Social Science Audiobooks

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. With incisive wit, Harriot speaks hilarious truth to oppressive power, subverting conventional historical narratives with little-known stories about the experiences of Black Americans. From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America’s first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF.  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

A New York Times Bestseller Taking the story of white supremacy in America back to 1493, and examining contemporary communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma for models of racial repair, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy is “full of urgency and insight” (The New York Times) as it helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy. Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. Along the way, he shows us the connections between Emmett Till and the Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto in the Mississippi Delta, between the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth and the mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men in Makato, and between the murder of 300 African Americans during the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and the Trail of Tears. From this vantage point, Jones offers a “revelatory…searing, stirring outline” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans. These deeds were justified by people who embraced the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery: the belief that God had designated all territory not inhabited or controlled by Christians as their new promised land. This “blistering, bracing, and brave” (Michael Eric Dyson) reframing of American origins explains how the founders of the United States could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence—and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism. Through stories of people navigating these contradictions in three communities, Jones illuminates the possibility of a new American future in which we finally fulfill the promise of a pluralistic democracy.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Esquire, The Atlantic, NPR, and Barack Obama With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them. How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Good Morning America Book Club Pick A New York Times Most Anticipated Books of Fall From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner, a “raw and inspiring” (People) memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid. When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, he called it an “unflinching look at America’s class divide…and a reminder of the dignity of all work.” Later, it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by sixty-seven million households and was Netflix’s fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Stephanie’s escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions. Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, food insecurity, the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line—Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties. Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America’s educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds.

“One of the rare books on the topic that manages to be both entertaining and factually grounded.” —The Wall Street Journal From the bestselling author of Raven Rock, The Only Plane in the Sky, and Watergate (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history) comes the first comprehensive and eye-opening exploration of our government’s decades-long quest to solve one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Are we alone in the universe? For as long as we have looked to the skies, the question of whether life on earth is the only life to exist has been at the core of the human experience, driving scientific debate and discovery, shaping spiritual belief, and prompting existential thought across borders and generations. It’s one of our culture’s favorite conversations, and yet, the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence has been largely banished to the realm of fantasy and conspiracy. Now, for the first time, the full story of our national obsession with UFOs—and the covert search by scientists, the United States military, and the CIA for proof of alien life—is told by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff in a deeply reported and researched history. It begins in 1947, when two headline-making sightings of strange flying objects prompt the US Air Force’s newly formed Department of Defense to create a series of secret programs to determine how unidentified phenomena may pose a threat to national security. Over the next half-century, as the atomic age gives way to the space race and the Cold War, the mission continues, bringing together an unexpected group of astronomers, military officials, civilian contactees, and true believers who bring us closer, then further, then closer again, to answering one of our most enduring questions: What exactly is out there? Drawing from original archival research, declassified documents, and interviews with senior intelligence and military officials, Graff brings readers a story that’s “Loads of fun…[a] fascinating deep dive down the rabbit hole” (Publishers Weekly).

“A thoughtful recipe for building social justice” (Kirkus Reviews) from acclaimed Harvard sociologist Michèle Lamont that makes the case for reexamining what we value—the quest for respect—in an age that has been defined by growing inequality and the obsolescence of the American dream. In this capstone work, Michèle Lamont unpacks the power of recognition—rendering others as visible and valued—by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults and cultural icons—from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay. Decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth, up and down the income ladder, just as the American dream has become out of reach for most people. By prioritizing material and professional success, we judge ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes of the upper-middle class in our values system feeds into the marginalization of workers, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minority groups. The solution, Lamont argues, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognize the diverse ways one can live a life. Building on Lamont’s lifetime of expertise and revelatory connections between broad-ranging issues, Seeing Others delivers realistic sources of hope: by reducing stigma, we put change within reach. Just as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone did for a previous generation, Seeing Others strikes at the heart of our modern struggles and illuminates an inclusive path forward with new ways for understanding our world.

