Peter Berger, Invitation to Sociology
This classic work explains the history and traditions of sociology and encourages the use of scientific methods within the discipline.

Peter Berger, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge
Here, Berger advances the field of the sociology of knowledge. He examines the ways that propaganda, science, art, and false consciousness shape what we perceive as the truth.

Charlotte Gattone, The Social Scientist as Public Intellectual: Critical Reflections in a Changing World
Gattone draws upon the work of contemporary and classical social theorists to argue that social scientists should feel free to act in accordance with or free from the constraints of other social institutions.

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
In this classic piece, Mills explains how he feels that sociology should be approached. He argues that we should examine the social, personal, and historical aspects of people's lived experiences.

Evitatar Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes: An Introduction to Cognitive Society
In this book, Zerubavel attempts to bridge the gap between sociology and cognitive science, arguing that knowledge of cognition plays a crucial role in understanding social relations.

Dan Clawson, Editor, Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century

In this text, eminent scholars in the field debate whether or not sociology should engage activism alongside education. They discuss the benefits and disadvantages of incorporating messages of action in education.

Peter Berger, Telling About Society

In this book, Berger discusses various mediums we can tell others or learn about society. Berger discusses popular and academic works to discuss how we can “tell about society” in numerous, meaningful ways.

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline

In this work, Rojas discusses how the black power movement influenced the American higher education system in a way that institutionalized itself as an academic discipline. Rojas shows how social movements and organizations influence and assimilate one another.

Malcolm Spector, John I. Kitsuse, Constructing Social Problems

The authors of this classic book provide a solid definition for social problems and how they are constructed by claimsmakers who are individuals or groups that regard certain social conditions to be unjust, immoral, or harmful. This initially controversial book will be of interest to those wanting an empirical perspective on the construction of social problems and how some “problems” are legitimized and others are not.

McDonald, Lynn, Women Founders of the Social Sciences

The author examines the important but often overlooked contribution of such pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Beatrice Webb, Jane Addams, and many more.

Steur, Max, The Scientific Study of Society

This book gives a useful overview of the approach to various social issues across five social science disciplines: sociology, economics, political science, social psychology, and anthropology

Peter Berger, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective
This classic work explains the history and traditions of sociology and encourages the use of scientific methods within the discipline.

Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, and Randall Stokes (Eds.)
Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-first Century
Here, a number of prominent sociologists debate the usefulness of moving sociological work outside of academia. This book would be helpful for discussing applied sociological research.

Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz, Our Studies, Ourselves: Sociologists' Lives and Work
In this book, Glassner and Hertz explore what motivates sociologists to study particular topics and how the topics they study impact their lives outside of academia.

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
In this book, Goffman lays out his symbolic interactionist theory of the presentation of self in which each individual uses an act to influence others' impressions of her.

George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society

In this text, Ritzer uses Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy and applies it to a familiar example, McDonald’s restaurants. His treatment of the theory makes it very accessible and fun to read.

 

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Diamond integrates modern functionalism theory into a discussion of economic and social development in the world over time. He shows the role these three central and interconnected elements play in societal development.

 

Joel Best, Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data and Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists

In these books, Best does as excellent job of explaining how non-specialists should think about and interpret statistics. He explains that problems exist among people who present as well as people who interpret statistics.

 

Collins, Randall, Four Sociological Traditions Selected Readings and Four Sociological Traditions

These books do an excellent job of explaining in a brief, readable format the 4 main schools of sociological thought, with the selected readings book providing intellectual highlights of each school along with exceptional readings that range from the classics to the contemporary. Together, or individually, these books represent a concise intellectual history of the development of sociology while clearly presenting the conflict tradition of Marx and Weber, the ritual solidarity tradition of Durkheim, the microinteractionist tradition of Mead, Blumer, and Garfinkel, and the rational choice/utilitarian tradition.

Van den Hoonaard, Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Issues for Qualitative Researchers.

This is a multidisciplinary assessment of the special ethical considerations in qualitative research. Contributors to the volume draw on their own research encounters with ethical issues.

 

Gladwell, Malcolm, The Tipping Point

A journalist examines how certain benchmarks or milestones are portrayed in news-breaking stories, such as drops in crime, the impact of smoking, and the influence of children’s television programming.

 

Andy Bennett, Cultures of Popular Music
In this book, Bennett details various genres of music and their associated youth subcultures. Genres detailed include rock, pop, heavy metal, and rap.

Jonathan Epstein, Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World
Epstein uses examples of everyday life (such as being at the mall or "hanging out" in one's bedroom) to explain how youth create a culture that is separate from that of their parents.

Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste
In this classic piece, Gans examines the differences between an elitist high culture and a pop culture that appeals to "the masses".

Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things
Glassner examines the way that the mass media has led to a culture of fear among Americans, leading us to be afraid of issues that we are statistically incredibly unlikely to ever encounter and to ignore the scientific evidence surrounding the "real" issues in the United States.

Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture
In this classic book, the daily social rhythms of small-town Muncie, Indiana are examined.

George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society
Ritzer scrutinizes the ways that the principles of predictability, calculability, controlling, and efficiency employed by the McDonald's chain of restaurants have spread to other industries, including health care and banking. He argues that the impacts on American culture have been immeasurable.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Schlosser argues that, in their pursuit of speed and profits, fast food companies engage in questionable and potentially dangerous practices. Still, the idea of fast food has become incorporated into American culture.

Robert Wood, Straightedge Youth: Complexity And Contradictions of a Subculture
In this book, Wood uses interviews and content analysis to describe the punk-rock subculture of "straightedge youth" (those who have militant oppositions to casual sex, drinking, and drug use.)

