Intellectuals and Society By Thomas Sowell [Audiobook]

Publisher's Summary

This is a study of how intellectuals as a class affect modern societies by shaping the climate of opinion in which official policies develop, on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace.
The thesis of Intellectuals and Society is that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society-- and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

 

Duration: 11 hours 24 minutes 45 seconds
BitRate: 95 kbps
File Format: .Mp3
File Size: 493.0 MB

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They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement By Wesley Lowery [Audiobook]

Publisher's Summary

One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2016 - Publishers Weekly
One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2016 - Elle
11 Fall Books We Can't Wait to Read - Seattle Times
A Best Book of Fall 2016 - Boston Globe
One of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's 20 Books to Watch, fall 2016
A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it.
Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.
In an effort to grasp the magnitude of the response to Michael Brown's death and understand the scale of the problem police violence represents, Lowery speaks to Brown's family and the families of other victims as well as local activists. By posing the question "what does the loss of any one life mean to the rest of the nation?", Lowery examines the cumulative effect of decades of racially biased policing in segregated neighborhoods with failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, and too few jobs.
Studded with moments of joy and tragedy, They Can't Kill Us All offers a historically informed look at the standoff between the police and those they are sworn to protect, showing that civil unrest is just one tool of resistance in the broader struggle for justice. As Lowery brings vividly to life, the protests against police killings are also about the black community's long history of being on the receiving end of perceived and actual acts of injustice and discrimination. They Can't Kill Us All grapples with a persistent if also largely unexamined aspect of the otherwise transformative presidency of Barack Obama: the failure to deliver tangible security and opportunity to those Americans most in need of both.

 

Duration: 8 hours 10 minutes 26 seconds
BitRate: 95 kbps
File Format: .Mp3
File Size: 470.8 MB

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Who Rules the World? By Noam Chomsky [Audiobook]

Publisher's Summary

The world's leading intellectual offers a probing examination of the waning American century, the nature of US policies post-9/11, and the perils of valuing power above democracy and human rights.
In an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky argues that the United States, through its military-first policies and its unstinting devotion to maintaining a world-spanning empire, is both risking catastrophe and wrecking the global commons. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the expanding drone assassination program to the threat of nuclear warfare as well as the flashpoints of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine, he offers unexpected and nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power on our increasingly chaotic planet.
In the process Chomsky provides a brilliant anatomy of just how US elites have grown ever more insulated from any democratic constraints on their power. While the broader population is lulled into apathy - diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable - the corporations and the rich have increasingly been allowed to do as they please.
Fierce, unsparing, and meticulously documented, Who Rules the World? delivers the indispensable understanding of the central conflicts and dangers of our time that we have come to expect from Chomsky.

 

Duration: 10 hours 12 minutes 13 seconds
BitRate: 95 kbps
File Format: .Mp3
File Size: 587.8 MB

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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything By Christopher Hitchens [Audiobook]

Publisher's Summary

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris' recent best-seller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty of the double helix.

 

 

Duration: 8 hours 49 minutes 30 seconds
BitRate: 95 kbps
File Format: .Mp3
File Size: 508.3 MB

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