The Sociology Books Top 100


The Sociology Books Top 100 is a list of some of the greatest works in sociology. A broad list of classics, it spans from the founders of sociology, Marx, Durkheim and Weber, to modern-day sociologists, such as Mills, Berger and Mann. Many of the texts are essential reading for those studying the subject.

1. The Sociological Imagination

By C. Wright Mills | Used Price: 60% Off

C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology ... More »

The Sociological Imagination
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

2. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

By Max Weber | Used Price: 80% Off

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day a powerful and fascinating read. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ... More »

3. The Social Construction of Reality

By Peter L. Berger; Thomas Luckmann | 90% Off

This book reformulates the sociological  subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge.  Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as  well false consciousness, propaganda, science and  art. More »

The Social Construction of Reality
Mind, Self, and Society

4. Mind, Self, and Society

By George Herbert Mead | Used Price: 60% Off

Written from the standpoint of the social behaviorist, this treatise contains the heart of Mead's position on social psychology. The analysis of language is of major interest, as it supplied for the first time an adequate treatment of the language mechanism in relation to scientific and philosophical issues."If ... More »

5. Suicide

By Emile Durkheim | Used Price: 70% Off

The landmark investigation into suicide and society?now in a new translation Émile Durkheim, one of the fathers of modern sociology, was the first to suggest that suicide might be as much a response to society as an act of individual despair. When he looked at social, religious, or ... More »

Suicide
Capital

6. Capital

By Karl Marx | Used Price: 70% Off

A landmark work in the understanding of capitalism, bourgeois society and the economics of class conflict, Karl Marx's Capital is translated by Ben Fowkes with an introduction by Ernest Mandel in Penguin Classics. One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one ... More »

7. The Sources of Social Power

By Michael Mann

While Marx considered economics to be the driving force in the evolution of societies, and Weber believed religion played a role, with his protestant ethic theory, In the Sources of Social Power, Mann identifies 4 different forces - economic, military, ideological and political - and demonstrates their role ... More »

The Sources of Social Power
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

8. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

By Erving Goffman | Used Price: 70% Off

In what the General Practitioner called 'this intelligent searching work', the author of "Stigma" and "Asylums" presents an analysis of the structures of social encounters from the perspective of the dramatic performance. He shows us exactly how people use such 'fixed props' as houses, clothes, and job situations; ... More »

9. The Theory of Communicative Action

By Jurgen Habermas | Used Price: 60% Off

A major contribution to contemporary social theory. Not only does it provide a compelling critique of some of the main perspectives in 20th century philosophy and social science, but it also presents a systematic synthesis of the many themse which have preoccupied Habermas for thirty years. --Times Literary ... More »

The Theory of Communicative Action
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

10. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

By Pierre Bourdieu

No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography ... More »

11. The Civilizing Process

By Norbert Elias | Used Price: 60% Off

The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias' greatest work, tracing the "civilizing" of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages by demonstrating how the formation of states and the monopolization of power within them changed Western society forever. More »

The Civilizing Process
The Structure of Social Action

12. The Structure of Social Action

By Talcott Parsons | Used Price: 60% Off

The Structure of Social Action is a 1937 book by sociologist Talcott Parsons. In 1998 the International Sociological Association listed this work as the ninth most important sociological book of the 20th century. More »

13. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

By Michel Foucault

In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change ... More »

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

14. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

By Thomas Kuhn | Used Price: 60% Off

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once ... More »

15. The Philosophy of Money

By Georg Simmel

With a new foreword by Charles Lemert 'Its greatness...lies in ceaseless and varied use of the money form to unearth and conceptually reveal incommensurabilities of all kinds, in social reality fully as much as in thought itself.' - Fredric Jameson In The Philosophy of Money, Georg ... More »

The Philosophy of Money
Risk Society

16. Risk Society

By Ulrich Beck | Used Price: 60% Off

This panoramic analysis of the condition of Western societies has been hailed as a classic. This first English edition has taken its place as a core text of contemporary sociology alongside earlier typifications of society as postindustrial and current debates about the social dimensions of the postmodern. ... More »

17. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century

By Harry Braverman

This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of ... More »

