Social Science Ebooks
Social science ebooks explore various elements of our modern and historical societies. Anthropology, criminology, economics, gender studies, and homelessness are all under the social sciences umbrella. Some well-known books in this genre include Outliers, Freakonomics, Nickel and Dimed, and Sapiens. Check out some of the best social science books today.
Social science ebooks explore various elements of our modern and historical societies. Anthropology, criminology, economics, gender studies, and homelessness are all under the social sciences umbrella. Some well-known books in this genre include Outliers, Freakonomics, Nickel and Dimed, and Sapiens. Check out some of the best social science books today.
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Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Summer 2018 Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wretched of the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race: The Sunday Times Bestseller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing the Scream: The Inspiration for the Feature Film "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Slaves in the Family Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gene: An Intimate History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Men We Reaped: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Bloodbath Nation An intimate and astonishing rumination on gun violence in America from one of our greatest living writers and “genuine American original” (The Boston Globe) Paul Auster Paul Auster was a crack marksman as a kid, and like most American boys of his generation he grew up playing with toy six-shooters and mimicking the gun-slinging cowboys in B-Westerns. But he also knows how families can be wrecked by a single act of gun violence: His grandmother shot and killed his grandfather when his father was just six years old. Now, at this time of intense national discord, no issue divides Americans more deeply than the debate about guns. There are currently more guns than people in the United States, and every day more than one hundred Americans are killed by guns and another two hundred are wounded. These numbers are so large, so catastrophic, so disproportionate to what goes on elsewhere, that one must ask why. Why is America so different—and why are we the most violent country in the Western world? In this short, searing book, Auster traces centuries of America’s use and abuse of guns, through the colonial prehistory of the Republic, armed conflict against the native population, the forced enslavement of millions, and the mass shootings that dominate the current news cycle. He examines the embattled gun-control and anti-gun-control camps, frames gun violence as a public health issue, and investigates the details of one horrific incident– including the perpetrator’s unchecked purchase of the gun he used and the suffering of a bystander-turned-hero. Filled with haunting photographs by Spencer Ostrander that document the abandoned sites of more than thirty mass shootings, Bloodbath Nation is an unflinching work about guns in America that asks: What kind of society do we want to live in?
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Child of the Indian Race: A Story of Return An adoptee reconnects with the Lakota family and culture she was born into—and nurtures a new tradition that helps others to do the same. In the 1950s, when Sandy White Hawk was a toddler, she was taken from her Lakota family on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Her adoption papers identify her as "a child of the Indian race," and her adoptive mother never let her forget it. This memoir of her removal from and return to her extended Lakota family is also the story of her life work: helping other adoptees and tribal communities to reconcile the enormous harms that widespread removals have caused. Many people believe that adoption is needed to protect "unwanted children" from "unfit mothers," to offer a child a "better chance at life." White Hawk shows that this is a myth; that adoption, particularly transracial adoption, is layered in complexities that adoptees are left to navigate in emotional isolation, without a language to speak about what is happening to them. White Hawk founded First Nation Repatriation Institute, which addresses the post-adoption issues of Native American individuals, families, and communities. Incorporating the testimony of adoptees, formerly fostered individuals, and birth relatives, she argues that those who experienced child protection need to inform the policies for child removal and placement—and that everyone involved in the issue must focus on family preservation.
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrdinary Wonder Tales A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday. “I’ve always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Country Music: Listening for Revolutions After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre. Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster’s book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner’s first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros” Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy, and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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The ZORA Canon
Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Color Purple Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Talents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Third Life of Grange Copeland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moses, Man of the Mountain Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Meridian Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Prose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweat (TCG Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUgly Ways Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Linden Hills: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Street Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Red Record Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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