John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, and Viki Robinson, Affluenza:
The All-Consuming Epidemic
This campy book looks at the American addiction to our stuff and the lengths we will go to attain it.

Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Levy explores the myth of female empowerment through the exploitation of women's bodies and sexuality.

Watson, James, Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia
Watson explores cultural difference by examining the differences between the McDonald's fast-food experience in North America and Asia.

Rebecca Mead, One Perfect Day

In this book, Mead examines the wedding industry in the United States and discusses how modern cultural changes lead to the reformation of the American wedding in the name of tradition.

John Ogbu, Black Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement

This book details an ethnography Ogbu conducted in a middle-class suburban school. He details the difference between White and Black students in this suburban school system and offers a cultural explanation for the difference in their performances.

Grazian, David. Mix It Up, Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc

This book focuses on the role of media and popular culture in everyday life, with a particular emphasis on the organization and functioning of the mass media industry; the increasingly blurry relationship between cultural consumption and production; and the social significance of leisure activities, from sports to shopping.

Berkowitz, Daniel A. Cultural Meaning of News, Newbury Park:  Sage Publications, Inc.

This book provides a fresh examination of news production from a cultural perspective, moving beyond what was once called "sociology of news" and toward the globally-broader, culturally-based concept of "journalism studies."

 

Cowen, Tyler. Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World’s Cultures.

This book takes a different tack on the question of cultural influence, asking not how American culture has been globally influential, but how outside cultures have influenced the U.S.

 

Zellner, William M. Countercultures: A Sociological Analysis. 

An overview of six countercultures found in the United States: the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, Satanists, Skinheads, survivalists, and the Ku Klux Klan.

 

Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture

Schor examines the influence of the consumer society on children and how they are targeted to become desiring spenders.

 

Ben Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly
This book details what happens when corporations own most of the mass media and the ways that the change from multiple media owners to a few corporate owners influences us as individuals.

 

Roberta M. Berns, Child, Family, School, Community: Socialization and Support
In this book, Berns explores the additive effects that multiple institutions have on the socialization of young children. She uses an ecological model (similar to the Our Social World model) to explain the effects that family, school, and community have on children.

 

Sucheng Chan, Chinese American Transnationalism: The Flow of People, Resources and Ideas between China and America during the Exclusion Era
In this book, Chan details the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United States during the exclusion era and the ways that they maintained their Chinese and American identities through their economic and political connections with China.

 

Alicia F. Lieberman, The Emotional Life of the Toddler
Lieberman's book focuses on the emotional development of children loosely using Erikson's stages as a framework.

 

J.I. Simmons, It's Happening: A Portrait of the Youth Scene Today
This classic book focuses on youth culture in the 1960s and the factors that led to the socialization of teens into the hippy culture

 

Sarah Chase, Perfectly Prep: Gender Extremes at a New England Prep School

Chase describes her findings from an ethnography she conducted living in a New England boarding school in this book. She discusses gender differences that emerge and the role social class privilege plays in the distinct cultures and social learning processes that emerge in this context.

 

Alyssa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

Quart provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between marketing and American teens. Quart argues that many of the white, female tweens and teens she studies in the book use money and products to construct their identity.

 

Gerald Handel, Spencer Cahill, Frederick Elkin. Children and Society: The Sociology of Children and Childhood Socialization

This book presents a comprehensive sociological portrayal of children and childhood from birth to the beginning of adolescence. A major theme is the tension between children's active agency and the socializing influences of the family, school, peer groups, and mass media. The book incorporates the most recent research and theories of childhood socialization. Its theoretical perspective is primarily symbolic interactionism and features research that documents cultural variations within American society shaped by social class, race and ethnicity, and gender.

 

Patricia and Peter Adler.  Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity. 

Using eight years of observation research, sociologists discuss the role of peer groups and family as they relate to popularity, social isolation, bullying, and boy-girl relationships.

 

Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City
Anderson interviewed others in middle- and lower-class Philadelphia neighborhoods to observe the ways that issues of racism, economic problems, and political forces have led to the current problems experienced by those in the inner city. Concerns about presenting one's self as "masculine" and not "acting too white" both emerge through interviews.

 

Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, and Ann Swidler, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
In this book, Bellah et al. examine the daily religious practices of a variety of Americans and the social significance those practices hold for them.

 

Stephen E. Cornell and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World
In this book, Cornell and Hartmann use case studies and examples to describe the ways that we construct our racial and ethnic identities. In the second edition, the impacts of modernization and globalization on our personal identities are discussed.

 

Erving Goffman, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Goffman, in his classic work, examines the ways that we consciously try to craft our identities. He uses the metaphor of dramaturgy to explain the ways that we attempt to shape others' views of our identities.

 

Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher, Mirror, Mirror. . .The Importance of Looks in Everyday Life
Hatfield and Sprecher draw on a variety of empirical experiments to explain how we interpret one another's appearances and treat each other differently based upon our perceptions.

 

Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling
Hochschild examines those who must sell their emotional labor as a part of their careers (such as flight attendants) to examine the effects of commodifying feelings.

 

Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority
Milgram's controversial experiments are detailed along with the implications of our willingness to obey authority figures.

 

Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy
Zelizer explores the role that money plays in defining social relationships through analyzing legal case studies.

 

Kieran Healy, Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs
Healy discusses altruism, not as a nature of human kindness, but the organizationally created efforts to secure resources through a gift economy.

 

Katherine Chen, Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event

In her book, Chen details the findings of her ethnography of the Burning Man Arts Festival in the Nevada desert. She focuses on the organizational efforts that sustain the event of seemingly unregulated creativity.