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century

18. The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century

By Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein’s highly influential, multi-volume opus, The Modern World-System, is one of this century’s greatest works of social science. An innovative, panoramic reinterpretation of global history, it traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. More »

19. Selections from the Prison Notebooks

By Antonio Gramsci | Used Price: 60% Off

The Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere) were a series of notebooks written by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926. The notebooks were written between 1929 and 1935, when Gramsci ... More »

Selections from the Prison Notebooks
The Origins of Totalitarianism

20. The Origins of Totalitarianism

By Hannah Arendt | Used Price: 60% Off

Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history   The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to ... More »

21. The Gift

By Marcel Mauss | Used Price: 50% Off

Since its first publication in English in 1954, The Gift, Marcel Mauss's groundbreaking study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure, has been acclaimed as a classic among anthropology texts.A brilliant example of the comparative method, ?The Gift? presents the first systematic study of the custom—widespread ... More »

The Gift
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

22. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

By Karl Polanyi | Used Price: 50% Off

In Polanyi's classic work of economic history and sociology, he examines societal changes since the Industrial Revolution and expertly explains the inadequacies of the free market. Published in 1944, it is as relevant as today as ever, with Harvard Professor Stephen Walt recommending it in his Top 10 ... More »

23. Reading Capital

By Louis Althusser; Etienne Balibar; Roger Establet

Establishing a rigorous program of “symptomatic readingâ€Â that cuts through the silences and lacunae of Capital to reveal its philosophical core, Louis Althusser interprets Marx’s structural analysis of production as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Building on a series of Althussers’s conceptual innovations that ... More »

Reading Capital
Social Systems

24. Social Systems

By Niklas Luhmann

A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to overcome its fixation on written narratives and the culture of print. In this presentation of a general theory of systems, Germany's most prominent and controversial social thinker sets out a contribution to sociology that reworks our understanding of meaning and ... More »

25. The Lonely Crowd

By David Riesman | Used Price: 80% Off

The Lonely Crowd is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the 'new middle class' in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that ... More »

The Lonely Crowd
Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance

26. Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance

By Howard S. Becker | Used Price: 70% Off

Although Becker does not claim to be a deviancy specialist, his work on the subject is often cited by sociologists and criminologists studying deviance. Becker's 1963 book Outsiders is credited as one of the first books on labeling theory and its application to studies of deviance. A compilation ... More »

27. Sociology

By Anthony Giddens

The seventh edition of this indispensable resource continues from strength to strength to provide a vibrant, engaging and authoritative introduction to sociology. Revised and updated throughout, it provides a commanding overview of recent global developments and new ideas in sociology. Classic debates are also given careful coverage, with ... More »

Sociology
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

28. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

By Barrington Moore | Used Price: 70% Off

A landmark in comparative history and a challenge to scholars of all lands who are trying to learn how we arrived at where we are now. -New York Times Book Review More »

29. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience

By Bin Wong | Used Price: 80% Off

"This bold, intellectually ambitious, and wholly original book challenges the way in which Western social science understands China. . . . It will set the standard for all future comparative and theoretical research on China."?Timothy Brook, Stanford University"This is a most extraordinary book. Wong's approach is to explore ... More »

China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

30. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

By Robert D. Putnam | Used Price: 80% Off

Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work—but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how ... More »

31. Dialectic of Enlightenment

By Theodor W. Adorno | Used Price: 50% Off

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in ... More »

Dialectic of Enlightenment
Men and Women of the Corporation

32. Men and Women of the Corporation

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter | Price: $0.01

In this landmark work on corporate power, especially as it relates to women, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the distinguished Harvard management thinker and consultant, shows how the careers and self-images of the managers, professionals, and executives, and also those of the secretaries, wives of managers, and women looking for ... More »

33. Tristes Tropiques

By Claude Levi-Strauss | Used Price: 60% Off

A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology. This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found ... More »

Tristes Tropiques
The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups

34. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups

By Mancur Olson | Used Price: 60% Off

This book develops an original theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations. Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which ... More »

35. The Interpretation Of Cultures

By Clifford Geertz | Used Price: 80% Off

In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire ... More »

