Using a conceptual organizing framework, this work provides a concise introduction to sociology that focuses on core concepts as the central building blocks for understanding sociology. Written in a conversational style, it uses numerous pedagogical features to help students grasp key sociological concepts.

The Contexts Reader collects over sixty of the best articles from the award-winning magazine Contexts in one affordable anthology.

It should serve as a useful reference tool for all those studying postmodernism and the history of economic thought.

This accessible, alternative approach to mainstream Research Methods titles is written for students who will need to interpret social research in their careers and, more than likely, have opportunities to do research. The book’s focus is on equipping students with the tools both to evaluate research done by others and to do their own research. Exercises in the text help students develop skills and strategies for research, including Internet assignments for finding and evaluating sources. The text provides students with a solid grounding in the relevant aspects of the philosophy of science and thoroughly explains the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methods.

The Practical Skeptic is a concise introduction to sociology that focuses on core concepts as the central building blocks for understanding sociology. Lisa McIntyre's straightforward, lively, even humorous style and her emphasis on critical thinking make this an engaging and user-friendly text for students of all levels. Through this conversational style students are able to grasp key sociological concepts and learn the essential lesson that there is much that goes on in the social world that escapes the sociologically untrained eye.

The Urban Ethnography Reader assembles the very best of American ethnographic writing, from classic works to contemporary research, and aims to present ethnography as social science, social history, and literature, rather than purely as a methodology.

"If sociology could teach everyone just one thing, what would it be? 'The Forest and the Trees' is one sociologist's response to the hypothetical-the core insight with the greatest potential to change how people see the world and themselves in relation to it"--Amazon.com.