Books about Sociologists from Amazon.com

First introduced in Freakonomics, here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrŽe into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.

When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student hoping to impress his professors with his boldness, he never imagined that as a result of the assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there.

Over the next seven years, Venkatesh got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his privileged position of unprecedented access, he observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack-selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.

In Hollywood-speak, Gang Leader for a Day is The Wire meets Harvard University. It's a brazen, page turning, and fundamentally honest view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in what is tantamount to an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between Sudhir and JT-two young and ambitious men a universe apart..
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Preceding the phenomenal success of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, in which Albom discusses his weekly visits with his mentor, Morrie, as Morrie faces death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Morrie Schwartz published his own book, Morrie: In His Own Words.

Schwartz intended his words to be read by people dying of terminal illnesses with passages titled ,"Living with Physical Limitations," "Grieving for Your Losses," and "Reviewing the Past." Yet, just as in the case in Tuesdays with Morrie, this collection of plainspoken reflections transcends the "death and dying" category and is more aptly shelved in one's inspiration and spirituality collection.

For example, Schwartz's simple thoughts on courage could speak to any seeker of enlightenment.

"Dealing bravely with physical pain or accidents takes one kind of courage," he writes. "Facing life as it is and accepting it requires another....I have found courage through seeking thoughtfulness, openheartedness, detachment, and other responses that make up a composed life and a calm response to illness....I hope that I can continue in this way to the end so that I die with inner peace.

As it was, on November 4, 1995, Morrie Schwartz died just as he hoped he would. --Gail Hudson.
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Fifty years ago, in the fall of 1957, two thirteen-year-old boys were enrolled at an elite, boys-only New England boarding school. One of them, descended from wealth and eminence, would go on to Yale, then to a career as a navy officer and Vietnam war hero, and finally to the U.S. Senate, from where he would fall just short of the White House. The other was a scholarship student, a misfit giant of a boy from a Pennsylvania farm town who would suffer shameful debasements at the hands of his classmates, then go on to a solitary and largely anonymous life as a salesman of encyclopedias and trailer parts--before dying, alone, twelve months after his classmate's narrow loss on Election Day 2004.

It is around these two figures, John Kerry and a boy known here only as Arthur, the bookends of a class of one hundred boys, that Geoffrey Douglas--himself a member of that boarding-school class--builds this remarkable memoir. His portrait of their lives and the lives of five others in that class--two more Vietnam veterans with vastly divergent stories, a federal judge, a gay New York artist who struggled for years to find his place in the world, and Douglas himself--offers a memorable look back to a generation caught between the expectations of their fathers and the sometimes terrifying pulls of a society driven by war, defiance, and self-doubt.

The class of 1962 was not so different from any other, with its share of swaggerers and shining stars, outcasts and scholarship students. Its distinction was in its timing: at the precise threshold of the cultural and political upheavals of the late 1960s. The world these boys had been trained to enter and to lead, a world very similar to their fathers', would be exploded and recast almost at the moment of their entrance--forcing choices whose consequences were sometimes lifelong.

Douglas's chronicle of those times and choices is both a capsule history of an era and a literary tour de force..
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The 30th anniversary edition of this classic memoir about growing up in Spanish Harlem includes an afterword reminding us that its streets are even meaner now, thanks to crack cocaine and the dismantling of government poverty programs. As a dark-skinned Puerto Rican, born in 1928, Piri Thomas faced with painful immediacy the absurd contradictions of America's racial attitudes (among people of all colors) in a time of wrenching social change. Three decades have not dimmed the luster of his jazzy prose, rich in Hispanic rhythms and beat-generation slang. .
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Marc Parent worked for four years as a caseworker for Emergency Children's Services in New York, acting as the final protector of children from abusive parents, as "the one on the front line--the last hope for a kid in trouble." His job was to make house calls and decide if a child needed to be removed at once. He has selected eight cases illustrating the extreme pressures of the work and indicating why it is that the system so often fails in its mission. He recounts unsparingly how three years into his job he made a fatal mistake, failing to recognize the plight of a little boy who later died of starvation. This compelling account is an important documenting of the weaknesses of the child support system..
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Austrian sociologist Otto Neurath was a seminal Modernist figure. Much attention has been given to his achievements in the fields of graphic design and philosophy (Neurath was a member of the Vienna Circle, founder of the Museum of Society and Economy, inventor of the ISOTYPE pictorial system and champion of the Unity of Science movement), yet his involvement with urbanism and architecture has been all but ignored. From 1931 onwards, Neurath collaborated with the International Congress of Modern Architecture and its chief exponents--Cornelis van Eesteren, Sigfried Giedion, Le Corbusier and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy--to develop an international language of urban planning and design. More experimentally, throughout the 1930s a fascination with visual media led to an attempt to franchise the Museum of Society and Economy by establishing international satellite museums. This volume contains a text by curator and writer Nader Vossoughian, which offers a fresh perspective on one of the most versatile intellectuals of the twentieth century..
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"This, then, is the overall strength of The Social Lens: its broad coverage from the roots of positivism and modernity to the post modern theme of disillusioned discontent...As a textbook is informally written and its tone invites the student reader in to explore with the author each new chapter of uncovered ground....Allan also encourages students to think beyond the theory on the page to its implications for global society by providing what he calls "theory you can use" to assist students in further exploration.  Allan's is a fresh, new and bold approach to the theory textbook."

—Barbara J. Denison, Shippensburg University
TEACHING SOCIOLOGY, Vol. 36, 2008 (April:161-184)


“This looks like it will be a great text. It covers the major schools and theorists in a logical and comprehensive way, and in a wonderful style that will engage students. It is engaging, informal and interesting, yet it does not slight the nuances of the content of the material covered.”