From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, “a strikingly fresh cultural critic” (Washington Post) comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between. Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights. Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay’s best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years. Covering a wide range of topics—politics, feminism, the culture wars, civil rights, and much more—with an all-new introduction in which she reflects on the past decade in America, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Roxane Gay’s devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking. Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet. “Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven. In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect” cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.

Award-winning New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reflects on twenty-five years of covering pandemics—how governments react to them, how the media covers them, how they are exploited, and what we can do to prepare for the next one. For millions of Americans, Donald McNeil was a comforting voice when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. He was a regular reporter on The New York Times’s popular podcast The Daily and told listeners early on to prepare for the worst. He’d covered public health for twenty-five years and quickly realized that an obscure virus in Wuhan, China, was destined to grow into a global pandemic rivaling the 1918 Spanish flu. Because of his clear advice, a generation of Times readers knew the risk was real but that they might be spared by taking the right precautions. Because of his prescient work, The New York Times won the 2021 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service. The Wisdom of Plagues is his account of what he learned over a quarter-century of reporting in over sixty countries. Many science reporters understand the basics of diseases—how a virus works, for example, or what goes into making a vaccine. But very few understand the psychology of how small outbreaks turn into pandemics, why people refuse to believe they’re at risk, or why they reject protective measures like quarantine or vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic was the story McNeil had trained his whole life to cover. His expertise and breadth of sources let him make many accurate predictions in 2020 about the course that a deadly new virus would take and how different countries would respond. By the time McNeil wrote his last New York Times stories, he had not lost his compassion—but he had grown far more stone-hearted about how governments should react. He had witnessed enough disasters and read enough history to realize that while every epidemic is different, failure was the one constant. Small case-clusters ballooned into catastrophe because weak leaders became mired in denial. Citizens refused to make even minor sacrifices for the common good. They were encouraged in that by money-hungry entrepreneurs and power-hungry populists. Science was ignored, obvious truths were denied, and the innocent too often died. In The Wisdom of Plagues, McNeil offers tough, prescriptive advice on what we can do to improve global health and be better prepared for the inevitable next pandemic.

This program is read by the author. “My Side of the River is both fierce and poetic. It brilliantly reframes border writing while embracing nature and familial history. There are moments one sees greatness appear. This is one of those moments.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this galvanizing yet tender memoir. Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family. When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws. For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Want to know what chaos theory can teach us about human events? In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works—and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas. If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind? In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas dives deeply into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy storybook version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives—and our societies—could be radically different. Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents? Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.

“Among the Bros is a harrowing and disturbing book. I have read about fraternity life but nothing like this. This book will blow your mind, each page digging deeper into the unimaginable. Except every word is true.”—Buzz Bissinger, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Mosquito Bowl and Friday Night Lights A brilliant young investigative journalist traces a murder and a multi-million-dollar drug ring, leading to an unprecedented look at elite American fraternity life. When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a homicide, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Behind the pop culture cliches of “Greek life” lies one of the major breeding grounds of American power: 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members. With unprecedented immersion, this book takes readers inside that bubble. Under the live oaks and Spanish moss of Travel + Leisure’s “Most Beautiful Campus in America,” Marshall traces several “C of C” boys’ journeys from fraternity pledges to interstate drug traffickers. The result is a true-life story of hubris, status, money, drugs, and murder—one that lifts a curtain on an ecstatic and disturbing way of life. With expert pacing and a cool eye, he follows a never-ending party that continues after funerals and mass arrests. An addictive and haunting portrait of tomorrow’s American establishment, Among the Bros is nonfiction storytelling at its finest.