The Interpretation Of Cultures
Eros and Civilization

36. Eros and Civilization

By Herbert Marcuse | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

 In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological ... More »

37. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times

By Giovanni Arrighi | Used Price: 70% Off

The Long Twentieth Century traces the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Arrighi argues that capitalism has unfolded as a succession of “long centuries,â€Â each of which produced a new world power that secured control over an expanding world-economic space. Examining the changing ... More »

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times
Critique of Everyday Life

38. Critique of Everyday Life

By Henri Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre’s magnum opus: a monumental exploration of contemporary society.Henri Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work by one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers. Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, the Critique was a philosophical inspiration for the 1968 student ... More »

39. Civilization and Capitalism

By Fernand Braudel | Used Price: 70% Off

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns. More »

Civilization and Capitalism
Ideology and Utopia

40. Ideology and Utopia

By Karl Mannheim | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Mannheim, a pioneer in the field of SOCIOLOGY (740), here analyzes the ideologies that are used to stabilize a social order and the wish-dreams that are employed when any transformation of that same order is attempted. Translated and with a Foreword by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils; Preface ... More »

41. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

By Matthew Desmond | Used Price: 60% Off

WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted ... More »

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
History and Class Consciousness

42. History and Class Consciousness

By Georg Lukacs | Used Price: 60% Off

This is the first time one of the most important of Lukács' early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923, has been made available in ... More »

43. Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale

By Maria Mies | Used Price: 60% Off

This now classic book traces the social origins of the sexual division of labor. It gives a history of the related processes of colonization and "housewifization" and extends this analysis to the contemporary new international division of labor and the role that women have to play as the ... More »

Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale
Social and Cultural Dynamics

44. Social and Cultural Dynamics

By Pitirim Sorokin

In his Social and Cultural Dynamics, his magnum opus, Sorokin classified societies according to their 'cultural mentality', which can be "ideational" (reality is spiritual), "sensate" (reality is material), or "idealistic" (a synthesis of the two). He suggested that major civilizations evolve from an ideational, to an idealistic, and ... More »

45. The Making of the English Working Class

By E. P. Thompson | Used Price: 60% Off

This book transformed our understanding of English social history. Thompson revealed how working class people were not merely victims of history, moved by powerful forces outside of themselves, but were also active in creating their own culture and future, during the degradation of the industrial revolution. More »

The Making of the English Working Class
Studies in Ethnomethodology

46. Studies in Ethnomethodology

By Harold Garfinkel | Used Price: 60% Off

This is the first appearance in paper back of one of the major classics of contemporary Sociology. Studies in Ethnomethodology has inspired a wide range of important theoretical and empirical work in the social sciences and linguistics. It is one of the most original and controversial works in ... More »

47. The Sociological Tradition

By Robert Nisbet | Under $1.00

When first published, The Sociological Tradition had a profound and positive impact on sociology, providing a rich sense of intellectual background to a relatively new discipline in America. Robert Nisbet describes what he considers the golden age of sociology, 1830-1900, outlining five major themes of nineteenth-century sociologists: community, ... More »

The Sociological Tradition
Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum

48. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum

By William Foote Whyte | Under $1.00

Street Corner Society is one of a handful of works that can justifiably be called classics of sociological research. William Foote Whyte's account of the Italian American slum he called "Cornerville"—Boston's North End—has been the model for urban ethnography for fifty years.By mapping the intricate social worlds of ... More »

49. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation

By David F. Noble | Used Price: 80% Off

Focusing on the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry--the heart of the modern industrial economy--this is a provocative study of how automation has assumed a critical role in America. David Noble argues that industrial automation--more than merely a technological advance--is a social process that reflects very real ... More »

Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation
Imagined Communities

50. Imagined Communities

By Benedict Anderson | Used Price: 60% Off

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is the most read book on nationalism. It's a historical, political and sociological analysis of nations which are really imagined communities or socially constructed communities. More »

51. The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects

By Gianfranco Poggi | Used Price: 90% Off

The state is the most massive and significant modern expression of the broader phenomenon of political power. This book offers a fresh, accessible and original interpretation of the modern state, concentrating particularly on the emergence and nature of democracy.Poggi presents an extensive conceptual portrait of the state, distinguishing ... More »