 

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do

Barabasi, a scholar of social networks, argues in the book that human behavior is predictable because of the habit of people to follow the orders and wishes of those in power. Barabasi shows that any “burst” of human behavior is only a testament to the universality of behavior throughout history.

 

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

In this book, Gladwell argues that when small groups of people alter their behavior it can create a change in mass behavior until the whole culture adapts to assimilate the behavior. He uses many popular examples to make his argument clear and easy to follow.

 

Irving L. Janis. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes

In light of all the buzz about group learning for students, this book reminds us that “group think” is not always good. Using several case studies of what he considers to be "groupthink"--The Bay of Pigs invasion, the escalation of the Korean War in 1950, the attack on Pearl Harbor and escalation of the Vietnam War, he shows how top decision-makers walled themselves off from dissenting voices and tended to reinforce one another's preexisting positions. In counterpoint are two successes, where groupthink did not triumph--the Cuban Missile Crisis and the development of the Marshall Plan.

 

Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh.  Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. 

Sociologist Ebaugh examines the phenomenon of becoming an “ex”—for example, an ex-convict, an ex-nun, a divorced person, or a mother who lost custody of her children.

 

William M Kephart and William M. Zellner.  Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles. Among the groups described in this very readable book are the Amish, the Oneida community, the Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Romani (commonly known as Gypsies).

 

 

Phillippe Bourgois, Selling Crack in el Barrio
For his dissertation, Bourgois lived among crack dealers to learn the inner workings of the business and much more about the young dealers themselves.

 

Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
In this classic piece, Goffman focuses on those who are considered deviant simply because they are different. He uses the examples of people who are physically disabled, former mental patients, prostitutes, and those who are addicted to drugs to make his case.

 

Edward Humes, No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court
Humes tells the stories of individual youth to argue that the juvenile justice system does more to make children into future criminals than it does to reform them.

 

Katherine S. Newman, Cybelle Fox, Wendy Roth, and Jal Mehta Rampage, The Social Roots of School Shootings
The authors interviewed 163 people impacted by school shootings to determine what social factors the shooters, their families and their communities had in common.

 

Jocelyn M. Pollock-Byrne, Women, Prison, and Crime
In this comprehensive book, Pollock-Byrne covers such topics as the history of women's crime and sentencing as well as the lives the women lead within a prison itself.

 

Stephen M. Rosoff, Henry N. Pontell, and Robert Tillman, Profit Without Honor: White Collar Crime and the Looting of America
Here, the authors detail the temptations and aftermath of a variety of white collar crimes in settings ranging from corporate America to schools and hospitals.

 

Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Schlosser examines three "black market" economies: marijuana, pornography, and immigrant labor. He questions what the unequal justice afforded to those who participate in these crimes says about culture and criminal justice in the United States.

 

Kody Scott/Sanyika Shakur, Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
In Monster, Shakur tells his story of joining the Crips at age 11 and the positive and negative consequences he has endured throughout his lifetime as a result of that decision.

 

Philippe Bourgois and Jeffrey Schonberg, Righteous Dopefiend

In this ethnography, Bourgois describes his ethnographic experience of living with homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. His account is strengthened by Schonberg’s photos of the addicts and their social context. The book fantastically demonstrates how personal troubles and social issues influence addicts’ lives.

 

Victor M. Rios. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner city Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. This book examines the difficult lives of these young men, who now face punitive policies in their schools, communities, and a world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized.

 

Jeffrey Ian Ross and Stephan C. Richards.  Behind Bars: Surviving Prison.

This book gives practical information to those imprisoned, and, in doing so, illuminates the prison experience for others.

 

Marshall B. Clinard and Robert F. Miller. 

An overview of the nature and forms of deviance, including drug use, drunkenness, sexual behavior, and suicide.

 

William Adler, Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line
In this book, the consequences of economic globalization and free trade are discussed by using the example of an electrical manufacturing company.

 

Jill Duerr Berrick, Faces of Poverty: Portraits of Women and Children on Welfare
Berrick details the stories of five women on welfare to explain the circumstances that brought them to needing public support, the underground economies they rely on to supplement their meager support checks, and the reasons that various reform policies are unlikely to help pull these women out of poverty.

 

William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Power, Politics, and Social Change
Domhoff argues that, in some ways, the owners and top-level managers at major corporations actually influence local, state, and national government more than politicians themselves.

 

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America
In this work, Ehrenreich attempts to survive by doing a variety of minimum wage jobs, including hotel worker, maid, and waitress. She discovers that the ability to live on a low wage job is often a fragile enterprise.

 

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Ehrenreich examines the struggles that American middle class professionals face when trying to find employment. Among other things, she attends "professional" job search seminars and job fairs, and discovers that most are exercises in futility.

 

Elliot Liebow, Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men
Liebow's study of black men in 1960's inner-city Washington D.C. was one of the first to offer an alternative to the "culture of poverty" thesis.

 

Jay MacLeod, Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low Income Neighborhood
MacLeod follows two groups of young men living in poverty (the "Brothers" and the "Hallway Hangers") from adolescence into adulthood. He discovers that despite their individual ambitions, most end up imprisoned, unemployed, or chronically underemployed.

 

Mary Romero, Maid in the USA
Romero interviews domestic workers to explore their concerns of low wages, unkind employers, and leaving their own families to sell their labor to others.

 

William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
Wilson investigates aspects of the inner city (e.g., the rise of fatherless families, gang violence, and drugs), which many blame on the "culture of poverty." Wilson concludes that structural factors (a lack of jobs and high levels of social inequality), rather than individual factors have led to many of the problems of the inner city.

 

Robert H. Frank, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class
In this book, Frank argues how dangerous the quest for status through material goods can be for society.

