Recommended Books
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Author:
Arlie Russell Hochschild
ISBN 13:
978-1620973493
2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR NONFICTION A 2016 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEWSDAY TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2016 One of "6 Books to Understand Trump's Win" according to the New York Times the day after the election The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic , âHochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchildâs âstrangers in their own landâ and a new elite.â Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called âhumble and importantâ by David Brooks, Hochschildâs book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition will feature a new introduction by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and will also include a readersâ group guide in the back of the book.
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Author:
Rebecca Solnit
ISBN 13:
978-0143118077
"The freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I've come across in years." -Bill McKibben The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.
Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Updated with a New Preface
Author:
Paul Farmer
ISBN 13:
978-0520229136
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing memoir rife with stories about diseases and human suffering. Using field work and new scholarship to challenge the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, Farmer points out that most current explanatory strategies, from "cost-effective treatment" to patient "noncompliance," inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving autobiography is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians and medical students determined to treat those in need: whether in their home countries or through medical outreach programs like Doctors without Borders. Infections and Inequalities weds meticulous scholarship in medical anthropology with a passion for solutionsâremedies for the plagues of the poor and the social illnesses that have sustained them.
The Division of Labor in Society
Authors:
Emile Durkheim
,
Steven Lukes
ISBN 13:
978-1476749730
Revised for the first time in over thirty years, this edition of Emile Durkheimâs masterful work on the nature and scope of sociology is updated with a new introduction and improved translation by leading scholar Steven Lukes that puts Durkheimâs work into context for the twenty-first century reader. When it was originally published, The Division of Labor in Society was an entirely original work on the nature of labor and production as they were being shaped by the industrial revolution. Emile Durkheimâs seminal work studies the nature of social solidarity and explores the ties that bind one person to the next in order to hold society together. This revised and updated second edition fluently conveys Durkheimâs arguments for contemporary readers. Leading Durkheim scholar Steve Lukesâs new introduction builds upon Lewis Coserâs originalâwhich places the work in its intellectual and historical context and pinpoints its central ideas and arguments. Lukes explains the textâs continued significance as a tool to think about and deal with problems that face us today. The original translation has been revised and reworked in order to make Durkheimâs arguments clearer and easier to read. The Division of Labor in Society is an essential resource for students and scholars hoping to deepen their understanding of one of the pioneering voices in modern sociology and twentieth-century social thought.