The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects
Postmodern Ethics

52. Postmodern Ethics

By Zygmunt Bauman | Used Price: 50% Off

Zygmunt Baumana s powerful and persuasive study of the postmodern perspective on ethics is particularly welcome. For Bauman the great issues of ethics have lost none of their topicality: they simply need to be seen, and dealt with, in a wholly new way. Our era, he suggests, may ... More »

53. The Second Sex

By Simone de Beauvoir | Used Price: 50% Off

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,â€Â and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness.  This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in ... More »

The Second Sex
Patterns of Culture

54. Patterns of Culture

By Ruth Benedict | Used Price: 90% Off

"Unique and important . . . Patterns of Culture is a signpost on the road to a freer and more tolerant life." -- New York TimesA remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture is an eloquent declaration of the role of culture in shaping human life. In ... More »

55. Social Movements 1768-2012

By Charles Tilly

The updated and expanded third edition of Tilly’s widely acclaimed book brings this analytical history of social movements fully up to date. Tilly and Wood cover such recent topics as the economic crisis and related protest actions around the globe while maintaining their attention to perennially important issues ... More »

Social Movements 1768-2012
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

56. Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

By James Suzman | Used Price: 50% Off

WASHINGTON POST'S 50 NOTABLE WORKS OF NONFICTION IN 2017AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2017A vibrant portrait of the “original affluent society”--the Bushmen of southern Africa--by the anthropologist who has spent much of the last twenty-five years documenting their encounter with modernity.If the success of a civilization is measured ... More »

57. The Rise of the Network Society

By Manuel Castells | Used Price: 50% Off

This first book in Castells' groundbreaking trilogy, with a substantial new preface, highlights the economic and social dynamics of the information age and shows how the network society has now fully risen on a global scale. * Groundbreaking volume on the impact of the age of information on ... More »

The Rise of the Network Society
The Bureaucratic Phenomenon

58. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon

By Michel Crozier

In The Bureaucratic Phenomenon Michel Crozier demonstrates that bureaucratic institutions need to be understood in terms of the cultural context in which they operate. The originality of the study lies in its association of two widely different approaches: the theory of decision-making in large organizations and the cultural ... More »

59. The Wretched of the Earth

By Frantz Fanon; Jean-Paul Sartre | 50% Off

A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon’s masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said’s Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it ... More »

The Wretched of the Earth
Urban Villagers

60. Urban Villagers

By Herbert J. Gans | Used Price: 90% Off

Herbert Gans' study of Italian Americans in Boston's West End is one of the classics of contemporary sociology A first-hand account of life in an inner city neighborhood, it is a systematic and sensitive analysis of working-class culture_ and of the politicians, planners and other outside professionals who ... More »

61. The World: A Beginner's Guide

By Goran Therborn | Used Price: 50% Off

What is the world of the 21st century like now that the centrality of the West is no longer given? How were the societies and cultures of today's world together with their interconnections forged, and what is driving human society in our times? In short, what is the ... More »

The World: A Beginner's Guide
Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare

62. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare

By Frances Fox Piven; Richard A. Cloward

"Originally published in 1971, this social science classic outlines the social functions of welfare programs." Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc."Uncompromising and provocative....By mixing history, political interpretation and sociological analysis, Piven and Cloward provide the best explanation to date of our present situation...no future discussion of welfare can ... More »

63. Foundations of Social Theory

By James Coleman

Combining principles of individual rational choice with a sociological conception of collective action, James Coleman recasts social theory in a bold new way. The result is a landmark in sociological theory, capable of describing both stability and change in social systems. This book provides for ... More »

Foundations of Social Theory
The Logic of Scientific Discovery

64. The Logic of Scientific Discovery

By Karl Popper

Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks ... More »

65. State, Power, Socialism

By Nikos Poulantzas

In State, Power, Socialism, the leading theorist of the state and European communism advances a vigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state. Arguing against a general theory of the state, Poulantzas identifies forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that go beyond the state apparatus. More »