 

Robert Frank, Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

In Richistan, Frank explores how the financial boom of the 1990s resulted in rising inequality in the United States by focusing on the lives of the extremely wealthy.

 

Douglass S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System
Massey tried to understand how the United States has become the most unequal modern capitalist society through exploring group relations.

 

Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen, The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America
Newman and Chen tell the life story of several working poor individuals to understand the experiences of the near poor and growing economic inequality in the United States.

 

The New York Times, Class Matters
This book is a compilation of a series on social class that the New York Times ran in 2005. The series examined growing class inequality as well as how these inequalities play out in several key social institutions.

 

Sean Safford, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt

In this book, Safford illustrates the differences between Pennsylvania and Ohio communities when the steel industry left. Safford argues that the way the elites viewed the labor issues play an important role in whether or not the community recovered after the industry left.

 

Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley, Social Class: How Does It Work?

Lareau and Conley’s text incorporates work from prominent sociologists to show the role social class plays across multiple dimensions of social life.

 

Mark Rank, One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All

Rank illustrates the structural causes and consequences of poverty in America. He argues that although America is a wealthy society, we overlook our responsibility to all our members, making many Americans susceptible to poverty and likely to experience poverty over the course of our lives.

 

Gilbert, Dennis. The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality.  Newbury Park:  Pine Forge Press.

Gilbert explores historical and contemporary empirical studies of class inequality in America through the lens of nine key variables. Focusing on the socioeconomic core of the American class system, Gilbert describes a consistent pattern of growing inequality in the United States since the early 1970s. In his search for the answer to why class disparities continue to increase, Gilbert examines changes in the economy, family life, and politics, drawing on vivid first-person accounts to illustrate the human emotion wrapped up in class issues.

 

Kevin Bales.  Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. 

Considers the more than 27 million people around the world who are victims of coerced labor. Offers case studies of Brazil, India, Mauritania, Thailand, the United States, and parts of Europe.

 

Marilyn Waring. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. 

Waring, a social scientist from New Zealand, considers how women’s labor is overlooked in the global economy.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
The author uses interview data to explore what he refers to as "the new racist ideology"—ignoring color and racial disparity.

 

Dalton Conley, Honky
Conley details his experiences growing up in a mostly black and Hispanic neighborhood, and explains the race and class privileges that allowed him to become a professor.

 

Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White
The author explores how the Irish came to be treated as "whites" rather than racial minorities in the United States following the Civil War. Ignatiev claims that embracing racism was a path toward greater rights for Irish Americans.

 

Douglas S. Massey, New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration
In this book, Massey explores the recent phenomenon of immigrants settling into small-town America, rather than just gateway cities. He explains the ways that small town residents are reacting to their new neighbors and the implications for the economy and family life.

 

Mary Patillo McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
In this ethnography on a black middle class neighborhood, McCoy explains that rather than moving to white suburbs, many black middle class Americans live in segregated suburbs just outside inner cities. Here, she explores the difficulties this group faces in maintaining its precarious class position.

 

Carlos Munoz, Jr., Youth, Identity and Power: The Chicano Movement, Revised and Expanded Edition
This book chronicles the history of Chicano radicalism and the political implications that resulted from the social movement.

 

William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum
In this classic piece, Whyte explores issues of nativity, ethnicity, and social class through participant observation.

 

Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White
Wu explores the supposedly positive stereotypes about Asian Americans and concludes that most are damaging to the “model minority.”

 

Richard D. Alba and Victor Nee, Rethinking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration
Alba and Nee work to uncover the role of assimilation in the 21st century and ask readers to reconsider their beliefs that assimilation is a dirty word.

 

Conley, Dalton, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Class in America
Conley examines the role wealth inequality plays in creating racial inequality in the United States. He ultimately explores whether racial or economic inequality primarily drives the inequality we see between Whites and Blacks in the Unites States

 

Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo, Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide

In this work, Peterson and Krivo show the strong relationship between race and social class by showing how residential segregation by social class is associated with neighborhood and racial crime patterns.

 

William Julius Wilson, More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

Wilson, in this work, synthesizes the structural and cultural forces at work in the situation of the Black, urban poor.

 

Fergal Keane, Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey

In this book, Keane recounts the Rwandan genocide. Keane illustrates the role socially constructed ethnic and political difference resulted in the 1994 murders of one million Tutsis at the hands of Hutus.

 

Parrillo, Vincent N.  Diversity in America.  Newbury Park:  Pine Forge Press.

This book offers a sociohistorical perspective while providing sociological analysis into U.S. diversity. This book does not shy away from the most controversial of topics by asking thought provoking questions such as: Is multiculturalism a threat to us? Should immigration be more closely controlled? Are we no longer sufficiently “American” and why?

 

Scott Malcomson. One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race. 

A historical account of how race was and is defined in the United States.

 

Annie Barnes.  Everyday Racism: A Book for All Americans. 

Drawing on her students’ experiences, a professor of sociology and anthropology recounts some middle-class African Americans’ encounters with racism.

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
This classic piece uses case studies and statistics to provide a cultural history of rape and aggression against women.

 

John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
The authors explain a wide variety of issues surrounding sexuality in the United States including same sex relationships, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and women's rights.

 

Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women
Faludi examines the backlash to the feminist movement that women in the 1980's received. This included propaganda warning of a "husband shortage" for professional women and the rise of fashion models who appear to have been battered.

 

Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
Faludi uses a number of examples to explain how the cultural ideal of "masculinity" that men have been sold is getting harder and harder to achieve. She details the scapegoating that occurs as a result of men's frustration.

