Sociology is the study of human and societal interaction. Whether you're currently enrolled in a course or want to learn how to apply sociological concepts to your personal or professional life, this text will help you understand how to scientifically analyze social organization and cultural structure.

A classic of Sociology, "The Mind and Society" is 1916 book by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923). In this book Pareto presents the first sociological cycle theory, centered on the concept of an elite social class.

"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything...

German Home Towns is a social biography of the hometown Bürger from the end of the seventeenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries. After his opening chapters on the political, social, and economic basis of town life, Mack Walker traces a painful process of decline that, while occasionally slowed or diverted, leads inexorably toward death and, in the twentieth century, transfiguration. Along the way, he addresses such topics as local government,...

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins's claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education's promises of upward...

"Moral psychologist Tess Wilkinson-Ryan examines what she calls the 'sucker construct,' the fear of being taken advantage of--of being a sucker--and its outsized role in the shaping of our lives and our world"--

"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker,...

People disappear when they most want to be seen. Jess Walker has come to a concrete campus under the flat grey skies of East Anglia for one reason: To be taught by the mesmerizing and rebellious Dr Lorna Clay, whose seminars soon transform Jess's thinking on life, love, and Agatha Christie. Swept up in Lorna's thrall, Jess falls in with a tightly-knit group of rule-breakers--Alec, a courageous South African journalist with a nihilistic streak; Georgie,...

Hosted by twice Oscar nominated actor and activist Woody Harrelson, 'Ethos' lifts the lid on a Pandora's Box of systemic issues that guarantee failure in every aspect of our lives, from the environment to our democracy and our own personal liberty. From conflicts of interest in politics to unregulated corporate power, to a military industrial complex that just about owns our government. We cannot change our system until we know how the system works....

ESCAPING POLYGAMY follows three sisters who left the Kingston clan, a secretive polygamist group in Utah known as the Order, and who now help loved ones and strangers break free of polygamy.