New Books in Sociology

[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] This week a Syrian rebel ripped the heart out of a loyalist fighter and ate part of it. You can see it on YouTube. Many people asked “How can people do things like this?” In his new book Evil Men (Harvard UP, 2013), James Dawes explores why people commit horrible atrocities. To get to [...]

[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] This week a Syrian rebel ripped the heart out of a loyalist fighter and ate part of it. You can see it on YouTube. Many people asked “How can people do things like this?” In his new book Evil Men (Harvard UP, 2013), James Dawes explores why people commit horrible atrocities. To get to [...]

[Cross-posted from New Books in History] When I went to college long ago, everyone had to read Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848). I think I read it in half-a-dozen classes. Today Marx is out.  Benedict Anderson, however, is in. You’d be hard-pressed to get a college degree without reading or at least hearing about his book Imagined Communities: Reflections [...]

[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] Most people think that professors are more liberal, and some much more liberal, than ordinary folk. As Neil Gross shows in his eye-opening Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? (Harvard UP, 2013), “most people” are right: academia is much more left-leaning than any other major profession in the U.S . But [...]

[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] Most people think that professors are more liberal, and some much more liberal, than ordinary folk. As Neil Gross shows in his eye-opening Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? (Harvard UP, 2013), “most people” are right: academia is much more left-leaning than any other major profession in the U.S . But [...]

What does it mean to be gay? According to many people, gayness is simply homosexuality – a sexual orientation. However, as David M. Halperin argues in his new book How to be Gay (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), being gay is about more than just sex. In fact, gay men learn how to [...]

[Cross-posted from New Books in Communications] In Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity Press, 2012), Nick Couldry provides a sweeping synthesis of his important media theory over the last decade. Couldry reassesses his work on media rituals, media power, and the “hidden injuries” of representation in light of cross-cultural diversity as well as the sudden eruption [...]

According to the Marriam-Webster dictionary, an “enigma” can be defined as “something hard to understand or explain.”  What is it that is so enigmatic about education?  Aren’t schools there to teach information, and expand people’s minds? What’s so mysterious about that?  In Christian J. Churchill and Gerald E. Levy’s new book, The Enigmatic Academy: Class, [...]

According to the Marriam-Webster dictionary, an “enigma” can be defined as “something hard to understand or explain.”  What is it that is so enigmatic about education?  Aren’t schools there to teach information, and expand people’s minds? What’s so mysterious about that?  In Christian J. Churchill and Gerald E. Levy’s new book, The Enigmatic Academy: Class, [...]