Ximena de la Barra and Richard A. Dello Buono, Latin America after the Neoliberal Debacle: Another Region is Possible, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Available from Rowman & Littlefield and Amazon.com.
Passionate yet scholarly, thorough yet succinct, this book by two deeply committed experts is the best guide one is likely to find to the current scene in fast-changing Latin America."
—Susan George, Transnational Institute
An insightful, wide-ranging and extremely well argued analysis of the scourge of neoliberalism and its tragic impact on Latin America. Just as important, however, is a prescription--based upon successful regional models--to avoid its reappearance. A profound study on the ills that have traditionally plagued Latin America and inhibited any meaningful form of development. Essential reading for all interested in contemporary Latin America, and its future.
—John Kirk, Dalhousie University
Daniel Egan and Levon Chorbajian, eds., Power: A Critical Reader, Prentice Hall, 2004. Available from Amazon.com.
Successfully bringing together accessible readings that cover the broad range of issues of importance to those studying politics and society, this volume provides a unique mix of theoretical and empirical pieces, such as state and electoral politics, that address both classic issues in political sociology as well as more recent developments, such as globalization. With strong integration of race and gender throughout, this collection offers a coherent analysis of power that reflects the contributions of a variety of critical perspectives, including Marxism, feminism, critical race theory, postmodernism, and power structure theory.
Corey Dolgon, The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America’s Paradise, New York University Press, 2005. Winner, 2005 Book Prize, Association for Humanist Sociology; winner 2007 American Sociological Association Marxist Section Book Award. Available from Amazon.com.
Takes us beyond the much-romanticized beaches of Long Island to the rich entrepreneurs and their McMansions, the Latino workers, and the stubborn indigenous residents refusing to disappear. The book is important because it is in so many ways a microcosm of the nation.
-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
Corey Dolgon and Mary Chayko, eds, Pioneers of Public Sociology: 30 Years of Humanity and Society (Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2010).
ISBN: 978-1-59738-026-3
440 pages / paper / $32.95
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Tired of sociology that claims to be radical when it is just more of the same? At last we have a volume by people, and an organization, that never sold out. Here is the book for those interested in real activist sociology for the 21st century.
-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racists and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America.
Corey Dolgon and Chris Baker, Social Problems: A Service Learning Approach (Pine Forge, August 2010). 384 pages. Published in Association with the American Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
In this unique new text, authors Corey Dolgon and Chris Baker integrate an innovative case study approach into a comprehensive introduction that helps students understand how they can address social problems in their communities by applying basic theories and concepts. Social Problems: A Service Learning Approach stresses how a sociological imagination not only informs how students understand the root causes of social ills but also offers powerful tools for engaging in solutions.
Mary Patrice Erdmans, The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had, The Choices They Made, Ohio University Press, 2004. Available from Amazon.com.
Refreshingly written in accessible, thoughtful, and sincere language, this book is not a call for women to return barefoot to the kitchen, but to enjoy life in the kitchen as well as in the boardroom—to be both happy and productive. The kitchen is reconceptualized as a space of feeling, of connection, of relationships, a space of revolutionary feminism where hierarchy and inequality are challenged. The book succeeds remarkably on all levels.
--Sally Cole
Mary Patrice Erdmans, Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 1976-1990, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Available from Amazon.com.
Opposite Poles is an engaging and well-researched book by a leading expert of the Polish experience in America. This is a welcome contribution to the literature on white ethnics in the United States and the ways in which immigration continues to renew and reconstruct American ethnicity.
--Joanne Nagel, University of Kansas
Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy
of Vietnam, New York University Press, 1998. Available from Amazon.com.
The best history I have seen on the impact of the war on Americans, both then and now.
--David Dellinger
Lembcke’s brilliant analysis shows us how the dominant cultural images of Vietnam veterans as reviled, spat-upon outcasts and mentally ill survivors of trauma have little basis in reality.
--J. William Gibson, author of Warrior Dreams
Jerry Lembcke, CNN’s Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam’s Last Great Myth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Available from Amazon.com.
An exquisite book that tempers criticism with compassion while exploring the power of myth in shaping memories of the Vietnam War among those who felt soldiers where betrayed by liberal elites. Lembcke has written an unusual and compelling study that blends media critique with explorations of folklore, popular culture, and apocalyptic metaphor.
--Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates
Robert J.S. Ross, Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops, University of Michigan Press, 2004. Available from Amazon.com. or directly from author: rjsross@clarku.edu
Slaves to Fashion is a remarkable achievement… a gripping history of sweatshops, explaining their decline, fall, and return; a study of how the media portray them; an analysis of the fortunes of the current anti-sweatshop movement; an anatomy of the global traffic in apparel, in particular the South-South competition that sends wages and working conditions plummeting toward the bottom; and not least, a passionate declaration of faith that humanity can find a way to get its work done without sweatshops. This is engaged sociology at its most stimulating.
—Todd Gitlin
A brilliant and beautiful book, the mature work of a lifetime, must reading for students of the globalization debate.
—Tom Hayden
James W. Russell, Class and Race Formation in North America. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Available from University of Toronto Press and Amazon.com.
Russell's meticulously researched and highly detailed book presents a critically important people's history of North America. For those interested in how class and race emerged and diverged among the three countries sharing this continent, this book provides rich insights and demonstrates the potential of comparative research to broaden our perspective.
-Dan Zuberi, University of British Columbia, author of Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada
James W. Russell, Double Standard: Social Policy in Europe and the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Honorable mention, Humanist Sociology Best Book Award 2007. Available from Amazon.com.
This is a wonderful book, erudite and sophisticated, yet lucid and to the point. Russell offers us a sweeping portrait of the development of social policy in Europe and America, and helps us to understand not only the differences between the European and American welfare states, but why those differences are so important.
-Frances Fox Piven, President, American Sociological Association and author of Regulating the Poor
James W. Russell, Societies and Social Life: An Introduction to Sociology, second edition, 2009, 2005. Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing. Available from Sloan Publishing and Amazon.com.
Russell introduces students to the field in the way it ought to be done, with the emphasis on the key ideas of the most important classical figures and with a historical and comparative approach. He does not try to do everything or cover absolutely every topic like most of the monster introductory texts do these days. Rather, he emphasizes the most important and determining feature of social structure and change.
-Donald A. Nielsen, Professor of Sociology, College of Charleston
