Our emotions and culture

In the current global social landscape, emotions have become important in people’s lives. Doyle McCarthy, in Culture and Our Emotions, explains in highly accessible terms how this came about and how our lives have been changed in the process.

Agents of reform

A groundbreaking account of how the welfare state began with early nineteenth-century child labor laws, and how middle-class and elite reformers made it happenThe beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late nineteenth-century labor movement and to policymakers’ efforts to ...

Overload

Why too much work and too little time is hurting workers and companies—and how a proven workplace redesign can benefit employees and the bottom lineToday's ways of working are not working—even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, ...

American afterlives

A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary lifeDeath in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun sh...

Mapping the transnational world

A study of the structure, growth, and future of transnational human travel and communicationIncreasingly, people travel and communicate across borders. Yet, we still know little about the overall structure of this transnational world. Is it really a fully globalized world in which everything is l...

Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism

A New York Times BestsellerA Wall Street Journal BestsellerA New York Times Notable Book of 2020A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceShortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the YearA New Statesman Book to ReadFrom economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus D...

One quarter of the nation

An in-depth look at the many ways immigration has redefined modern AmericaThe impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration schol...

All the news that’s fit to click

From the New York Times to Gawker, a behind-the-scenes look at how performance analytics are transforming journalism today—and how they might remake other professions tomorrowJournalists today are inundated with data about which stories attract the most clicks, likes, comments, and shares. These ...

The tolls of uncertainty

An indispensable investigation into the American unemployment system and the ways gender and class affect the lives of those looking for workThrough the intimate stories of those seeking work, The Tolls of Uncertainty offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system—who it helps, who i...

Dreams of a lifetime

How social status shapes our dreams of the future and inhibits the lives we envision for ourselvesMost of us understand that a person’s place in society can close doors to opportunity, but we also tend to think that anything is possible when someone dreams about what might be. Dreams of a Lifetim...

Scripting the moves

An inside look at a "no-excuses" charter school that reveals this educational model’s strengths and weaknesses, and how its approach shapes studentsSilent, single-file lines. Detention for putting a head on a desk. Rules for how to dress, how to applaud, how to complete homework. Walk into some o...

The government of emergency

The origins and development of the modern American emergency stateFrom pandemic disease, to the disasters associated with global warming, to cyberattacks, today we face an increasing array of catastrophic threats. It is striking that, despite the diversity of these threats, experts and officials ...

Thinking like an economist

The story of how economic reasoning came to dominate Washington between the 1960s and 1980s—and why it continues to constrain progressive ambitions todayFor decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitiou...

The age of capitalism and bureaucracy

In this new edition of Wolfgang Mommsen’s illuminating study, Max Weber is presented in terms of the major questions that preoccupied him as one of the towering social scientists of his time, with insights that are persistently relevant as we deal with the structures and dynamics of modern indu...

Trading at the speed of light

A remarkable look at how the growth, technology, and politics of high-frequency trading have altered global financial marketsIn today’s financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use...

Culture, power, and history

Theoretical meditations and empirical studies of the intersection of culture, power and history in social life.

You can't win

Critique of rationality

A fascinating rectification for the distortion of technical necessity in Western Society due to unbridled instrumental reason.

China: promise or threat?

An insightful socio-cultural analysis of the differences in Chinese and Western relationships to the public and the private spheres.

Crisis, politics and critical sociology

In order to understand the forces that created our social world, we need the tools provided by a critical sociology.

The extreme gone mainstream

How clothing brands coded with racist and nationalist symbols are bringing extremism into the German mainstreamFar right politics and extremist violence are on the rise across Europe, prompting scholars and policymakers to question why extremism has become so appealing to so many people. Cynthia ...

The contentious public sphere

Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media...

Globalization, violence and world governance

International law has failed to promote and protect the rights of society in the face of the neoliberal agenda

Government paternalism

Should governments save people from themselves? Do governments have the right to influence citizens' behavior related to smoking tobacco, eating too much, not saving enough, drinking alcohol, or taking marijuana—or does this create a nanny state, leading to infantilization, demotivation, and brea...

Foragers, farmers, and fossil fuels

The best-selling author of Why the West Rules—for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the ninete...

Max weber: modernisation as passive revolution

Originally published in German, this volume makes available in English the definitive Marxist critique of Max Weber’s politics and method.

Making history

Making History is about the complex interaction between human agency and social structures.

Confronting gouldner

An important new appraisal of one of the 20th century’s most important activist sociologists.

Messages from george simmel

Simmel's influence on Sociology has been immense. This volume aims to re-examine that legacy and draw lessons for today's scholars.

Max weber's theory of personality

Widely considered the founding-father of Sociology, Sarah Farris's excellently argued book shows that Max Weber was also deeply orientalist.

Men on strike

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been ...

Life during wartime

A chilling indictment of state repression and first-world counterinsurgency tactics, with suggestions on how to fight back.

Territories in resistance

A thoughtful examination of social relations in Latin America, from one of the region's foremost political analysts.

Under the affluence

A scalding indictment of how the wealthy influence the national economy, politics, and media to disadvantage those less fortunate.

The sum of small things

In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry canvas tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like...

A poetics of resistance

How to market a new and better world...and win!

What we now know about race and ethnicity

Explains how the idea of race became so important in the USA. Reviews references to “race,” “racism,” and “ethnicity” in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and comparative politics.

Weaving transnational solidarity

Weaving Transnational Solidarity traces the threads of social justice spun by international activists stretching from Chiapas to the Catskills

European bloc imperialism

Debates on contemporary imperialism have focused on the U.S., to the exclusion of E.U. countries, this book corrects these trends

The battle for yellowstone

Yellowstone holds a special place in America's heart. As the world's first national park, it is globally recognized as the crown jewel of modern environmental preservation. But the park and its surrounding regions have recently become a lightning rod for environmental conflict, plagued by intense...

Anarchism and its aspirations

An accessible and thorough overview of anarchist figures and tendencies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The genome factor

How genomics is revolutionizing the social sciencesFor a century, social scientists have avoided genetics like the plague. But the nature-nurture wars are over. In the past decade, a small but intrepid group of economists, political scientists, and sociologists have harnessed the genomics revolut...

Becoming black political subjects

After decades of denying racism and underplaying cultural diversity, Latin American states began adopting transformative ethno-racial legislation in the late 1980s. In addition to symbolic recognition of indigenous peoples and black populations, governments in the region created a more pluralisti...

Making a good life

Making a Good Life takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and reproduction, fears about environmental degradation, and the rise of the biotechnology indust...

Against security

How security procedures could be positive, safe, and effectiveThe inspections we put up with at airport gates and the endless warnings we get at train stations, on buses, and all the rest are the way we encounter the vast apparatus of U.S. security. Like the wars fought in its name, these measure...

Masters of craft

In today’s new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young people are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual labor occupations as careers. Masters of Craft looks at the renaissance of four such trades: ...

Social trends in american life

Changes in American social attitudes and behaviors since the 1970sSocial Trends in American Life assembles a team of leading researchers to provide unparalleled insight into how American social attitudes and behaviors have changed since the 1970s. Drawing on the General Social Survey—a social sci...