This title was first published in 1987: This is the autobiography of Fay Afaf Kanafani, an Arab Muslim woman born in Beirut in 1918. Through telling the story of her difficult life as a woman in such a society and her struggles to free herself from her father, brother and father-in-law, it offers a feminist view of a people and culture.

This book is about long-term changes to class and inequality in Poland. Drawing upon major social surveys, the team of authors from the Polish Academy of Sciences offer the rare comprehensive study of important changes to the social structure from the communist era to the present. The core argument is that, even during extreme societal transformations, key features of social life have long-lasting, stratifying effects. The authors analyse the core issues of inequality research that best explain “who gets what and why:” social mobility, status attainment and their mechanisms, with a focus on education, occupation, and income. The transition from communist political economy to liberal democracy and market capitalism offers a unique opportunity for scholars to understand how people move from one stratifi cation regime to the next. There are valuable lessons to be learned from linking past to present. Classic issues of class, stratification, mobility, and attainment have endured decades of radical social change. These concepts remain valid even when society tries to eradicate them.

The American press and American television news have been filled with stories from Gdansk, Warsaw, Krakow, Lódz, and other Polish cities and towns. The names of a number of Polish leaders have become almost as familiar to Americans as the names of their own leaders, and the word " Solidarity" has acquired an important new meaning for Americans as well as Poles. The editor's identify that this interest of the American public has not been matched by corresponding interest from American sociologists, stating that Polish society is seldom mentioned either in major scholarly journals or in the textbooks written for students. This collection of studies seeks to address some of this issue, looking at works and the systems in Poland since 1956.

Is there a typical European class structure? Have power patterns left any imprint in the European societies of today? Has the experience of socialist revolution in Eastern Europe created a distinctive social-structural pattern in that part of the continent? These are only a few of the questions taken up by the contributors to this collection of case studies and comparative research.

A comparison of these two presidents and presidencies, examining their legacies, leadership styles, and places in history.

The collapse of the state-controlled economies of the former Eastern Bloc will certainly change the way the global economy operates. Bringing together scholars from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, different nations and different empirical research traditions, this title examines the ongoing transition and the implications of market transitions for individual life chances, state economic policy and social stratification systems. The volume includes scholarship that focuses on both single nation and cross-national research, plus research contributions that compare state socialist/former state socialist political economies with conditions elsewhere in the world.