Philosophy bestsellers

How to Be Perfect

The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

By: Michael Schur
Narrated by: Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, D'Arcy Carden, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, Marc Evan Jackson, Jameela Jamil & Todd May
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

“Who doesn’t need a little guidance on this topic, right? Michael Schur discusses what can be a weighty topic (that is often presented somewhat dryly) with wit and humor. I have to say, I prefer the audio version of this book. The tone and style are so engaging, and that aforementioned humor is highlighted in a way that I sometimes missed reading... Read more

Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind

By: Yuval Noah Harari
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

“I think this book should be a required read if you consider yourself a member of the human race. This was an interesting and dynamic text on the evolution of early humans to modern man. Sapiens helps recreate a narrative of our existence in relation to other early human subspecies, as well as helps elaborate on how we came to be today. I learned... Read more

Four Thousand Weeks

Time Management for Mortals

By: Oliver Burkeman
Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
Length: 6 hours 13 minutes

“Burkeman’s title emphasizes that if we make it to 80 years of age, we live roughly four thousand weeks. That intro alone sounds pretty sobering, but Burkeman takes us through philosophers’ and scientists’ wisdom across centuries with conclusions that are very optimistic. Burke reassures us with stories such as the American who in 1969 went... Read more

The Courage to Be Disliked

How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness

By: Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
Narrated by: Noah Galvin, Graeme Malcolm & January LaVoy
Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

An international bestseller and TikTok sensation with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide, The Courage to Be Disliked is a transformative and practical guide to personal happiness and self-fulfillment.

Now you can unlock your full potential and free yourself from the shackles of past traumas and societal expectations to find true personal... Read more

How to Know a Person

The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

By: David Brooks
Narrated by: David Brooks
Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

“Brooks went from zero to hero in my mind. His deep research and obvious self-reflection glows in this book. I not only have new terminology to grapple with people who don't listen, but also used his story telling inquiry for richer conversations with my family. Read more

The Bright Ages

A New History of Medieval Europe

By: Matthew Gabriele & David M. Perry
Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
Length: 9 hours 30 minutes

""Traveling easily through a thousand years of history, The Bright Ages reminds us society never collapsed when the Roman Empire fell, nor did the modern world did wake civilization from a thousand year hibernation. Thoroughly enjoyable, thoughtful and accessible; a fresh look on an age full of light, color, and illumination."" —Mike Duncan,... Read more

How Fascism Works

The Politics of Us and Them

By: Jason Stanley
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 5 hours 44 minutes

“With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer

“No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A Yale... Read more

12 Rules for Life

An Antidote to Chaos

By: Jordan B. Peterson
Narrated by: Jordan B. Peterson
Length: 15 hours 56 minutes

OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

What are the most valuable things that everyone should know?

Acclaimed clinical psychologist Jordan B Peterson has influenced the modern understanding of personality, and now he has become one of the world's most popular public thinkers, with his lectures on topics from the Bible to... Read more

Moral Ambition

Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference

By: Rutger Bregman
Narrated by: Boris Hiestand & Rutger Bregman
Length: 5 hours 55 minutes

Bloomsbury presents Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman, read by Boris Hiestand and Rutger Bregman.

‘The rare read that might actually help you become a better person’ ADAM GRANT
‘A fierce and brilliant call to arms for anyone who has been wondering whether there's more to life. (There is.)’ TIM HARFORD
‘Gives us hope, humour and guidance at a time... Read more

Careless People

The explosive memoir that Meta doesn't want you to read

By: Sarah Wynn-Williams
Narrated by: Sarah Wynn-Williams
Length: 13 hours 16 minutes

Meta wants to silence her voice. You can hear her words.

'Devastating . . . funny . . . highly enjoyable . . . A Bridget Jones’s Diary-style tale of a young woman thrown into a series of improbable situations' The Times
'Jaw-dropping . . . A tell-all tome' Financial Times

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream... Read more

On Freedom

By: Timothy Snyder
Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
Length: 10 hours 48 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “visionary” (The Guardian) exploration of freedom—what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival—by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of On Tyranny

“[Snyder’s] deep political and philosophical examination of how to . . . create and sustain freedom provides a hopeful view for... Read more

What's Left

Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis

By: Malcolm Harris
Narrated by: Patrick Harrison
Length: 10 hours 17 minutes

“This is a different kind of climate manifesto. In What’s Left, Malcolm Harris (Palo Alto) doesn’t advocate for specific policies or technology, but instead details whole political and economic systemic changes to enable those. Diving into three strategies of increasingly radical change, illustrating the effectiveness of each through historical... Read more

Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing The Uncommon

By: Dr. Joe Dispenza
Narrated by: Adam Boyce
Length: 14 hours 6 minutes

The author of the New York Times bestseller You Are the Placebo, as well as Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and Evolve Your Brain, draws on research conducted at his advanced workshops since 2012 to explore how common people are doing the uncommon to transform themselves and their lives. Becoming Supernatural marries the some of the most... Read more

Conscious

A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

By: Annaka Harris
Narrated by: Annaka Harris
Length: 2 hours 22 minutes

2020 Audie Finalist As concise and enlightening as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, this mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience.What is consciousness? How does it arise? And why does it exist? We take our experience of... Read more

Believe

Why Everyone Should Be Religious

By: Ross Douthat
Narrated by: Ross Douthat
Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

An Instant New York Times Bestseller"Truly a Mere Christianity for the 21st century"--World magazineRead by the author.Do you ever wish you had more faith? Here is a blueprint for thinking your way from doubt to belief.As a columnist for the New York Times who writes often about spiritual topics for a skeptical audience, Ross Douthat understands... Read more

Hospicing Modernity

Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism

By: Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
Narrated by: Dougald Hine & Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
Length: 11 hours 54 minutes

For fans of Everything Is F*cked and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times, a book about facing the multiple crises of modernity--and hospicing modernity--with maturity, humility, and integrity.

This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. Instead, Vanessa... Read more

When Breath Becomes Air

By: Paul Kalanithi
Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra & Cassandra Campbell
Length: 5 hours 34 minutes

“With a message both mournful and life-affirming, When Breath Becomes Air chronicles a young doctor's journey from literature student to promising neurosurgeon and finally to a patient in his own hospital after being diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Always profound, never sentimental, this important book refuses to take refuge in platitudes,... Read more

Meditations for Mortals

Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts

By: Oliver Burkeman
Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
Length: 4 hours 5 minutes

“I love that the author Oliver is narrating. Only just at the start but already taking so much from this book. Read more

Fierce Self-Compassion

How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive

By: Kristin Neff
Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

The author of Self-Compassion follows up her groundbreaking book with new ideas that expand our notion of self-kindness and its capacity to transform our lives, showing women how to balance tender self-acceptance with fierce action to claim their power and change the world.

Kristin Neff changed how we talk about self-care with her enormously... Read more

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

By: Thich Nhat Hanh
Narrated by: René Ruiz
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

With poetry and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy – all qualities of enlightenment. 

“Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, now... Read more

Finite and Infinite Games

By: James Carse
Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
Length: 4 hours 11 minutes

“There are at least two kinds of games,” states James P. Carse as he begins this extraordinary book. “One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be... Read more

The End is Always Near

Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

By: Dan Carlin
Narrated by: Dan Carlin
Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

The creator of the wildly popular award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks at some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future.Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No... Read more

The Happiness Hypothesis

Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

By: Jonathan Haidt
Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom can enrich and transform our lives

The Happiness Hypothesis is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations—to... Read more

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler
Narrated by: Judith Butler
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fuelling reactionary politics around the world

Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose influential work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing... Read more

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Incerto: Book #3

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Narrated by: Joe Ochman
Length: 16 hours 13 minutes

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and The Bed of Procrustes.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the... Read more

The Obstacle Is the Way

The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

By: Ryan Holiday
Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
Length: 4 hours 38 minutes

#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller

The Obstacle is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do.

Its many fans include a former governor and movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a hip hop icon (LL Cool J), an Irish tennis pro (James McGee), an NBC... Read more

How to Think Like a Woman

Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind

By: Regan Penaluna
Narrated by: Angie Kane
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

As a young woman growing up in Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we, and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academic—the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What she didn’t... Read more

The Art of Living

Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now

By: Thich Nhat Hanh
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Gabra Zackman
Length: 5 hours

In troubled times, there is an urgency to understand ourselves and our world. We have so many questions, and they tug at us night and day, consciously and unconsciously. In this important volume Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh—one of the most revered spiritual leaders in the world today—reveals an art of living in mindfulness that helps us answer... Read more

To Have or To Be?

By: Erich Fromm
Narrated by: Adriel Brandt
Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

To Have Or to Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Nothing less than a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution to save our threatened planet, this book is a summary of the penetrating thought of Eric Fromm. His thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the... Read more

Skin in the Game

Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Incerto

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Narrated by: Joe Ochman
Length: 8 hours 20 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A bold work from the author of The Black Swan that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility

In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world,... Read more

The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han: The Collected Audio Works

By: Byung-Chul Han
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Length: 2 hours 21 minutes

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, user-friendly technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the... Read more

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Liberation Through Understanding in the Between

By: Robert Thurman
Narrated by: Robert Thurman
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

The most accessible and informative version of the Buddhist classicavailable in English, with instruction in meditation, illuminating commentary, and guidance in the practical use of the prayers
 
The so-called “Tibetan Book of the Dead” has been renowned for centuries as a cornerstone of Buddhist wisdom and religious thought. More recently, it... Read more

Bodies That Matter

On the Discursive Limits of Sex

Routledge Classics

By: Judith Butler
Narrated by: Kelly Burke
Length: 12 hours 8 minutes

In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that... Read more

Galileo's Daughter

A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

By: Dava Sobel
Narrated by: George Guidall
Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the earth moves around the sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition,... Read more

Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone

By: Astra Taylor
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money compaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise.