State, Power, Socialism
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

66. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

By William Thomas; Florian Znaniecki | 80% Off

Focusing on the immigrant family, this new, abridged edition of the classic "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America" brings together documents and commentary that will be valuable in teaching United States history survey courses as well as immigration history and introductory sociology courses. It includes a new ... More »

67. The Souls of Black Folk

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and ... More »

The Souls of Black Folk
Woman's Role in Economic Development

68. Woman's Role in Economic Development

By Ester Boserup

'Boserup's contribution to our thinking on women�s role in development cannot be underestimated. Her keen observations, her use of empirical data and her commitment to greater gender equality are still an inspiration to students, researchers and activists who are interested in a better and more equal world.' From ... More »

69. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics

By R.W. Connell | Used Price: 80% Off

This book is an introductory textbook on sexual politics and an original contribution to the reformulation of social and political theory. In a discussion of, among other issues, psychoanalysis, Marxism and feminist theories, the structure of gender relations, and working class feminism, the author has produced a work ... More »

Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics
The Evolution of Cooperation

70. The Evolution of Cooperation

By Robert Axelrod | Used Price: 70% Off

The Evolution of Cooperation provides valuable insights into the age-old question of whether unforced cooperation is ever possible. Widely praised and much-discussed, this classic book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists-whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals-when there is no central authority to police their ... More »

71. From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society

By Xiaotong Fei; Gary G. Hamilton; Wang Zheng

This classic text by Fei Xiaotong, China's finest social scientist, was first published in 1947 and is Fei's chief theoretical statement about the distinctive characteristics of Chinese society. Written in Chinese from a Chinese point of view for a Chinese audience, From the Soil describes the contrasting organizational ... More »

From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society
The Power Elite and the State

72. The Power Elite and the State

By G. William Domhoff | Used Price: 80% Off

This volume presents a network of social power, indicating that theories inspired by C.Wright Mills are far more accurate views about power in America than those of Mills's opponents. Dr. Domhoff shows how and why coalitions within the power elite have involved themselves in such policy ... More »

73. Against Method

By Paul Feyerabend

Paul Feyerabend’s globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy ... More »

Against Method
Great American City

74. Great American City

By Robert J. Sampson | Used Price: 50% Off

For over fifty years numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our ... More »

75. Unequal Childhoods

By Annette Lareau

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of ... More »

Unequal Childhoods
The Affluent Worker

76. The Affluent Worker

By John H. Goldthorpe | Under $1.00

This 1968 volume, the second of The Affluent Worker monographs, reports on the voting and political attitudes of highly paid manual workers. As in the first book, the affluent workers studied are employed in Luton, a town which benefited faster and more consistently than almost any other in ... More »

77. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

By Gosta Esping-Andersen

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role ... More »

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
Pedagogy of the Oppressed

78. Pedagogy of the Oppressed

By Paulo Freire | Used Price: 60% Off

This text argues that the ignorance and lethargy of the poor are the direct result of the whole economic, social and political domination. The book suggests that in some countries the oppressors use the system to maintain a 'culture of silence'. Through the right kind of education, the ... More »

79. Human Ecology

By Amos H. Hawley | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Human Ecology: A Theoretical Essay, by Amos Hawley, presents for the first time a unified theory of human ecology by a scholar whose name is virtually synonymous with the discipline.Focused on the interaction between society and environment, human ecology is an attempt to deal holistically with the phenomenon ... More »

Human Ecology
The Rise of Professionalism

80. The Rise of Professionalism

By Magali Sarfatti Larson

What gave rise to our modern conceptions of professional status, and how did particular professions gain their privileged status? Magali Sarfatti Larson shows how our present conception and acceptance of profession was shaped in the liberal phase of capitalism. Larson argues that professionalization was both a response to ... More »

81. We Have Never Been Modern

By Bruno Latour

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us ... More »

We Have Never Been Modern
Power and Privilege

82. Power and Privilege

By Gerhard E. Lenski

A former president of the American Political Science Association, Heinz Eulau, described Power and Privilege as a "masterpiece of comparative social analysis" and Ralf Dahrendorf referred to it as "an imaginative and substantial work [and] an indispensable guide." More »

