Social Science Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

About Canada: Disability Rights: 2nd Edition

Including people with disabilities fully into Canadian society, with the rights enjoyed by non-disabled people, requires a fundamental social transformation, not simply "fixing" some bodies. It requires deep changes in the attitudes, cultural images and policies that make people with disabilities invisible, set them aside, undermine or reject their contributions and value, and justifies their neglect, abuse and death. This shift involves the simple recognition and honouring of the dignity, autonomy and rights of all people, including those who experience disabilities. In the second edition of About Canada: Disability Rights, Deborah Stienstra explores the historical and current experiences of people with disabilities in Canada, as well as the policy and advocacy responses to these experiences. Stienstra demonstrates that disability rights enable people with disabilities to make decisions about their lives and future, claim rights on their own behalf, and participate actively in all areas of Canadian society. Disability rights can and does increase access to and inclusion in critical areas like education, employment, transportation, telecommunications and health care. Additionally, Stienstra identifies new approaches and practices, such as universal design, disability supports and income supports, that can transform Canadian society to be more inclusive and accommodating for everyone.

Deborah Stienstra (Author), Nathalie Toriel (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive

In The Purpose Gap, Patrick Reyes reflects on a family member's death after a long struggle with incarceration and homelessness. As he asks himself why his cousin's life had turned out so differently from his own, he realizes that it was a matter of conditions. While they both grew up in the same marginalized Chicano community in central California, Patrick found himself surrounded by a host of family, friends, and supporters. They created a different narrative for him than the one the rest of the world had succeeded in imposing on his cousin. In short, they created the conditions in which Patrick could not only survive but thrive. Far too much of the literature on leadership tells the story of heroic individuals creating their success by their own efforts. Such stories fail to recognize the structural obstacles to thriving faced by those in marginalized communities. If young people in these communities are to grow up to lives of purpose, others must help create the conditions to make that happen. Pastors, organizational leaders, educators, family, and friends must all perceive their calling to create new stories and new conditions of thriving for those most marginalized. This book offers both inspiration and practical guidance for how to do that.

Patrick B. Reyes (Author), Timothy Andrés Pabon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right

This audiobook narrated by Kelly Burke reveals the unexpected places where violent hate groups recruit young people Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across America and around the globe are struggling to understand how so many people are being radicalized and why they are increasingly attracted to violent movements. Hate in the Homeland shows how tomorrow's far-right nationalists are being recruited in surprising places, from college campuses and mixed martial arts gyms to clothing stores, online gaming chat rooms, and YouTube cooking channels. Instead of focusing on the how and why of far-right radicalization, Cynthia Miller-Idriss seeks answers in the physical and virtual spaces where hate is cultivated. Where does the far right do its recruiting? When do young people encounter extremist messaging in their everyday lives? Miller-Idriss shows how far-right groups are swelling their ranks and developing their cultural, intellectual, and financial capacities in a variety of mainstream settings. She demonstrates how young people on the margins of our communities are targeted in these settings, and how the path to radicalization is a nuanced process of moving in and out of far-right scenes throughout adolescence and adulthood. Hate in the Homeland is essential for understanding the tactics and underlying ideas of modern far-right extremism. This eye-opening book takes readers into the mainstream places and spaces where today's far right is engaging and ensnaring young people, and reveals innovative strategies we can use to combat extremist radicalization.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss (Author), Kelly Burke (Narrator)

Audiobook

North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction

When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty-first with European powers and then with the United States-in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful.

Michael D. Green, Theda Perdue (Author), Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Pornification of America: How Raunch Culture Is Ruining Our Society

Pictures of half-naked girls and women can seem to litter almost every screen, billboard, and advertisement in America. Pole-dancing studios keep women fit. Men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on planes and trains. To top it off, the First Lady has modeled nude and the 'leader of the free world' has bragged about grabbing women 'by the pussy.' This pornification of our society is what Bernadette Barton calls 'raunch culture.' Barton explores what raunch culture is, why it matters, and how it is ruining America. She exposes how internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, and makes its way onto our phones, into our fashion choices, and into our sex lives. From twerking and breast implants, to fake nails and push-up bras, she explores just how much we encounter raunch culture on a daily basis-porn is the new normal. Drawing on interviews, television shows, movies, and social media, Barton argues that raunch culture matters not because it is sexy, but because it is sexist. She shows how young women are encouraged to be sexy like porn stars, and to be grateful for getting cat-called or receiving unsolicited dick pics. As politicians vote to restrict women's access to birth control and abortion, The Pornification of America exposes the double standard we attach to women's sexuality.

Bernadette Barton (Author), Francine Waverly (Narrator)

