13 Best Social Classes, Political Science Books
Social Classes, Political Science is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Social Classes, Political Science audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 13 Social Classes, Political Science audiobooks below.
-
America and the Art of the Possible
- By: Christopher Buskirk
- Narrator: Alex Boyles
- Length: 6 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDBetween 1920 and 1950, America saw an unprecedented expansion of wealth and power underwritten by technological innovation, cultural confidence, and victory in war. American elites won World War II, rebuilt the world order with America at its head,Between 1920 and 1950, America saw an unprecedented expansion of wealth and power underwritten by technological innovation, cultural confidence, and victory in war. American elites won World War II, rebuilt the world order with America at its head, inaugurated the jet age, and put a man on the moon. The boom led to a larger, richer middle class that confirmed America’s best ideals.
By the early 1970s, that ended. American elites have captured a disproportionate share of the social and economic rewards over the last fifty years. Meanwhile, the middle class has shrunk in size and has become economically insecure, owning a smaller share of national wealth than at any time in the nation’s history. This has happened even while most households have two income earners, versus the single-income households that characterized the period of shared prosperity. At the same time, technological innovation that improves people’s standard of living has dramatically slowed.
These trends undermine the basic premise behind the broad acceptance of a meritocratic elite, whose rule is predicated on the belief that if the best rise to the top, their talent and energy will create a rising tide that lifts all boats. We had that once. We can have it again.
... Read more -
On the Clock
- By: Emily Guendelsberger
- Narrator: Christine Lakin
- Length: 12 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: July 16, 2019
- Language: English
-
4.28(1878 ratings)
4.28(1878 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USD“Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age,” (Salon) the bitingly funny, eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved world of hourly low-wage laborAfter the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily“Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age,” (Salon) the bitingly funny, eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved world of hourly low-wage labor
After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she travelled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald’s, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. Offering an up-close portrait of America’s actual “essential workers,” On the Clock examines the broken social safety net as well as an economy that has purposely had all the slack drained out and converted to profit. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest – and how low wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity.
On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane for millions of Americans.
... Read more -
Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay
- By: The Debt Collective
- Narrator: Nancy Peterson
- Length: 4 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
-
4.28(264 ratings)
4.28(264 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDDebtors have been mocked, scolded, and lied to for decades. We have been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own incarceration. We’ve been told there is no way to changeDebtors have been mocked, scolded, and lied to for decades. We have been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own incarceration. We’ve been told there is no way to change an economy that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small minority hoard wealth and power. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a political choice. In the early days of the crisis, elected officials drew up plans to spend trillions of dollars. The only question was: where would the money go and who would benefit from the bailout?The truth is that there has never been a lack of money for things like housing, education, and health care. Millions of people never needed to be forced into debt for those things in the first place.Armed with this knowledge, a militant debtors movement has the potential to rewrite the contract and assure that no one has to mortgage their future to survive.
Debtors of the world must unite.
As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our debts can make us powerful.
... Read more -
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower
- By: Davarian L Baldwin
- Narrator: Wayne Carr
- Length: 8 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 30, 2021
- Language: English
-
4.09(141 ratings)
4.09(141 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDAcross America, universities have become big businesses–and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow. Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas andAcross America, universities have become big businesses–and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow.
... Read more
Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target the Black and Latinx neighborhoods nearby. They become the primary employers, dictating labor practices and suppressing wages.
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power–and who is made vulnerable.
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities. -
The New Education
- By: Cathy N. Davidson
- Narrator: Carolyn Cook
- Length: 11 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 05, 2017
- Language: English
-
4.08(293 ratings)
4.08(293 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDA leading educational thinker argues that the American university is stuck in the past — and shows how we can revolutionize it for our era of constant change Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925. It wasA leading educational thinker argues that the American university is stuck in the past — and shows how we can revolutionize it for our era of constant change
Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925. It was in those decades that the nation’s new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors, all in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T.
As Cathy N. Davidson argues in The New Education, this approach to education is wholly unsuited to the era of the gig economy. From the Ivy League to community colleges, she introduces us to innovators who are remaking college for our own time by emphasizing student-centered learning that values creativity in the face of change above all. The New Education ultimately shows how we can teach students not only to survive but to thrive amid the challenges to come.
... Read more -
Rendezvous with Oblivion
- By: Thomas Frank
- Narrator: Thomas Frank
- Length: 6 hours 27 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: June 19, 2018
- Language: English
-
4(453 ratings)
4(453 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDFrom the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas, a scathing collection of his incisive commentary on our cruel times–perfect for this political moment. What does a middle-class democracy look like when itFrom the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas, a scathing collection of his incisive commentary on our cruel times–perfect for this political moment.
What does a middle-class democracy look like when it comes apart? When, after forty years of economic triumph, America’s winners persuade themselves that they owe nothing to the rest of the country?
With his sharp eye for detail, Thomas Frank takes us on a wide-ranging tour through present-day America, showing us a society in the late stages of disintegration and describing the worlds of both the winners and the losers–the sprawling mansion districts as well as the lives of fast-food workers.