This program is read by the author. From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned generation. Kate is a pop culture commentator and host of the popular millennial-focused podcast Be There in Five. Part-funny, part-serious, Kate navigates the complicated nature of celebrating and criticizing the culture that shaped her as a woman, while arguing that great depths can come from surface-level interests. With her trademark style and vulnerability, One In a Millennial is sharp, hilarious, and heartwarming all at once. She tackles AOL Instant Messenger, purity culture, American Girl Dolls, going out tops, Spice Girl feminism, her feelings about millennial motherhood, and more. Kate’s laugh-out-loud asides and keen observations will have you nodding your head and maybe even tearing up. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

The internationally bestselling author explores the revolutions—past and present—that define the chaotic, polarized, and unstable age in which we live. Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, geopolitical dangers, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk—the early decades of the 21st century may be one of the most revolutionary periods in modern history. But they are not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What makes an age a revolutionary one? And how do they end? In this major new work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates eras that have shattered and shaped humanity. Four such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in 17th-century Netherlands a series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world—and created modern politics as we know it today. The “Glorious Revolution” in Britain showed that major political change could happen peacefully. Next, the French Revolution, a dramatic decade and a half that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us to this day. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world. Against these paradigm-shifting historical eras, Zakaria describes our current situation, unpacking the four revolutions we are living through now; in globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to reframe and illuminate a turbulent present.

The strange tale of how one Jewish family-the Rothschilds-became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories over the course of the last two centuries . . . In 2018 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to social media to share her suspicions that the California wildfires were started by 'space solar generators' which were funded by powerful, mysterious backers. Instantly, thousands of people rallied around her, blaming the fires on "Jewish space lasers" and, ultimately, the Rothschild family. For more than 200 years, the name "Rothschild" has been synonymous with two things: great wealth, and conspiracy theories about what they're "really doing" with it. Almost from the moment Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his sons emerged from the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt to revolutionize the banking world, the Rothschild family has been the target of myths, hoaxes, bizarre accusations, and constant, virulent antisemitism. Over the years, they have been blamed for everything from the sinking of the Titanic, to causing the Great Depression, and even creating the COVID-19 pandemic. Jewish Space Lasers is a deeply researched dive into the history of the conspiracy industry around the Rothschild family.

Peabody Award–winning journalist Michele Norris offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through her decade-long work at The Race Card Project. The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send. The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such as: You’re Pretty for a Black girl. White privilege, enjoy it, earned it. Lady, I don’t want your purse. My ancestors massacred Indians near here. Urban living has made me racist. I’m only Asian when it’s convenient. Many go even further than just six words, submitting backstories, photos, and heirlooms: a collection much like a scrapbook of American candor you rarely get to see. Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories. The breadth of this work came as a surprise to Norris. For most of the twelve years she has collected these stories, many were submitted by white respondents. This unexpected panorama provides a rare 360-degree view of how Americans see themselves and one another. Our Hidden Conversations reminds us that even during times of great division, honesty, grace, and a willing ear can provide a bridge toward empathy and maybe even understanding.

A “thought-provoking and timely” (The Times, London) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history. This “inventive and compelling” (Times Literary Supplement) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance. Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this raw coming-of-age memoir, in the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, The Other Wes Moore, and Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate. Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. Divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence marked his adolescent and teen years, propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing high school. An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts Henderson’s expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with those of his friends who wound up incarcerated or killed. He retreads the steps and missteps he took to escape the drama and disorder of his youth. As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class, Henderson finds that he remains on the outside looking in. His greatest achievements—a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge—feel like hollow measures of success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable.

A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read for March 2024 * A Bustle Best New Book of Spring 2024 Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class. We’ve all heard of Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and LuLaRoe, but few know the nefarious way they and countless other multilevel marketing (MLM) companies prey on desperate Americans struggling to make ends meet. When factories close, stalwart industries shutter, and blue-collar opportunities evaporate, MLMs are there, ready to pounce on the crumbling American Dream. MLMs thrive in rural areas and on military bases, targeting women with promises of being their own boss and millions of dollars in easy income—even at the risk of their entire life savings. But the vast majority—99.7%—of those who join an MLM make no money or lose money, and wind up stuck with inventory they can’t sell to recoup their losses. Featuring in-depth reporting and intimate research, Selling the Dream reveals how these companies—often owned by political and corporate elites, such as the Devos and the Van Andels families—have made a windfall in profit off of the desperation of the American working class.

