The biography of an idea: that many of the problems we face - from teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like epidemics and are capable of sudden and dramatic change due to their inherent volatility. The author explores the ramifications of this, offering a way to view the world.

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty level wages. Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them in order to find out how anyone survives on six dollars an hour. So began a gruelling, hair-raising and darkly funny odyssey though the underworld of working America.

This work abandons the conventional distinctions between history and science. Diamond focuses on what ancient people were endowed with in the way of land, animals and plants, and on the confrontations between less and more advanced people to see how this led to today's inequalities.

Explores the links between Hollywood and the fast food trade, and the tactics used to target ever younger consumers. This title is a meticulously researched account.

Asking questions about human motivation and living and reaching some conclusions, this book aims to be at the heart of things we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams.

Talks about the mysterious collapse of past civilizations - and what this means for the future. Bringing together evidence from many sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, this book shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past.

Widely considered as the most informed work ever written on the social effects of advanced capitalism, this remarkable volume holds its own as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century.

Drawing on evidence that includes nearly half a million interviews conducted over 25 years in the US, Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, suburban life, technology, and the roles of women are isolating people from each other in a trend that has its reflection in British society.

Intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life.

Presents an analysis of the structures of social encounters from the perspective of the dramatic performance. This title shows us how people use such 'fixed props' as houses, clothes, and job situations; how they combine in teams resembling secret societies; and, how they adopt discrepant roles and communicate out of character.

Offers an account of the role of knowledge in society aimed to stimulate both discussion and investigations. This book presents an analysis of knowledge in everyday life in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality.

It used to be easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture, but now the bos are all mixed up and it is impossible to tell an espresso-sipping artist from a cappucino-gulping banker. Read how the Bobos define our age.

There has never been another era in modern history, even during wartime or the Great Depression, when so many people have feared so much. Three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today then they did twenty years ago. The Culture of Fear describes the high costs of living in a fear-ridden environment where realism has become rarer than doors without deadbolts. Why do we have so ...

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim investigated the enduring source of human social identity and fellowship by studying the simplest form of documented religion, totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. His book about the origin and nature of religion and society continues to enthrall sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians.

Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the most prolific and influential sociologists of the twentieth century. This classic collection draws together his key papers. This edition contains a new preface by Professor Bryan S. Turner.

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 in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, .

Aims to demonstrate historical parallels for almost every neurosis of our times. This book covers subjects such as the South Sea Bubble, Witch Mania, Alchemy, the Crusades, Fortune-telling, Haunted Houses, and 'Tulipomania'.

The book that offers a cure for affluenza, 'No Logo' is one of those rare books that defines a generation, the most significant one since Douglas Coupland's 'Generation X'.