Rendezvous with Oblivion is a collection of interlocking essays examining how inequality has manifested itself in our cities, in our jobs, in the way we travel–and of course in our politics, where in 2016, millions of anxious ordinary people rallied to the presidential campaign of a billionaire who meant them no good.
These accounts of folly and exploitation are here brought together in a single audiobook unified by Frank’s distinctive voice, sardonic wit, and anti-orthodox perspective. It captures a society where every status signifier is hollow, where the allure of mobility is just another con game, and where rebellion too often yields nothing.
For those who despair of the future of our country and of reason itself, Rendezvous with Oblivion is a booster shot of energy, reality, and moral outrage.
... Read more -
The Marginalized Majority
- By: Onnesha Roychoudhuri
- Narrator: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 5 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
-
3.98(125 ratings)
3.98(125 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDEver since the 2016 election, pundits have been saying our country has never been more divided–that if progressives want to reclaim power, we need to be “pragmatic,” reach across the aisle, and look past identity politics. But whatEver since the 2016 election, pundits have been saying our country has never been more divided–that if progressives want to reclaim power, we need to be “pragmatic,” reach across the aisle, and look past identity politics.
But what if we’re getting the story all wrong?
In The Marginalized Majority, Onnesha Roychoudhuri makes the galvanizing case that our voices are already the majority–and that our plurality of identities is not only our greatest strength but is also at the indisputable core of successful progressive change throughout history.
From the civil rights movement to the Women’s March, Saturday Night Live to the mainstream media, Roychoudhuri holds the myths about our disenfranchisement up to the light, illuminating narratives from history that reveal we have far more power than we’re often led to believe. With both clear-eyed hope and electrifying power, she examines our ideas about what’s possible, and what’s necessary–opening up space for action, new realities, and, ultimately, survival.
Now, Roychoudhuri urges us, is the time to fight like the majority we already are.
... Read more -
White Working Class
- By: Joan C. Williams
- Narrator: Liisa Ivary
- Length: 3 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
-
3.89(1393 ratings)
3.89(1393 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDAround the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite–journalists, managers, and establishment politicians–are on the outside looking in, left to argue overAround the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite–journalists, managers, and establishment politicians–are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having “something approaching rock star status” by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite’s analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness.
Williams explains that many people have conflated “working class” with “poor”–but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don’t resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities–just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.
White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers–and voters.
... Read more -
It Was All a Dream
- By: Reniqua Allen
- Narrator: Shayna Small
- Length: 12 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: January 08, 2019
- Language: English
-
3.88(166 ratings)
3.88(166 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDYoung Black Americans have been trying to realize the promise of the American Dream for centuries and coping with the reality of its limitations for just as long. Now, a new generation is pursuing success, happiness, and freedom — on their ownYoung Black Americans have been trying to realize the promise of the American Dream for centuries and coping with the reality of its limitations for just as long. Now, a new generation is pursuing success, happiness, and freedom — on their own terms.
In It Was All a Dream, Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point.
Interweaving her own experience with those of young Black Americans in cities and towns from New York to Los Angeles and Bluefield, West Virginia to Chicago, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity. Instead of accepting downward mobility, Black millennials are flipping the script and rejecting White America’s standards. Whether it means moving away from cities and heading South, hustling in the entertainment industry, challenging ideas about gender and sexuality, or building activist networks, they are determined to forge their own path.
Compassionate and deeply reported, It Was All a Dream is a celebration of a generation’s doggedness against all odds, as they fight for a country in which their dreams can become a reality.
... Read more -
Maid
- By: Stephanie Land
- Narrator: Stephanie Land
- Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: January 22, 2019
- Language: English
-
3.83(62319 ratings)
3.83(62319 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES, HAILED BY ROLLING STONE AS “A GREAT ONE.” “A single mother’s personal, unflinching look at America’s class divide, a description of theNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES, HAILED BY ROLLING STONE AS “A GREAT ONE.”
“A single mother’s personal, unflinching look at America’s class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work.”... Read more
-PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama’s Summer Reading List
At 28, Stephanie Land’s dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet.
Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie’s years spent in service to upper middle class America as a “nameless ghost” who quietly shared in her clients’ triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren’t being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor.
Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit.
-
Had I Known
- By: Barbara Ehrenreich
- Narrator: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hours 50 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 24, 2020
- Language: English
-
3.72(507 ratings)
3.72(507 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDWinner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and “veteran muckraker”... Read moreWinner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and “veteran muckraker” Barbara Ehrenreich (The New Yorker).
A self-proclaimed “myth buster by trade,” Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into intellectual waters that others deem too murky. Now, Had I Known gathers the articles and excerpts from a long-ranging career that most highlight Ehrenreich’s brilliance, social consciousness, and wry wit.
