Sociology History

More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future.

First published in 1973, Skye Moody’s Hillbilly Women shares the stunning and raw oral histories of 19 women in 20th-century Southern Appalachia, from their day-to-day struggles for survival to the personal triumphs of their hardscrabble existence. They are wives, widows, and daughters of coal miners; factory hands, tobacco graders, cotton mill workers, and farmers; and women who value honest labor, self-esteem, and dignity.

The world is becoming less religious. Since 2007, there has been a pervasive decline in religious belief and most of the world's people now say that God is less important in their lives than they said he was in the quarter century before 2007. Many factors contributed to this dramatic shift, but as Inglehart shows, certain ones stand out. Utilizing a massive global database, Inglehart analyzes the conditions under which religiosity collapses, and explores its implications for the future.

In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.

In Capital, Commonwealth Prize-winning author Rana Dasgupta examines one of the great trends of our time: The expansion of the global elite. Capital is an intimate portrait of the city of Delhi, which bears witness to the extraordinary transmogrification of India's capital. But it also offers a glimpse of what capitalism will become in the coming, post-Western world. The story of Delhi is a parable for where we are all headed.

An enthralling blend of oral history and Gail Collins' keen research, this definitive look at 50 years of feminist progress shimmers with the amusing, down-to-earth liberal tone that is this New York Times columnist's trademark.

By 2016, it was impossible to ignore an international resurgence of xenophobia. What had happened? Looking for clues, psychiatrist and historian George Makari started out in search of the idea’s origins. To his astonishment, he discovered an unfolding series of never-told stories. While a fear and hatred of strangers may be ancient, he found that the notion of a dangerous bias called “xenophobia” arose not so long ago.

City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600's to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city - from the tycoons and the politicians, to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the 21st century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past.

Animal rights. Diane Beers demonstrates how the cause has shaped and reshaped itself as it has evolved within the broader social context of the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society. For the Prevention of Cruelty tells an intriguing and important story that reveals society's often changing relationship with animals through the lens of those who struggled to shepherd the public toward a greater compassion.

Acclaimed Oxford scholar David Priestland proposes a radical new approach to understanding today’s balance of power and analyzes the societal and economic historical conditions required for one of these three value systems to dominate. Priestland asserts that, in the wake of the Great Recession, the weakened and discredited merchant still clings to power - but the world is again in the midst of a period of upheaval.

¿Qué cenaremos hoy? Nos hemos confrontado a esta pregunta desde que el hombre descubrió el fuego, pero para Michael Pollan la manera en que la abordamos hoy en día podría llegar a determinar nuestra supervivencia en cuanto a especie. El hecho de que seamos omnívoros y podamos ingerir todo tipo de alimentos hace que nuestro acto de decidir qué queremos comer se vuelva un dilema, sobre todo ante la abundancia de productos que nos ofrece el desconcertante y traicionero mercado alimenticio.

Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black Southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.

The 2008 financial crisis crystallized for people around the country the fact that something was wrong. Americans had already been losing faith in elites who had failed to protect them from crisis after crisis and disaster after disaster. After the collapse, we expected someone to have a solution but were inevitably disappointed. Instead, we got high and rising unemployment, foreclosures spiraling out of control, and, as the protest chant went, "banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

In recent years the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality.

Ask children where food comes from, and they’ll probably answer: “the supermarket.” Ask most adults, and their replies may not be much different. Where our foods are raised and what happens to them between farm and supermarket shelf have become mysteries. How did we become so disconnected from the sources of our breads, beef, cheeses, cereal, apples, and countless other foods that nourish us every day?

It has become the prevalent view among sociologists, historians, and some theistic scientists that religion and science have never been in serious conflict. Some even claim that Christianity was responsible for the development of science. In a sweeping historical survey that begins with ancient Greek science and proceeds through the Renaissance and Enlightenment to contemporary advances in physics and cosmology, Stenger makes a convincing case that not only is this conclusion false, but Christianity actually held back the progress of science for 1,000 years.

How is it that comic books - the once-reviled form of lowbrow popular culture - are now the rage for Hollywood blockbusters, the basis for best-selling video games, and the inspiration for literary graphic novels? In Demanding Respect, Paul Lopes immerses himself in the discourse and practices of this art and subculture to provide a social history of the American comic book over the last 75 years.

This book explores the idea that table activities - the mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining - lay the foundation for a proper education on the value of civility, the importance of the common good, and what it means to be a good citizen. The arts of conversation and diplomatic speech are learned and practiced at tables, and a political history of food practices recasts thoughtfulness and generosity as virtues that enhance civil society and democracy.

For the last two decades, Sidney Tarrow has explored "contentious politics" - disruptions of the settled political order caused by social movements. These disruptions range from strikes and street protests to riots and civil disobedience to revolution. In War, States, and Contention, Tarrow shows how such movements sometimes trigger, animate, and guide the course of war and how they sometimes rise during war and in war's wake to change regimes or even overthrow states.