The problems lie deeper than any one election... Read more

Gratitude

Essays

By: Oliver Sacks
Narrated by: Dan Woren
Length: 36 minutes

A deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with... Read more

The Complete Strategy Collection

The Art of War, The Prince, The Book of Five Rings, Tao Te Ching, Arthashastra, On War & More

By: Sun Tzu, Niccolò Machiavelli, Miyamoto Musashi, Lao Tzu, Kautilya , Confucius , Carl von Clausewitz, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great, Thucydides & Tim Zengerink
Narrated by: Zeek Ring
Length: 69 hours 4 minutes

Unlock the minds of history’s greatest leaders and tacticians with The Complete Strategy Collection. This modern audiobook adaptation brings together the world’s most influential writings on power, warfare, diplomacy, and leadership—translated and adapted for clarity, comprehension, and immediate application.Perfect for business leaders,... Read more

Love's Braided Dance

Hope in a Time of Crisis

By: Norman Wirzba
Narrated by: Mike Lenz
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

In this series of meditations, Norman Wirzba recasts hope not as something people have, like a vaccine to prevent pain and trouble, but as something people do. Hope evaporates in conditions of abandonment and abuse. It grows in contexts of nurture and belonging. Hope ignites when people join in what Wendell Berry calls "love's braided dance"—a... Read more

Regime Change

Toward a Postliberal Future

By: Patrick J. Deneen
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class

Classical liberalism promised to overthrow the old aristocracy, creating an order in which individuals could create their own... Read more

Violence and the Sacred

By: René Girard
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Length: 17 hours 50 minutes

Violence and the Sacred is René Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature, and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy, and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his... Read more

Radical Wholeness

The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being

By: Philip Shepherd
Narrated by: Philip Shepherd
Length: 11 hours 44 minutes

There are qualities we all yearn to experience in our lives—peace, simplicity, grace, connection, clarity. Yet these qualities evade us because each of them arises from an experience of wholeness, and we live in a culture that enforces divisions within each of us. In Radical Wholeness, Philip Shepherd shows the countless ways in which we are... Read more

Ethics

By: Benedict de Spinoza
Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

Benedict de Spinoza's Ethics, first published in 1677, constitutes a major systematic critique of the traditional and religious foundations of philosophical thought. In it, Spinoza follows a logical step-by-step format consisting of definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, and corollaries to create a comprehensive inquiry into the truth about... Read more

Spinoza

Freedom's Messiah

Jewish Lives

By: Ian Buruma
Narrated by: Lee Beddow
Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time



Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many as Satan's... Read more

Of The Social Contract and Other Political Writings

By: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Narrated by: Heather Long, John Kapansa & Roy McMillan
Length: 13 hours 19 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.'

These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has stirred vigorous debate ever since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or 'social contract', that... Read more

The Conscious Mind

In Search of a Fundamental Theory

By: David J. Chalmers
Narrated by: George Cunningham
Length: 23 hours 47 minutes

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers, and we
have seen in recent years superb volumes by such... Read more

Consciousness

A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edition

By: Susan Blackmore
Narrated by: Zehra Jane Naqvi
Length: 4 hours 35 minutes

Consciousness, "the last great mystery for science," remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion?



Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now... Read more

Plato's Republic

By: Plato
Narrated by: Ray Childs
Length: 11 hours 53 minutes

The Republic poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, and which ones should be fostered and which... Read more

The Moral Landscape

By: Sam Harris
Narrated by: Sam Harris
Length: 6 hours 46 minutes

Sam Harris has discovered that most people, from secular scientists to religious fundamentalists, agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, science's failure to address questions of meaning and morality has become the primary justification for religious faith.The underlying claim is that while science... Read more

Knowing What We Know

The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

By: Simon Winchester
Narrated by: Simon Winchester
Length: 14 hours 19 minutes

‘A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter’ New York Times ‘An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightly’Sunday Times From the creation of the first encyclopedia to... Read more

The Prophet

By: Kahlil Gibran
Narrated by: Becky Ann Baker
Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

Gibran considered The Prophet to be his greatest achievement. First published in 1923, The Prophet has been translated into more than twenty languages, and has become one of the beloved classics of our time. Cherished by millions, the universally inspiring words of The Prophet are here magnificently read aloud. Read more