From Ehrenreich’s award-winning article “Welcome to Cancerland,” published shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to her groundbreaking undercover investigative journalism in Nickel and Dimed, to her exploration of death and mortality in the New York Times bestseller, Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich has been writing radical, thought-provoking, and worldview-altering pieces for over four decades. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, among others, while her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and many more. Had I Known pulls from the vast and varied collection of one of our country’s most incisive thinkers to create one must-have volume. -
Mill Town
- By: Kerri Arsenault
- Narrator: Kerri Arsenault
- Length: 12 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: September 01, 2020
- Language: English
-
3.7(1369 ratings)
3.7(1369 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USD“This is a listen for anyone interested in small-town America, how it’s changed, and why it matters…Though Arsenault may not be a professional narrator, her passion for these important stories comes through with just the right“This is a listen for anyone interested in small-town America, how it’s changed, and why it matters…Though Arsenault may not be a professional narrator, her passion for these important stories comes through with just the right amount of sincerity.” — AudioFile Magazine
This program is read by the author.A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.”
Mill Town is an personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press
“While this is a portrait of a town in decline, it’s also a paean to the community that cared for it and those who have remained there, including Arsenault’s own classmates, friends, and family. The author’s unusually quiet, tender reading evinces that love, while also clearly setting that affection against the brutality of the forces that have laid Mexico low.” — Booklist
... Read more -
Struggle and Mutual Aid
- By: Nicolas Delalande
- Narrator: Chris Abell
- Length: 10 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDA dynamic historian revisits the workers’ internationals, whose scope and significance are commonly overlooked. In current debates about globalization, open and borderless elites are often set in opposition to the immobile and protectionistA dynamic historian revisits the workers’ internationals, whose scope and significance are commonly overlooked.
In current debates about globalization, open and borderless elites are often set in opposition to the immobile and protectionist working classes. This view obscures a major historical fact: for around a century–from the 1860s to the 1970s–worker movements were at the cutting edge of internationalism.
The creation in London of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864 was a turning point. What would later be called the “First International” aspired to bring together European and American workers across languages, nationalities, and trades. It was a major undertaking in a context marked by opening borders, moving capital, and exploding inequalities.
In this urgent, engaging work, historian Nicolas Delalande explores how international worker solidarity developed, what it accomplished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and why it collapsed over the past fifty years, to the point of disappearing from our memories.
... Read more
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.
Recent Blogs
-
July 06, 2023
Which books are available on Spotify?
-
July 06, 2023
Are audiobooks free on Spotify with membership?
-
June 25, 2023
Top Destinations for Free eBooks and Audiobooks Online
-
June 25, 2023
Best Alternative to Barnes & Noble Online
-
June 25, 2023
The Best Places to Buy eBooks: Beyond the Kindle Ecosystem
-
June 25, 2023
What are the best places to find free ebooks?
-
June 25, 2023
Best Independent Companies to Buy eBooks from
-
April 19, 2023
How many Game of Thrones books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
Where to buy cheap books: A comprehensive guide
-
April 19, 2023
How many Jack Reacher books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many FNAF books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many Warrior Cats books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
How many Wheel of Time books are there?
-
April 19, 2023
The best Vampire Survivors powerups in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read the Robert Galbraith books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read the Artemis Fowl books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Craig Johnson’s books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Cassandra Clare’s books in order
-
April 19, 2023
How to read Lee Child’s books in order
-
April 18, 2023
How to read the In Death book series in order
-
April 18, 2023
Best book quotes
-
April 18, 2023
A tale of two cities reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
All the President’s Men reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
Tintin reviewed
-
April 18, 2023
What are adult coloring books?
-
April 18, 2023
How to read the Percy Jackson books in order
-
April 11, 2023
How to find charities for the blind
-
April 11, 2023
What is the best Bible app
-
April 11, 2023
Where to find free audio Bible downloads
-
April 11, 2023
What is the best free Bible app
More in this series
- 11 Best Public Speaking, Business & Economics Books
- 10 Best Humorous, Performing Arts Books
- 13 Best Industrial & Organizational Psychology Books
- 13 Best Genocide & War Crimes Books
- 29 Best School & Education Books
- 29 Best Paranormal Books
- 28 Best Women in Business Books
- 29 Best Coaching Books
- The best books by Harper Lee
- 29 Best Death, Grief, Bereavement, Religion Books
- 11 Best Eating Disorders, Self-Help Books
- 23 Best Birds, Juvenile Fiction Books
- 26 Best Shakespeare, Drama Books
- 18 Best Eastern Books
- 12 Best Alzheimer’s & Dementia Books
- 15 Best Sermons Books
- 13 Best Vietnam War Books
- 23 Best Business Development, Business & Economics Books
- 22 Best Yoga Books
- 14 Best Interpersonal Relations, Psychology Books
- 15 Best Law Enforcement, Political Science Books
- 12 Best Marriage & Family, Family & Relationships Books
- 29 Best Islam Books
- 29 Best Spiritual Warfare, Religion Books
- 29 Best Romance, Fiction Books
- 13 Best Christmas & Advent, Religion Books
- 20 Best Science & Technology, Juvenile Nonfiction Books
- 13 Best Cleaning & Caretaking Books
- 21 Best Business Ethics, Business & Economics Books
- 29 Best Literary Books