Audiobook

No son micro. Machismos cotidianos

No son micro porque sostienen un problema enorme. Tienes en tus manos el libro que millones de personas exigen en redes sociales, ese que la gente pregunta constantemente por qué no ha sido escrito en México. Un libro que entrega las preguntas y las respuestas que más tiempo, espacio y caracteres ocupan en la discusión cibernética, en los cafés y en las calles después de cada marcha contra la violencia feminicida. Cualquiera que se pregunte por qué no debe usar el término feminazi, por qué tantos hombres interrumpen a las mujeres, por qué hay hombres aterrados frente al cambio, por qué le damos más valor a una estatua que a la vida de una chica asesinada, cómo se puede ser igualitario más allá del discurso, encontrará aquí las claves para la comprensión y el debate informado. Éste es un libro para quienes argumentan que los hombres siempre han sido así y que las mujeres calladitas se ven más bonitas, porque rabiosas frente a la violencia masiva pierden su encanto; ese encanto que da tanta tranquilidad a una sociedad centrada en las necesidades emocionales de los hombres, de los patriarcas, de los machistas, de los conservadores, de los guapetes de la güisquizquierda. No son micro. Machismos cotidianos puede abrirse en cualquier página para encontrar la respuesta a nuestras preguntas, los argumentos que las chicas y chicos más jóvenes están buscando para enfrentar una absurda guerra de desinformación que pretende acallar las nuevas formas de convivencia entre personas, de la niñez y juventud a veces indefinible y siempre imposible de etiquetar. Es entretenido, lúcido, implacable, claro, realista y honesto, igual que sus autoras. Si este libro estuviera en todas las bibliotecas escolares y en las redacciones de los medios de comunicación, el absurdo debate sobre lo que significan la igualdad, el machismo, el feminismo y la violencia de género se disolvería para transformarse en la conversación más urgente de este siglo: cómo hemos sido y cómo queremos ser, cómo educar para vivir en paz, en el amor y en la diversidad que reconoce las diferencias sin que cuestionar o rebelarse frente al pasado merezca el insulto, la descalificación o la muerte. -Lydia Cacho

Claudia De La Garza, Claudia De La Garza Galvez, Eréndira Derbez, Eréndira Derbez Campos (Author), Lili Barba, Liliana Barba, Lorena López (Narrator)

Audiobook

Eugenics, Sterilization and Planned Parenthood

Their mission was to destroy Black Americans using government-sanctioned sterilization. What damage did eugenics programs do to society? Is there really a superior race? Does anybody have the right to play God with your life? Explore the origins and key players in this fascinating study. What you need to know about eugenics - just the facts!

Xavier James (Author), Coby Allen (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Top 5 reasons Why Black Men Choose white Women

Xavier James (Author), E.M. Lewis (Narrator)

Audiobook

Designing Humans: How Gene Editing Can Bring Back Old Evils and Alter the Course of Human Evolution

This short read analyses gene editing as a revolutionary new technology that could enable the design of new 'ideal' humans. What traits would be desirable? This kind of question links back to eugenic ideas that were popular in Europe in the early 1920s. Using visual communication and design references, 'Designing Humans' critiques past eugenic propaganda and speculates on its possible come back once genome editing enters the biotech market. Will the ideology that dictates human 'fitness' gain momentum once the technology that allows its implementation becomes widely available? This book raises ethical questions that might become part of mainstream consciousness in years to come and points out the role of communication and language in helping create (or avoid) a potentially dystopian future.

Andy Renmei (Author), Martin John (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America

Through the intimate stories of those seeking work, The Tolls of Uncertainty offers a startling look at the nation's unemployment system-who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania, Sarah Damaske examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Shaped by a person's gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America. She reveals the high levels of blame that women who have lost jobs place on themselves, leading them to put their families' needs above their own, sacrifice their health, and take on more tasks inside the home. This 'guilt gap' illustrates how unemployment all too often exacerbates existing differences between men and women. Class privilege, too, gives some an advantage, while leaving others at the mercy of an underfunded unemployment system. Middle-class men are generally able to create the time and space to search for good work, but many others are bogged down by the challenges of poverty-level unemployment benefits and family pressures and fall further behind.

Sarah Damaske (Author), Teri Schnaubelt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Oswald on Trial: Making Sense of the Evidence

Lee Harvey Oswald died before he could stand trial for murdering President Kennedy. This book briefly summarizes the evidence against him. It focuses on what the State of Texas would have included in its closing argument. The author is a notable trial lawyer and a judge. You will find J. Layne Smith's summation of the evidence to be revealing and convincing. Judge Smith succinctly presents a tight and compelling case in eight short chapters, including Jack Ruby's role. He ends by exposing the flaws in the current JFK conspiracy theories too. In less than 30 minutes, Judge Smith explains the essential facts and what the evidence means. Infused with his clarity, you will feel like you're learning about the case over a warm cup of coffee with a friend.

J. Layne Smith (Author), Todd Eflin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Slinging Arrows: How (not) to be a professional darts player

Brought to you by Penguin. Booze, Bullseyes and (more) Booze Humanity has come a long way in the 500,000 years since Neanderthal man first started chucking spears around. Or has it? In his blisteringly funny new book, former professional player Wayne Mardle, whose crowd-pleasing antics were even more lively off stage than they were on, blows the lid off one of the UK's biggest televised sports. Known in darts circles as Hawaii 501 on account of his colourful Hawaiian shirts (yours for just forty-five quid - he's got a garage full of them) Mardle remains one of the planet's most recognisable players, having performed on the world stage during a professional career that saw him play all the greats and, quite frankly, lose to most of them. In this witty (frequently), honest (largely), and poignant (twice) guide to life both on and off the oche, Mardle delivers world-class advice - such as why you shouldn't go on a two-day Vegas booze bender before a major PDC final, or how to avoid going live on European TV with a string of expletives so outrageous that clips are still replayed, years later, on Belgian telly. Some are lessons Mardle learned the hard way; others, like why it's best to avoid being sued by a well-known biscuit manufacturer, are gleaned from green-room gossip spanning decades. © Wayne Mardle 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Wayne Mardle (Author), Wayne Mardle (Narrator)

Audiobook

Social Science Audiobooks in Non-Fiction