Social Analysis

This is an audio summary of Bob's Woodward's best-selling book that explores the detailed inner workings of Trump's highly unorthodox, and often toxic, White House. It is intended as a companion to, not a replacement for, the original book.

In their best-selling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explore the culture of fragility and safetyism that has invaded American universities since 2013 and the underlying causes behind it. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Steven Pinker wants to prove that we are living in a world that is better off than it has ever been, and it will only continue to get better. In Enlightenment Now, Pinker argues that the best tools we have come from the 18th century ideals of reason, science, progress, and humanism, and we can leverage them in very 21st century ways by using data to tell the story of our modern world. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

In 1963's The Feminine Mystique, she identified "the problem that has no name" afflicting women pressured to devote themselves to domestic life. After World War II, society fostered the idea that women wanted different things from men - namely, to run homes and live through the achievements of their husbands and children. In reality, rigid gender roles left housewives frustrated and depressed and caused tensions both in their marriages and in how couples raised their children.

With its convenient format, AudioLearn fits your busy lifestyle, enabling you to study anywhere, anytime. Best of all, you'll significantly increase learning and retention with AudioLearn's proven study format.

De Beauvoir's book charted the oppression of "the second sex" in terms never before seen in the academic world. Her most startling theory became a rallying cry for the feminist movement: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She argued that gender identity was shaped by upbringing in a world ruled by men. A leading light in the existentialist movement, de Beauvoir applied the radical philosophy of personal choice and freedom to argue that women were subjugated in every area of life.

First published in Germany in 1980, British historian Ian Kershaw's The "Hitler Myth" is recognized as one of the most important books ever written about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi State. Kershaw wanted to focus on what he called the "history of everyday life", and so investigated the attitude of the German public to Hitler at the time, rather than looking at the dictator from the perspective of those in positions of power. He was intrigued to find out how someone like Hitler could have become such a powerful figure.

Why has gender inequality persisted for so long without revolutionary change? That's the central question Joan Wallach Scott poses in her 1998 collection of essays, Gender and the Politics of History. Scott notes that obvious economic, social, and class inequalities have produced large-scale social change, but uncovering the reality of gender inequality has not done the same.

In his 1986 book War Without Mercy, American historian John Dower examines Japanese-American relations during World War II and investigates links between popular culture, stereotypes, and extreme violence. He argues that it was the concept of racism - used equally by both sides - that underpinned the military conflict and led to a particularly brutal war in the Pacific and East Asia.

The title of Norwegian-born historian Odd Arne Westad's 2005 work - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - offers a window into his thesis. Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, both the Soviet Union and the United States "intervened" (or "offered aid and support to") developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Westad's view, these interventions were more important than events in Europe, where most studies of the Cold War focus.

Even as recently as the 1920s the historical lack of great female writers was often considered as evidence of women's inferiority. Virginia Woolf disagreed. In her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, she argues that creativity is impossible without privacy and freedom from financial worries - and that throughout history women have had neither. As a result, no tradition of great female writing existed to inspire women. Woolf's focus on the everyday suppression of women was a turning point.

Though written around 1513, more than 500 years ago, Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is still both widely listened to and very influential. Listeners turn to it for its direct advice on the question of how to attain - and retain - power. Machiavelli's answer, in brief: Use any means necessary to make sure the state survives.

Iranian American writer and scholar Hamid Dabashi wrote Iran: A People Interrupted amid the political fallout following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York - his adopted city - in 2001. As US President George W. Bush declared a "war on terror" and named Iran as part of an "axis of evil" that supported terrorism, Dabashi offered an insider's insight into the Iranian psyche.

Michel Foucault had already written extensively about medicine, madness, and prisons. But in the latter days of his career, he turned to the subject of sexuality, planning six volumes on the subject. He completed three before dying of an AIDS-related illness in 1984. Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1 is a study of the evolution of cultural ideas about sex in the West since the end of the 17th century. Volume two looked at attitudes toward sex in ancient Greece; volume three investigated sex in ancient Rome.

AudioLearn Philosophy Classics is proud to present The Politics by Aristotle. With its convenient format, AudioLearn fits your busy lifestyle, enabling you to study anywhere, anytime. Best of all, you'll significantly increase learning and retention with AudioLearn's proven study format.

This is a summary and analysis of the book by Rachel Maddow and not the original book. In Blowout, Rachel Maddow explains how the oil and gas industry is experiencing a Renaissance thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling. The book tells the history of oil and gas over the last decade, and shows how all these pieces are interconnected and are affecting our lives, right now. In fact, it is argued by the author that the geopolitical impact of the oil and gas industry activities is the key explanatory variable of the current global chaos and democratic downturn.

Material culture: the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make, or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. One way our American economy has been stimulated is through the production and innovation of technology.

American sociologist Jack A. Goldstone examines the causes of revolutions and uprisings in the period between 1500 and 1800. Investigating cases in both Europe and Asia, the conclusions he reaches are surprising. Many thinkers had previously believed that Europe's distinctive history - and particularly the rise of capitalism - had created the specific revolutions and political changes that launched the continent on a path to global supremacy. Goldstone says this is wrong, and that European and Asian states were, in fact, all experiencing similar developments.

No one would work to establish a new school if they weren’t driven by extreme dissatisfaction with the schools already available. The people who established the Sudbury Valley School have not been an exception to this rule. All have been actively seeking a new way in education, and all have made large investments of thought, time, and material, firmly rooted in the traditional values, and institutions, that constitute our American heritage. This book quickly became a classic and is still relevant as it lays out the foundations of the Sudbury model in clear, easy terms.

In The Desert Enigma: An Analysis of Occult Symbolism in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, author, blogger, and independent investigator Isaac "The IlluminatiWatcher" Weishaupt reveals the hidden occult messages found in Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist. This analysis takes an honest look at the history of author Paulo Coelho and his degrees of separation from ceremonial magick, Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson, Kenneth Grant, Alejandro Jodorowsky, witchcraft, satanism, and more.