 

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, Global Women: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
This collection of essays focuses on the "female underside of globalization," that often involves poor women leaving their own families to care for the families of wealthier individuals.

 

Jean Kilbourne and Mary Pipher, Can't Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel
Kilbourne and Pipher explain the pervasiveness of advertising and the ways that advertising affects and objectifies individuals.

 

Pamela Paxton and Melanie Hughes, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective
Paxton and Hughes explore women's political power worldwide and examine the historical trends that have led to varying degrees of women's global political representation.

 

Barbara J. Risman, Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition
In this book, Risman interviews couples who are attempting to create egalitarian relationships and details the difficulties they face in a world not designed for equal unions.

 

Christine L. Williams, Still A Man's World: Men Who Do Women's Work
Williams interviews men in traditionally female dominated occupations and explains the glass escalator most experience. She finds that, contrary to their chosen careers, most have quite traditional ideas about masculinity.

 

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women
Wolf argues that the standard of beauty presented by the media is unattainable by most women and details the industries (cosmetic, plastic surgery, and diet) that have evolved to help women correct their “flaws.”

 

Naomi Wolf, Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood

In this book, Wolf argues that, due to our social conceptions about motherhood, mothers are often patronized and misunderstood. This, she suggests, divides heterosexual families by class, with mothers in the care-giving class and fathers in the working class highlighting the persistence of gender stratification despite the movement of women into the workplace.

 

C.J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

This book documents Pascoe’s ethnographic work where he spent a year and a half examining the meaning of masculinity and sexuality in a working-class high school. Pascoe discusses her findings on the “fag discourse” showing that sexualized rhetoric used among high school age boys is as much about gender as it is about sexuality.

 

Miliann Kang, The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Service Work

Kang interviews nail technicians, shop owners, and women seeking manicures to uncover intersectional dynamics of race, class, gender, and sexuality present in receiving and giving nail and beauty services.

 

Gail Dines, Jean M. Humez.  Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader

From gender issues in Desperate Housewives, to race in Ugly Betty, gender biases in video games, and portrayals of the American family in Extreme Makeover, this book provides a critical analysis of media consumed for pleasure while providing a grounding in theory.

 

Waring, Marilyn. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. 

Waring, a social scientist from New Zealand, considers how women’s labor is overlooked in the global economy.

Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
This book demonstrates that the “traditional” family demonstrated in sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver actually represented a large change over what families had been like prior to the 1950's. Here, Coontz debunks many of the myths surrounding the “traditional American family.”

 

Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage

This book continues Stephanie Coontz’ position that marriage has not always been what we think it is. She provides a detailed history of marriage from ancient Babylon to the Victorian era to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love really is—and how this very emotion may be the undoing of the institution of marriage.

 

Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage
For this book, Edin and Kefalas lived among poor single mothers for several months to determine why they choose to have children before getting married. They find that a perceived shortage of “quality,” marriageable men and a high value placed on children leads to large numbers of single mothers among this group.

 

Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood
Hays explores the contradictory messages that women receive about motherhood. Women are expected to be competitive and assertive at work to help provide for their children, but nurturing and caring at home. New ideas about the intense investment children “require” only make parenting more stressful for working women.

 

Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift
In this book, Hochschild interviews couples to describe and explain the extra housework and parenting duties that women are expected to take on after getting home from their paid jobs. She finds that couples use a variety of strategies to rationalize why women must work the Second Shift while men are not given this responsibility.

 

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
Laureau interviews black and white families to examine the benefits and drawbacks of the different parenting strategies used by poor, working and middle class families.

 

Pamela Stone, Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
Stone interviewed white, professional women who left the workforce to stay at home with their children. She found that the reason the quit working was not because they had a strong desire to be stay at home moms. Instead, it was because they were unable to meet the huge demands of their workplaces while raising their families.

 

Mark Strasser, Legally Wed: Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution
Strasser uses a variety of past cases and state policies to examine the reasons behind banning gay marriage and argues that legal arguments against gay marriage are weak.

 

Nicholas Townsend, The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives
In this book, Townsend details the pressures faced by contemporary men to not only provide for their families, but also to be involved fathers and husbands.

 

Joanna Gregson, The Culture of Teenage Mothers

In this book, Gregson draws from her ethnographic research studying teenage mothers in high schools to describe the social and structural forces impacting teen mothering. Gregson skillfully uncovers the social stigma these teen mothers face and how they give meaning to their parental experiences.

 

Chrys Ingraham, White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture

Ingraham, in this work, deconstructs rituals and beliefs surrounding the modern wedding to show how it romanticizes beliefs about heterosexuality. Ingraham argues that the social construction of weddings has created a “wedding-industrial complex” that feeds classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism through the materialistic pursuit of a perfect wedding in modern society.

 

Kathleen Gerson, The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America

Gerson studies the life histories of over 100 young adults in the New York area to uncover how children born after the women’s movement were impacted by being raised after the Third Wave of feminism. Gerson examines how divorce, step-parenting, working mothers, and blended families impacts young adults’ beliefs about work, family, and relationships.

 

Paul R. Amato, Alan Booth, David R. Johnson, Stacy J. Rogers.  Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing.

The researchers outline the two main perspectives in how marriage has changed. Some think it is in decline, that the growth of individualism has made it increasingly difficult to achieve satisfying and stable relationships. Others believe that changes, such as increasing gender equality, have made marriage a better arrangement for men as well as women. Based on two studies of marital quality in America twenty years apart, this book takes a middle view, showing that while the divorce rate has leveled off, spouses are spending less time together—people may be “bowling alone” these days, but married couples are also eating alone. Indeed, the declining social capital of married couples—including the fact that couples have fewer shared friends—combined with the general erosion of community ties in American society has had pervasive, negative effects on marital quality. However, family income has increased, decision-making equality between husbands and wives is greater, marital conflict and violence have declined, and the norm of lifelong marriage enjoys greater support than ever.

