trip with his brother to a New York psychic community becomes a rollicking tour through the world of American spiritualism. At a wilderness retreat in Ohio, men seek a cure for toxic masculinity, while in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, antiwar veterans turn to farming when they cannot sustain the heroic myth of service. And when his best friend’s body washes up on the shores of the Mississippi River, he falls into the gullet of true crime discussion boards, exploring the stamina of conspiracy theories along the cankered byways of the Midwest.
In this exhilarating debut, Barrett Swanson introduces us to a new reality. At a moment when grand unifying narratives have splintered into competing storylines, these critically acclaimed essays document the many routes by which people are struggling to find stability in the aftermath of our country’s political and economic collapse, sometimes at dire and disillusioning costs.
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The Rape of the Nile, Revised and Updated
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrator: Michael Langan
- Length: 10 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.04(3 ratings)
4.04(3 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe scandalous rape of Ancient Egypt is a historical vignette of greed, vanity, and dedicated archaeological research. It is a tale vividly told by renowned archaeology author Brian Fagan, with characters that include the ancient historianThe scandalous rape of Ancient Egypt is a historical vignette of greed, vanity, and dedicated archaeological research. It is a tale vividly told by renowned archaeology author Brian Fagan, with characters that include the ancient historian Herodotus; Theban tomb robbers; obelisk-stealing Romans; Coptic Christians determined to erase the heretical past; mummy traders; leisured antiquarians; major European museums; Giovanni Belzoni, a circus strongman who removed more antiquities than Napoleon’s armies; shrewd consuls and ruthless pashas; and archaeologists such as Sir Flinders Petrie who changed the course of Egyptology.
This is the first thoroughly revised edition of The Rape of the Nile–Fagan’s classic account of the cavalcade of archaeologists, thieves, and sightseers who have flocked to the Nile Valley since ancient times. Featured in this edition are new accounts of stunning recent discoveries, including the Royal Tombs of Tanis, the Valley of Golden Mummies at Bahariya, the Tomb of the Sons of Ramses, and the sunken city of Alexandria (whose lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). Fagan concludes with a clear-eyed assessment of the impact of modern mass tourism on archaeological sites and artifacts.
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In Search of the Canary Tree
- By: Lauren E. Oakes
- Narrator: Ellen Archer
- Length: 8 hours 27 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: November 27, 2018
- Language: English
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3.98(433 ratings)
3.98(433 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe award-winning and surprisingly hopeful story of one woman’s search for resiliency in a warming world Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska’s old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: theThe award-winning and surprisingly hopeful story of one woman’s search for resiliency in a warming world
Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska’s old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment. Eloquent, insightful, and deeply heartening, In Search of the Canary Tree is a case for hope in a warming world.
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Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes
- By: David Horowitz
- Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 9 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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3.93(196 ratings)
3.93(196 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe anti-white racism of the political left remains one of the few taboo subjects in America. In this book, David Horowitz, a former confidante of the Black Panthers, lays bare the liberal attack on “whiteness,” the latest battle in theThe anti-white racism of the political left remains one of the few taboo subjects in America. In this book, David Horowitz, a former confidante of the Black Panthers, lays bare the liberal attack on “whiteness,” the latest battle in the war against American democracy.
Horowitz acknowledges that America’s political culture is the creation of white, European, primarily Christian males. But it is these very men and their heirs that have led the world in abolishing slavery, establishing the principles of ethnic and racial inclusion, and creating a society of unparalleled rights and opportunities that people of every race and creed continue to flock to. Horowitz points to the hypocrisy of this and challenges racism in all its forms, especially the hidden ones.
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Blood Rites
- By: Barbara Ehrenreich
- Narrator: Amy Landon
- Length: 9 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: January 07, 2020
- Language: English
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3.91(56 ratings)
3.91(56 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDA New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book“Original and illuminating.” —The Washington PostWhat draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to... Read moreA New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book“Original and illuminating.” —The Washington PostWhat draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to “become” men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century “total war.”Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place — not in a “killer instinct” unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores.Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life. -
Dancing in the Streets
- By: Barbara Ehrenreich
- Narrator: Pam Ward
- Length: 9 hours 29 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.83(1032 ratings)
3.83(1032 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDFrom bestselling social commentator and cultural historian Barbara Ehrenreich comes this fascinating exploration of one of humanity’s oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting,From bestselling social commentator and cultural historian Barbara Ehrenreich comes this fascinating exploration of one of humanity’s oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture, showing that such mass festivities have been indigenous to the West since the ancient Greeks. Though suppressed by elites who fear the undermining of social hierarchies, outbreaks of group revelry still persist, Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent “carnivalization” of sports.
Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets shows that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and thereby envision a peaceable future.
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The Witch
- By: Ronald Hutton
- Narrator: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 16 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.6(711 ratings)
3.6(711 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDWhy have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe’s history. The witch came to prominence–and often a painful death–in early modern Europe, yet herWhy have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe’s history.
The witch came to prominence–and often a painful death–in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early modern stake.
This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft. Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and North and South America, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations. His fresh anthropological and ethnographical approach focuses on cultural inheritance and change while considering shamanism, folk religion, the range of witch trials, and how the fear of witchcraft might be eradicated.
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The World of the Ancient Maya, Second Edition
- By: John S. Henderson
- Narrator: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 10 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.03(2 ratings)
3.03(2 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe ancient Maya were the only fully literate pre-Colombian people in the Americas. Superb scientists, they developed highly sophisticated mathematics and an intricate and accurate calendar system. Theirs was one of the few complex societies toThe ancient Maya were the only fully literate pre-Colombian people in the Americas. Superb scientists, they developed highly sophisticated mathematics and an intricate and accurate calendar system. Theirs was one of the few complex societies to emerge in and to adapt successfully to a tropical forest environment. Their architecture, sculpture, and painting were sophisticated and compellingly beautiful.
In this comprehensive survey, updated for this new edition, Henderson explores the entire Maya cultural tradition, from the earliest traces of settlement through the period of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. His wide-ranging account treats diverse aspects of the Maya world, from religion and philosophy to the environments of the various Maya peoples, using deciphered Maya texts to reconstruct the ancient societies.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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