An acclaimed sociologist illuminates the public life of an American city, offering a major reinterpretation of the racial dynamics in America.Elijah Anderson, called "one of our best urban ethnographers" by the New York Time...

Maggie and John Anderson were successful African American professionals raising two daughters in a tony suburb of Chicago. But they felt uneasy over their good fortune. Most African Americans live in economically starved neighborhoods...

Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of "debt" ― a timely subject during our current period of economic upheaval. In her intelligent and imaginative approach to the...

The election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote in the UK have caused fear and panic among liberals worldwide. They argue that the populist backlash represents a dangerous new authoritarianism. But what if the really dangerous author...

First, this book is unique in subject. Dr. Wayne Baker is reporting a surprising truth about Americans: We are united by 10 Core Values. This truth is empowering because it enables us to rise above and see beyond political polarizatio...

It's time for everyone who cares about the state of our nation to heed the call and join forces to redeem the soul of America. It's time to come together and renounce the politics of rejection, division, and greed. It's time to lif...

Refugees from the violence of wars and the brutality of famished lives have knocked on other people's doors since the beginning of time. For the people behind the doors, these uninvited guests were always strangers, and strangers tend...

OG Kush. Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. Marijuana has come a long way since its seedy days in the back parking lots of our culture. So has Howard S. Becker, the eminent sociologist, jazz musician, expert on "deviant" ...

In 1963, Howard S. Becker gave a lecture about deviance, challenging the then-conventional definition that deviance was inherently criminal and abnormal and arguing that instead, deviance was better understood as a function of labelin...

NOW AN HBO MINISERIESNot in my backyard -- that's the refrain commonly invoked by property owners who oppose unwanted development. Such words assume a special ferocity when the development in question is public housing. Lisa Belkin pe...

What extremism is, how extremist ideologies are constructed, and why extremism can escalate into violence.A rising tide of extremist movements threaten to destabilize civil societies around the globe. It has never been more important ...

Elly Blue's Bikenomics provides a surprising and compelling new perspective on the way we get around, where we live, and how we spend our money. The book provides an unflinching look at the real costs of transportation and roads, for...

The pace of modern life is accelerating. To keep up, we must keep on moving and adapting – constantly striving for greater happiness and success. Or so we are told. But the demands of life in the fast lane come at a price: stress, f...

Self-help gurus, life coaches and business consultants love to tell us that we must strive for constant self-improvement to realize our full potential and become truly happy. But it doesn't seem to work - for many of us, life still se...

"[An] inspired tour of the post modern city…Invigorating." ―Mark Kingwell, Harper’sHailed as an “original and fascinating book” (Times Literary Supplement), A History of Future Cities is Daniel Brook’s captivating investig...

#1 NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER - Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered wor...

"It might be the most important book about being a parent that you will ever read." ―Emily Rapp Black, New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World"Brooks's own personal experience provides the narrative...

NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNER — PARENTING & FAMILY • 2022 IPPY AWARDS GOLD MEDALIST —PARENTING “Timely, informative, thought-provoking, inspirationally motivating.” —Midwest Book Review ...

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.   Fifty-five years have passed since the cover o...

Law and society is a rapidly growing field that turns the conventional view of law as mythical abstraction on its head. Kitty Calavita brilliantly brings to life the ways in which law is found not only in statutes and courtrooms but i...

A major American intellectual makes the historical case for the inevitability of President Trump, arguing that the 1960s reforms meant to make the nation more humane instead created a system that left Americans alienated and poised to...

As the 2008 presidential election nears, Americans on both the right and the left agree that America is in a moral crisis. For most citizens, though, this crisis is not about abortion, gay marriage, or the Òwar on Christmas,Ó but a ...

How policing became the major political issue of our timeCombining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows polici...

In 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America's countryside. They met and followed ...

The majority of citizens in the world today do not trust their political representatives, the mainstream political parties, the established political institutions or their governments. This widespread crisis of legitimacy underlies a ...

"A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir" (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, "To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This," ...

The Marriage-Go-Round illuminates the shifting nature of America's most cherished social institution and explains its striking differences from marriage in other Western countries. Andrew J. Cherlin's three decades of study have shown...

Renowned scientists Christakis and Fowler present compelling evidence for our profound influence on one another's tastes, health, wealth, happiness, beliefs, even weight, as they explain how social networks form and how they operate.

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., accla...