 

Hertz, Rosanna, and Nancy L. Marshall. Working Families: The Transformation of the American Home.  Two sociologists look at the rise of dual-income families and the social dynamics of work and parenthood.

Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity
Using interviews and participant observation, Ferguson notes that some young black men are being labeled “unsalvageable” or “future criminals” by their teachers. She explores the implications these labels have on the young men's senses of self.

 

Samuel G. Freeman, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School
This book focuses on a year in the life of one New York public school teacher and the “small victories” she achieves, including encouraging a few children's dreams of attending college.

 

Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
Kozol examines the numerous inequalities among public schools that result in poor and minority children being taught in woefully underfunded and understaffed schools and being tracked into a permanent underclass.

 

Peter Coolson and Caroline Hodges Persell, Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools
Based upon their visits to nearly 60 elite preparatory high schools, Coolson and Persell argue that these schools act as one way of transmitting privilege among the American power elite.

 

Murray Sperber: Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education
Sperber critiques the party scene surrounding college sports and argue that universities, rather than attempting to quell it, rely upon this (sometimes dangerous) subculture to recruit students at the expense of quality undergraduate education.

 

Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Boys and Girls at School
Thorne observed elementary school boys and girls in the classroom and on the playground. She notes that children divide themselves (and are divided by others) into sex-segregated groups and use games like “cooties” to reinforce difference.

 

Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, and Ann Swidler, Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth
The authors of this book attack the idea that intelligence and inequality is genetic. They detail the role educational policy and the structures of society create inequality in society.

 

Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of a Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
In this best-seller, Kozol details how we have reverted to a racially segregated education system in the United States.

 

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
In this classic theoretical work, Freire argues that the poor are educated in a way so that their education is not useful or able to use to develop their human potential.

 

William G. Bowen, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public University

Bowen provides data analysis that uncovers discrepancies in graduation rates and educational attainment, showing that widespread discrepancies persist despite the efforts of colleges and universities to address them.

 

James E. Rosenbaum, Beyond College for All: Career Paths for the Forgotten Half

Rosenbaum questions the college-for-all model of higher education we follow in the United States. He shows that our beliefs about social inequality negatively influence our ability to offer vocational education to individuals who do not have access for a college preparatory curriculum. Not all young adults, as a result, have a chance at occupational success.

 

Richard Arum, Irenee Beattie, Richard Pitt, Jennifer Thompson, and Sandra Way, Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority

In this book, the authors present the results of their investigation of the zero tolerance policy used in compulsory education. They argue that this policy and school discipline is much more influenced by the American legal system than the education system. As a result, teens are subjected to school discipline that undermines their educational pursuits.

 

Margolis, Eric. The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. 

Eleven essays on the ways in which higher education reproduces race, class, and gender hierarchies.

 

Participant Media Group. Waiting for "Superman": How We Can Save America's Failing Public Schools

Like all good point of view exposes this book provides many statistics and other evidence to support its point of view that the American school system is in serious need of reform. By bringing in engaging and highly controversial topics such as teacher tenure and the need for teachers’ unions, this book presents the staggering claim that the American public school system is in crisis, failing millions of students, producing as many drop-outs as graduates, and threatening our economic future. By 2020, the United States will have 123 million high-skill jobs to fill—and fewer than 50 million Americans qualified to fill them. What this volume also does is to expose the “lie” that inner city children cannot learn.

 

Ken Robinson. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

This book can best be summarized through a quote from its author. “It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves. To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”

—Ken Robinson

Geneive Adbo, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America after 9/11
Adbo examines the experiences of Muslims in America following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She finds that many Muslims feel that they've been driven to separatism because of the way they were treated by their neighbors following 9-11.

 

Kai Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance
In this book, Erikson examines the ways that deviance within a religious community can have positive outcomes for the entire group.

 

Leon Festinger et al., When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study
This classic book follows a UFO cult that formed and predicted the end of the world. It explains what happened after the members gave away all of their personal possessions and the end of the world failed to materialize.

 

Aminah McCloud, African American Islam
Using personal interviews, McCloud traces the history of the African American Islam movement and the impact that Islam has in the lives of African American women in particular.

 

Thomas C. Reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity
Reeves argues that people are leaving mainline churches in favor of more fundamentalist religions because of the growing secularization of America. He further examines the history of religious groups becoming involved in politics.

 

Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus
In this book, Storr analyzes various religious gurus to find commonalities among their upbringing and psyches.

 

Stephen R. Warner, New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small Town Church
Using a case study of one church in small town America, Warner tracks the resurgence of the evangelical movement in the United States through the struggle of the congregation to shape their church's doctrine.

 

Mark Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers

Regnerus uses survey and interview data to detail the relationship between religion and sexuality in the lives of American teenagers. Regnerus examines teens of many religious traditions—from evangelical to secular—to show how their sexuality is influenced by their faith.

 

David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

Wilson suggests that instead of seeing religion and evolution as complementary concepts, arguing that religion itself is a form of social evolution. He strips the belief system from religion; we are more able to see its cultural force in shaping human interaction.

 

Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion

In this text, Stark and Finke show the division between faith and the social factors of religion. They argue that, while sociology has no ability to understand issues of faith and beliefs, sociology can uncover a great deal by working to understand the social dynamics of religion.

 

Bartowski, John, and Helen A. Regis. Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era.

Among other features, this book presents a history of faith-based welfare initiatives in the United States.