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST “Quite simply one of the best books of the decade.” —Los Angeles Review of Books * “The mother of intersectional Latinx identity.” —Cosmopolitan * “Brilliant…a hopeful book…rooted in the steadfast belief other worlds are possible.” —The New York Observer * “Witty, confident, and effortlessly provocative.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer * “The most fearless writer in America.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Good Night, Irene A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity. A creep can be a single figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it. Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from William Burroughs to her grandfather, from Joan Didion to her own abusive ex-partner; she takes aim at everything from public school administrations to the mainstream media, from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Weaving her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

This program is read by the author. Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them. "A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein "A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world. Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization—and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence. The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new audiobook, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless—an audiobook whose verve and rigor only they could deliver. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This program is read by the author. "An intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon’s story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans." —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne The first definitive book that names the massive social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals. Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and—most of the time—a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: She is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood. Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America. In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them? With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live. This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.

This program features an introduction read by the author. “I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’ in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.” —Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice. It is time to put a price tag on the miseducation of Black children. In this prequel to The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays bare the devastating effect on 25 Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then, with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

“Arresting, deeply reported. . . . a patient reporter who embeds with her subjects long enough to write about their inner worlds with authority and nuance. . . . The Furies is deeply respectful of its subjects’ autonomy, including their self-justifications and mistakes. Flock largely withholds judgment, and her work is richer and more troubling because of it.” —Washington Post Renowned journalist and author of The Heart is a Shifting Sea Elizabeth Flock investigates what few dare to confront, or even imagine: the role and necessity of female-led violence in response to systems built against women. In The Furies, Elizabeth Flock examines how three real-life women have used violence to fight back, and how views of women who defend their lives are often distorted by their depictions in media and pop culture. These three immersive narratives follow Brittany Smith, a young woman from Stevenson, Alabama, who killed a man she said raped her but was denied the protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, leader of a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a fighter in a thousands-strong all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. Each woman chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—utterly failed to do so. Each woman has been criticized for their actions by those who believe that violence is never the answer. Through Flock’s propulsive prose and remarkable research on the ground—embedded with families, communities, and organizations in America, India, and Syria—The Furies examines, with exquisite nuance, whether the fight for women’s safety is fully possible without force. Do these women’s acts of vengeance help or hurt them, and ultimately, all women? Did they create lasting change in entrenched misogynistic and paternalistic systems? And ultimately, what would societies in which women have real power look like? Across mythologies and throughout history, the stories of women’s lives frequently end with their bodies as sites of violence. But there are also celebrated tales of women, real and fictional, who have fought back. The novelistic accounts of these three women provoke questions about how to achieve true gender equality, and offer profound insights in the quest for answers.

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table-eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the complex reality when poverty and food intersect. Whether it's heirloom vegetables or a block of neon-yellow government cheese, food is both a basic necessity and a nuanced litmus test: what and how we eat reflects our communities, our cultures, and our place in the world. The Meth Lunches gives a glimpse into the lives of people living in Foster's Las Vegas community-the grocery store cashier who feels safer surrounded by food after surviving a childhood of hunger; the inmate baking a birthday cake with coffee creamer and Sprite; the unhoused woman growing scallions in the slice of sunlight on her passenger seat. This is what food looks like in the lives of real people. The Meth Lunches reveals stories of dysfunction intertwined with hope, of the insurmountable obstacles and fierce determination all playing out on the plates of ordinary Americans. It's a bold invitation to pull up a chair and reconsider our responsibilities to the most vulnerable among us. Welcome to the table.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography and leading geopolitics expert comes an “insightful, hopeful, and endlessly fascinating” (Daily Express) book on today’s space race—including the increasingly tense power struggle between the US, China, and Russia and what it means for all of us here on Earth. Spy satellites orbiting the moon. Space metals worth more than most countries’ GDP. People on Mars within the next ten years. This isn’t science fiction—it’s reality. Humans are venturing up and out, and we’re taking our competitive spirit with us. Soon, what happens in space will shape human history as much the mountains, rivers, and seas have impacted civilizations around the world. It’s no coincidence that Russia, China, and the USA are leading the way. The next fifty years will change the face of global politics and the world order as we know it. In this must-read work, bestselling author Tim Marshall navigates the new astropolitical reality to show how we got here and where we’re heading. Extensively researched, “thought-provoking” (Popular Science), and drawing on the latest information from intelligence, government, and civilian institutions, this book provides a detailed, clear account of the new space race, the power rivalries, and how technology, economics, and war have a ripple effect on everyone across the globe. Written with all the insight and wit that have made Marshall one of the world’s most popular and trusted writer on geopolitics, The Future of Geography is an essential read about global power, politics, and the future of humanity.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet, revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off—“terrific,” as the New York Times calls it, “Lorenz…is a knowledgeable, opinionated guide to the ways internet fame has become fame, full stop.” For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism. By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms’ power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. In this “deeply reported, behind-the-scenes chronicle of how everyday people built careers and empires from their sheer talent and algorithmic luck” (Sarah Frier, author of No Filter), Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century. “Extremely Online aims to tell a sociological story, not a psychological one, and in its breadth it demonstrates a new cultural logic emerging out of 21st-century media chaos” (The New York Times). Lorenz reveals the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.