83. Phenomenology of the Social World

By Alfred Schutz | Used Price: 60% Off

Phenomenology originated with Edmund Husserl. Schutz became friends with Husserl and soon after began working on this concept. Phenomenology is the study of things as they appear (phenomena). It is also often said to be descriptive rather than explanatory: a central task of phenomenology is to provide a ... More »

Phenomenology of the Social World
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

84. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

By Richard G. Wilkinson; Kate Pickett | 60% Off

It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree ... More »

85. Power: A Radical View

By Steven Lukes | Used Price: 50% Off

Steven Lukes' Power: A Radical View is a seminal work still widely used some 30 years after publication. The second edition includes the complete original text alongside two major new essays. One assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of ... More »

Power: A Radical View
Orientalism

86. Orientalism

By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 70% Off

Orientalism examines how the West has historically perceived the East and how Western imperialism has shaped these perceptions. Published in 1978, Said's work is a landmark in post-colonial studies. More »

87. Main Currents in Sociological Thought

By Raymond Aron | Used Price: 90% Off

This is the first of Raymond Aron's magisterial two-volume treatment of the sociological tradition—perhaps the definitive work of its kind. The second volume treating Durkheim, Pareto, and Weber is scheduled to appear in spring 1998. More than a work of reconstruction, Aron's study is, at its deepest level, ... More »

Main Currents in Sociological Thought
The Society of the Spectacle

88. The Society of the Spectacle

By Guy Debord | Used Price: 50% Off

The Das Kapital of the 20th century. An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of ... More »

89. Agrarian Revolution

By Jeffrey M. Paige | Used Price: 80% Off

paige' agrarian revolution provided a theoretical framework which creatively explores the linkage between forms of economic and social organization and collective political movements More »

Agrarian Revolution
Crime Control as Industry

90. Crime Control as Industry

By Nils Christie | Used Price: 80% Off

This classic text argues that crime control, rather than crime itself is the real danger for our future. Since the second edition was published in 1994, prison populations , especially in Russia and America, have grown at an increasingly rapid rate. This third edition is published to take ... More »

91. Social Justice and the City

By David Harvey

Throughout his distinguished and influential career, David Harvey has defined and redefined the relationship between politics, capitalism, and the social aspects of geographical theory. Laying out Harvey’s position that geography could not remain objective in the face of urban poverty and associated ills, Social Justice and the City ... More »

Social Justice and the City
Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals

92. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals

By Ernest Gellner

Western democracies are "open societies" in which neither the state nor religion try to achieve a monopoly of power or the exclusive claim on people's hearts. In between the state and the family are countless other institutions from Trade Unions to stamp collecting clubs, from student organisations to ... More »

93. When Work Disappears

By William Julius Wilson | Price: $0.01

Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, ... More »

When Work Disappears
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass

94. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass

By Douglas Massey; Nancy Denton | 70% Off

This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities. American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth ... More »

95. Worlds Of Pain

By Lilian Brelow Rubin | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

The classic that is widely acknowledged to be the most valuable and insightful book ever written on the dynamics of working-class family life by a renowned sociologist, psychotherapist, and bestselling author."One of the most devastating critiques of contemporary American life that I have read."--Michael B. Katz Professor of ... More »

Worlds Of Pain
Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

96. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

By Jonathan Kozol | Used Price: 60% Off

For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich ... More »

97. The Sociology of Science

By Robert K. Merton | Used Price: 70% Off

"The exploration of the social conditions that facilitate or retard the search for scientific knowledge has been the major theme of Robert K. Merton's work for forty years. This collection of papers [is] a fascinating overview of this sustained inquiry. . . . There are very few other ... More »

The Sociology of Science
Schooling In Capitalist America

98. Schooling In Capitalist America

By Samuel Bowles; Herbert Gintis

"This seminal work . . . establishes a persuasive new paradigm."—Contemporary SociologyNo book since Schooling in Capitalist America has taken on the systemic forces hard at work undermining our education system. This classic reprint is an invaluable resource for radical educators.Samuel Bowles is research professor and director of ... More »

99. The Death and Life of Great American Cities

By Jane Jacobs | Used Price: 60% Off

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are ... More »

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The I in We

100. The I in We

By Axel Honneth

In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation.Drawing on his reassessment of ... More »