 

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

A work from the Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics, this text provides data on religion in many cultures and societies to show how secularization is impacting various world cultures. They show that religion, despite trends of secularization, is still a strong force throughout the world and continues to persist even after many theorists suggest it would fade.

 

Margaret Thaler Singer. Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace

One of the more interesting aspects of religion is examining the powerful allure of cults. Singer reveals what cults really are and how they work, focusing specifically on the coercive persuasion techniques of charismatic leaders seeking money and power. The book contains fascinating updates on several well-known cults and makes a connection between cults and terrorism

 

James Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House
Barber uses a number of social sciences (sociology, psychology, and history) to determine the characteristics that made Presidents Taft through Bush successful (or not) in office.

 

Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?
Bartlett and Steele explain how the upper class and major corporations use tax code loopholes to avoid paying taxes on the majority of the income they earn, leaving the middle and working classes to foot the bills.

 

William Domhoff, The Powers That Be
Domhoff provides a history of the press, including the political pressures that the government and corporate sponsors place upon it to "shape" the news in a particular direction and the ways that the press was used to report some of the largest political scandals of all time.

 

Redish, Martin H. Money Talks: Speech, Economic Power, and the Values of Democracy.

A professor of law looks at campaign financing, government funding of the arts, and commercial advertising, arguing against government restrictions.

 

Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics
In this book, the author examines some of the social factors that are related to political concepts like stability and change.

 

Neil de Mause and Joanna Cagan, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit
Here, the authors explain the ways that private franchises profit off of public money in sports both through the use of tax dollars to build new stadiums and through the higher ticket prices as a result.

 

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite
In his classic book, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills examines a trilogy of institutions that command most of the power in the United States: the military, corporations, and the political elite.

 

Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Klien examines the Bush Administration from a political economy prospective to examine how neo-liberalism capitalism has interfered with democracy.

 

Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Frank discusses the success the Republican Party has had connecting with middle America through the division of social class and political interests.

 

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
In this theoretical classic, Polanyi argues that laissez-faire markets are not self-regulating, but instead are carefully and thoroughly socially constructed through social relations.

 

Morris P. Fiorina, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America
In this book, Fiorina challenges that political polarization is real in America. Instead, he argues that it is largely a product of the Media because America is a land of political moderates.

 

Pamela Paxton and Melanie Hughes, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective

Paxton and Hughes present a quantitative analysis of the changing representation of women in politics in various nations. They show how structural forces, like historical factors and gender ideology account for women’s experiences in politics.

 

Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

Fukuyama examines the extent to which the Bush administration’s policies are influenced by neoconservative thought.

 

Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World

This book examines the global consequences of the rise of nations other than the United States having influence over the global economy and political system.

 

Peter Schiff. The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy---How to Save Yourself and Your Country

Schiff argues that America is enjoying a government-inflated bubble, one that will dissolve with disastrous consequences for the economy and for each of us. He demonstrates how the infusion of billions of dollars of stimulus money has only dug a deeper hole: the United States government simply spends too much and does not collect enough money to pay its debts, and in the end, Americans from all walks of life will face a crushing consequence. Whether you see him as an alarmist or a realist this book is something that everyone should read and examine for themselves.

 

 

Michael Bloor, The Sociology of HIV Transmission
In this book, Bloor examines group phenomena such as needle sharing and unprotected sex that leads to HIV transmission using sociological research methods to separate myths from reality.

 

Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
This book explores the story of Lia Lee, a child whose epilepsy and subsequent treatment by American doctors comes into conflict with her parents' Hmong culture.

 

Geyla Frank, Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography and Being Female in America
Frank provides an ethnographic and life history of Diana DeVries, who was born without arms or legs and who chooses not to use prostheses. Frank also details the methodological challenges of telling DeVries' story without taking it over.

 

Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face
Grealy explains what it is like having grown up with one-third of her jaw missing from a potentially terminal cancer. She discusses her competing desires to be accepted by her peers and to be seen as “special.”

 

J. Eric Oliver, Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic
Oliver explores what he calls “the real problem,” not obesity but the panic over obesity that has led to a multi-billion dollar diet and fitness industry.

 

Thomas Scheff, Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory
Scheff examines mental illness as a violation of socio-normative behaviors. In addition, he explores the hotly contested issues of pharmaceutical intervention and even the labeling of mental illness itself.

 

Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce Kennedy, The Health of Nations: Why Inequality is Harmful to your Health

The authors look at how social class inequality influences the health and mortality of individuals in society. They also show how the stratification system influences the overall health of a nation.

 

Greg Critser, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

A journalist by trade, Crister uses the sociological imagination to show how historical and structural forces have transformed the American food industry resulting in widespread obesity.

 

Jill Quadagno, One Nation, Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance

Quadagno shows how the U.S. lacks a national health system mainly because important social forces—insurance companieis, small-businesses, and the American Medical Association—opposes it. She also shows how a cultural shift is necessary before national healthcare could be a possibility.

 

Robert H. Lustig. Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

Lustig documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years. In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.

 

Lassey, Marie L., William R. Lassey, and Martin J. Jinks. Health Care Systems around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms.

A comparative look at health care delivery in 13 countries, including Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and Sweden.

 

Rachel Carson, Edward O. Wilson, and Linda Lear, Silent Spring (2002 Special Edition)
Carson et al. note that the same problems she first drew attention to in 1962 (the use of pesticides that seeped into the food supply) still exist.

 

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
The author argues that as the structure of suburbs has changed they have actually become less functional in ways that disproportionately disadvantage women, children, and the elderly.

 

Paul Ehrlich and David Brower, The Population Bomb
In this classic piece, the authors predicted a Malthusian future based upon surging population growth.