The author of The Defining Decade explains why the twenties are the most challenging time of life and reveals essential skills for handling the uncertainties surrounding work, love, friendship, mental health, and more during that decade and beyond. There is a young adult mental health crisis in America. So many twentysomethings are struggling—especially with anxiety, depression, and substance use—yet, as a culture, we are not sure what to think or do about it. Perhaps, it is said, young adults are snowflakes who melt when life turns up the heat. Or maybe, some argue, they’re triggered for no reason at all. Yet, even as we trivialize twentysomething struggles, we are quick to pathologize them and to hand out diagnoses and medications. Medication is sometimes, but not always, the best medicine. For twenty-five years, Meg Jay has worked as a clinical psychologist who specializes in twentysomethings, and here she argues that most don’t have disorders that must be treated: they have problems that can be solved. In these pages, she offers a revolutionary remedy that upends the medicalization of twentysomething life and advocates instead for skills over pills. In The Twentysomething Treatment, Jay teaches us: -How to think less about “what if” and more about “what is.” -How to feel uncertain without coming undone. -How to work—at work—toward competence and calm. -How to be social when social media functions as an evolutionary trap. -How to befriend someone and why this is more crucial for survival than ever. -How to love someone even though they may break your heart. -How to have sex when porn is easier and more available. -How to move, literally, toward happiness and health. -How to cook your way into confidence and connection. -How to change a bad habit you may not know you have. -How to decide when so much about life is undecided. -How to choose purpose at work and in love. The Twentysomething Treatment is a book that offers help and hope to millions of young adults—and to the friends, parents, partners, teachers, and mentors who care about them—just when they need it the most. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to find out how to improve our mental health by improving how we handle the uncertainties of life.

*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice* A landmark new history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity but is vanishing in our time. “What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support.” For over the past century and a half, and still more rapidly in the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life—the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago—is disappearing. In this new history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life. In one sense, this is a global history, ambitious in scope, taking us from the urbanization of the early 19th century to the present day. But more specifically, Joyce’s focus is the demise of the European peasantry and of their rites, traditions, and beliefs. Alongside this he brings in stories of individuals as well as places, including his own family, and looks at how peasants and their ways of life have been memorialized in photographs, literature, and in museums. Joyce explores a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented in human history and is usually mediated through others. And now peasants are vanishing in one of the greatest historical transformations of our time. Written with the skill and authority of a great historian, Remembering Peasants is a landmark work, a richly complex and passionate history written with exquisite care. It is also deeply resonant, as Joyce shines a light on people whose knowledge of the land is being irretrievably lost during our critical time of climate crisis and the rise of industrial agriculture. Enlightening, timely, and vitally important, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on history—and the future—remains profoundly relevant.