—Stephen R. Couch, The Pennsylvania State University

“Teaching theory is a conversation with students, where the meaning of the social world and the theories we use to describe it must be reflected and played with. What I am looking for in a textbook is to lay the ground for this conversation, that practices some cognitive moves with students that I then can built on in class. And that is precisely what Allan does.”

—Stephan Groschwitz, University of Cincinnati

The Social Lens: An Invitation to Social and Sociological Theory covers the key thinkers in Western thought for the past 200 years.Written in a conversational style that is both appealing and provocative, this text uses real life examples to draw readers in and invite them to consider the ideas that have shaped our understanding of society.

Key Features:

• Provides in-depth coverage of 30 individual theorists: The book is divided into three sections covering the classics, the organized perspectives, and contemporary critiques and visions. Importantly, the book gives full treatment to and explicitly allows each of the 30 authors their individual perspectives and voices, allowing critical theorists to be critical and positivist theorists to be scientific.
• Emphasizes the problem of modernity/postmodernity as a thinking framework: Roughly organized around the theme of modernity, the book traces theories of race and gender through the three periods, beginning with the positive philosophy of Harriet Martineau and ending with the disenchantment of Jean Baudrillard.
• Explicitly written as an invitation to students: This book contains unparalleled pedagogical features, including study guides, “Seeing Further,” “Defining the Perspective,” “Essential Theorist” boxes, “Glossary of Terms,” and “Building Your Theory Toolbox.” These pedagogical features help the student organize and review the material, see their world in theoretical terms, and move beyond the book to begin their own research in theory.

Sample Chapters and example of student favorite "Building Your Theory Toolbox" feature -- online now! Click on 'Sample Chapters and Materials' at left to explore:

• Chapter 4: The Individual in Modern Society - George Herbert Mead and Georg Simme
• Chapter 7: Conflict and Critical Theories
• Chapter 14: Post-Theories
• Chapter 4: "Building Your Theory Toolbox" - praised by professors and students alike!

Intended Audience:
This is an ideal core textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in social theory including Combined Sociological Theory, Classical Sociological Theory, and Contemporary Sociological Theory.

(20080512).
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The seventh edition of Sociological Theory by George Ritzer, one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, gives readers a comprehensive overview of the major theorists and schools of sociological thought. Key theories are integrated with biographical sketches of theorists, and theories are placed in their historical and intellectual context. This helps students to better understand the original works of classical and modern theorists as well as to compare and contrast the latest substantive theories..
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“Edles and Appelrouth's new book is a major contribution for those striving to help students understand the essential place of theory in the sociological enterprise.  It skillfully demonstrates the contemporary relevance of classical theory, elucidates the complex interplay of empirical research and sociological theory, and makes crystal clear that good theory must always be more than idle speculation.  The authors are to be commended for how they interweave biographical sketches, background influences, core ideas, and theoretical orientations, on the one hand, with their inclusion of pivotal primary sources.  This book will likely be template that future texts in theory will try to emulate.”

                                                                        — Edward Lehman, New York University
 
"Sociological Theory in the Classical Era is an ambitious and successful attempt to revitalize the teaching of sociological theory. The scope of primary readings is wide and inclusive. Their introductory materials are clear and helpful. Their new organizing framework will allow students to clarify the similarities and differences among the wealth of classical readings."

                                                                              — Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
 
“This is one of the best classical theory texts I've come across.  Most undergraduates are unprepared for a serious encounter with the writings of the classical theorists.  Rather than respond to this problem with a textbook full of pat summaries, Edles and Appelrouth ingeniously combine the best of the reader and textbook formats.  Their exegeses of the major themes and arguments of each theorist -- written with a rare combination of theoretical acumen, clarity, and the sure-footed use of examples -- will help students make sense of the well chosen excerpts.  The book thus serves a double purpose: not only will it expose students to the ideas of the classical theorists; it will also help them learn what it really means to read.”
 
                                                                                    — Neil Gross, Harvard University
 
Sociological Theory in the Classical Era is a highly-acclaimed new text which utilizes the unique and increasingly popular text/reader approach. The book presents major readings by sociology’s key classical theorists, including Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, Georg Simmel, W.E.B. Du Bois, and George Herbert Mead. The corresponding text written by Laura Desfor Edles and Scott Appelrouth gives students the analytical framework necessary for them to develop a more critical and gratifying understanding of the ideas advanced by these theorists.
 
The theoretical concepts addressed in the book, while classical, still resonate with contemporary concerns. Topics include the nature of capitalism, the basis of social solidarity of cohesion, the role of authority in social life, the benefits and dangers posed by modern bureaucracies, the dynamics of gender and racial oppression, and the nature of “self” to name but a few.
 
Key Features

• “Student-friendly” text/reader approach provides an overarching scaffolding which students can use to examine, compare, and contrast each theorists’ major themes and concepts through primary and secondary source materials
• Connects classical theorists and their writings to contemporary concerns.
• Photos of theorists, the social milieu during which their theories were developed, as well as photos that illustrate theories’ applications to modern life
• Charts and figures summarize key concepts, illuminate complex ideas, and provoke student interest
• Discussion questions at the end of each chapter aid student comprehension

Sociological Theory in the Classical Era is intended for use as the core text in upper-level Classical Sociological Theory courses, or in combined Classical/Contemporary Sociological Theory courses.
 
Laura Desfor Edles is the author of Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain (1998) and Cultural Sociology in Practice (2002). She has been teaching theory courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level for over ten years. She has also given numerous presentations at conferences on her particular method of teaching theory. Professor Edles received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1990.
 
Scott Appelrouth is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2000. He has taught classical and contemporary theory at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has published several articles in research- and teaching-oriented journals.    .
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