 

Douglas S. Massey, New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration
In this book, Massey explores the recent phenomenon of immigrants settling into small-town America, rather than just gateway cities. He explains the ways that small town residents are reacting to their new neighbors and the implications for the economy and family life.

 

Thomas Sieverts, Cities Without Cities: Between Place and World, Space and Time, Town and Country
Sieverts investigates the rise of the “meta-city” (multiple cities linked by transportation routes). He concludes that individuals feel less of a connection to their own communities as a result of the geographic changes they've undergone.

 

William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
Wilson investigates aspects of the inner city (e.g., the rise of fatherless families, gang violence, and drugs), which many blame on the “culture of poverty.” Wilson concludes that structural factors (a lack of jobs and high levels of social inequality), rather than individual factors have led to many of the problems of the inner city.

 

Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

Using New York as case study, Zukin shows the influence of authenticity on a city. Efforts to maintain authenticity influence housing costs, racial and ethnic make-ups of neighborhoods, and consumption patterns.

 

Lance Freeman, There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up

Freeman interviews residents of three New York City neighborhoods to explore their beliefs about gentrification. Freeman uncovers that residents see positives and negatives in gentrification and the process can be neither sees as solely a social problem or a welcome solution to urban poverty.

 

Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America

An update to his original work, Friedman argues that the growth of a global middle class has created a driving need for a green movement that focuses on sustainability. This Green movement, he suggests will bolster the American and the global economy.

 

Massey, Douglas.  Strangers in a Strange Land

This classic book focuses on three central factors—the physical environment, social relations at the micro level, and social organization at the macro level—with Professor Massey arguing that humans are genetically programmed to be physiologically, psychologically, and socially adapted to life in small groups and to organic natural environments.  Despite this, most humans live in dense urban environments.  “As biological organisms,” Massey writes, “we are indeed strangers in a strange land.”

 

Langdon, Philip.  A Better Place to Live:  Reshaping the American Suburb

Philip Langdon crisscrossed the country to see how suburbs are being built and to interview designers, developers, planners, and residents. Training his eye on houses, streets, parks, gathering places, stores, employment and transportation, Langdon shows how these elements can generate frustration and isolation or, under better circumstances, contribute to a more congenial way of life. Langdon shows how suburbs could be designed much differently than they are today - with networks of walkable streets, neighborhood stores and gathering places, compact town centers, and more varied and affordable housing. 

Crane Brinton, Anatomy of a Revolution
Brinton examines the English, French, Russian, and American Revolutions in this classic piece.

 

Susan Ferriss, Ricardo Sandoval, and Diana Hembree, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement
This book tells the story of Chavez and his instrumental leadership in the United Farmworkers union, which resulted in better occupational conditions for migrant workers.

 

Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
In his autobiography, Malcolm X explains his transformation into a civil rights activist and attempts to inspire others to abolish white racism.

 

Julia Butterfly Hill, The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
In this book, Julia Butterfly Hill recounts her tale of spending 738 days living in a 200-year-old California redwood tree. Her fight against commercial logging drew the attention of fellow protesters, celebrities, and the mass media.

 

Abbie Hoffman, Steal this Book
Hoffman's guide for the modern aspiring hippie explains to individuals that they have the power to overturn the status quo and provides advice from the theoretical to the practical.

 

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Here, Marx lays out his foundational plans for the proletariat overthrow of bourgeoisie capitalism. Marx argues that a class consciousness is necessary for an uprising to occur.

 

Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered
Raines' book includes interviews with activists from the American Civil Rights Movement. It also includes the interesting tensions between the older and younger generations of black Americans during the 1960's.

 

Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
In this book, Kline discusses branding, or the ability of corporate logos to be transformed into a socially meaningful entity. No Logo exposes the rise of the sweatshop as a rise of global capitalism and consumerism.

 

Thomas L. Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11
In this book, Friedman explores how the global society has shifted in the new millennium.

 

Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
Here Friedman discusses globalization as the key force driving the global society which is polarized around technological development and global integration.

 

Jeffery D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
This book highlights Sachs work as the head of the UN Millennium Project and details a plan how we can end extreme poverty in our lifetime.

 

Pietra Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade
Rivoli explores the how consumption in the global north is impacting poverty in the global south by following used clothing from the U.S. and the U.K. to Africa and describing how this global “t-shirt trade” has decimated the textile industry in many African nations.

 

Judith Levine, Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping
In this critique of modern consumerism, Levine describes her year spent without purchasing anything beyond necessities.

 

Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

In this book, UN Millennium Project Director Sachs identifies four challenges most salient to the global population: global warming, population growth, extreme poverty, and political subversion. Sachs goes beyond simply identifying these issues to detail a concrete plan achievable with a small portion of our national budget that could rectify each major area of concern.

 

Colin Beavan, No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

This book details Beavan and his family’s year long experiment of having no ecological impact. Beavan’s book goes far beyond documenting his individual experiences as he uncovers many social factors that influence our ability to minimize our ecological footprint.

 

Dan Clawson, The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements

In this book, Clawson argues that labor movements fuse with social justice social movements in order to be successful. For this reason, Clawson suspects it will take several justice-related social movements before labor unions have the membership or influence they had in Post-War America, if they are ever able to regain their influence.

 

Al Gore. The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

Gore reminds us that ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore surveys our planet’s beclouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and ultimately hopeful forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends. In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our world and makes sound suggestions for the future.

 

Miller, David L. Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Actions. 

The author, associated with the assembling perspective, covers all the major theoretical approaches of the field. He examines rumors, riots, social movements, immigrations, and other forms of collective behavior.