(Part 3) Best sociology books according to redditors
We found 562 Reddit comments discussing the best sociology books. We ranked the 245 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
Charles Murray, 2018:
> But the fact is that in my own life, the federal government plays hardly any negative role at all. Neither Donald Trump nor Barack Obama has done anything that has gotten in my way. De facto, life is still pretty good for a lot of Americans. We still have the freedom to live life as we see fit.
Charles Murray, 2015:
> American freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government—not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, “Try to fight this, and we’ll ruin you.”
I am curious if Charles Murray expressed these blasé sentiments about the federal government even once during the span of 2008-2016. (Please do not rush to inform me Charles Murray is a NeverTrump. I'm aware. That doesn't make him non-partisan.)
That question is terrifying.
There's an interesting book that talks about how the way we calculate violent crime rates is completely wrong because it almost always excludes corporate crime (such as the poisoning of employees, town residents, and consumers).
If I were to sell you something poisonous, lie about its healthiness, and make it highly addictive... I'd be tried for murder. Yet the tobacco companies did exactly that. They knowingly hid science regarding the dangers of their products, fabricated science to lie about its healthiness, manufactured it to increase addiction rates, and then sold it to everyone targeting children and adults.
The book also talks about how OSHA workplace injury rates don't have an effective way to develop exposure that leads to illness (like asbestos causing cancer). Nor does it move statistics from the illness tally to the death tally if that illness is the cause of death.
A very good read if you're interested.
We police poverty, not crimes.
This is misleading, if not outright false.
Business is the most popular major in America by a wide (wide) margin, and most of what gets taught in economics is your standard Free Markets = Freedom conservatism.
Those are good reading recs.
If one is still able to sleep after that, take a look at "The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right" by Daniel Levitas (2004.) Fun times.
https://www.amazon.com/Terrorist-Next-Door-Militia-Movement/dp/0312320418
It's hard to get proof of this because of causation / correlation issues.
Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Premarital-Sex-America-Americans-Marrying/dp/0199743282
Some very interesting research done on young adults in this book. While it can't prove the hypothesis, the data is in line with it. Some findings (which I'm stealing from an amazon review since I don't currently have the book):
"Rather surprisingly, research shows those marrying between "ages 20-27 report higher levels of marital success" (p 181) than those who marry later. And "those who marry between 22 and 25" (p 181) have an even higher rate of marital happiness."
"Study after study has shown that women with higher numbers of sexual partners, or those who began having sex at an earlier age, frequently suffer from depression or other emotional problems. In fact, after the sexual revolution and the feminist tidal wave of the seventies, increasing numbers of women are looking back on what's happened with regret, not happiness."
And perhaps a positive one for people who still want to get married:
"One very interesting fact: one of the most influential statistics about marriage in the US, the one mentioned many times by young adults, is wrong--or at least misunderstood. That would be the old chestnut that 50% of all marriages here end in divorce.
In truth, some people marry and divorce again and again. But those who marry for the first time have a much, much greater chance of remaining married."
Anecdotally, I know a few 28 year old women that have basically said exactly what Demonspawn said to me. Basically, "I don't know if I can love anyone anymore." Quite interesting coming from two different women at similar points in their lives, similar backgrounds, and saying the same thing. They both aren't sluts, but they've had around 8 LTRs each at this point, and have certainly gotten into the double digit dick mark.
You should read this book
Almost all activism tends to be dominated by those that are at least relatively well off. This is because participating in political activism is partially a function of being able to have the time and resources to actually do it. Now, this does not mean that poor people or others do not care about these issues, but that they just might not have time to participate in it.
If you want some scholarly literature:
It's always been something like utilitarianism for me. "The greatest good for the greatest number of people in the long run". I'd die for that. The problem is that "good" is really poorly defined. "In the long run" is a long time.
I was very opinionated and politically active in highschool, before deciding that my passions were ill-directed. Righteous dynasties continuously rise up to defeat the old corruption, only to become corrupt themselves after enough generations have passed. Even more influential than political struggles are things like disease. The black death wiped out a third of Europe, and suddenly there weren't enough people to farm the fields. Demand for labor skyrocketed in response to the lack of supply, and the value placed on those human lives went up. This spurred inventions of labor saving devices like the printing press, and arguably contributed significantly to the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the notion of human equality. Did the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? If so, should I also vote for disasters that I think might cause net gain in the long run? It's all to ambiguous, and for years I figured that the best I could do was to think about it all, and exchange thoughts with others. I built myself up from an introvert into an extrovert, and explored all the worldly pleasures i could, in hopes of experiencing everything I could of the world.
A year or so ago, I came across a concept that inferred the existence of a much clearer purpose in life. Before that, I had just resigned myself to the idea that my purpose in life was to try to find a purpose in life, so that maybe hundreds or thousands of years from now, some philosopher will finally figure out what humanity's purpose should be. I never really expected to find it myself, but then I encountered the concept of Existential Risk.
Statistically, the average length between a modern-style civilization’s rise and fall is about 300-500 years. (Motesharrei, Rivas, & Kalnay, 2014) That's just history, though, and we've changed a lot since then. In 2004, Sir Martin Reese published the first works since the cold war examining what our chances were of wiping ourselves out as a species. He concluded that we had about a 50/50 shot of surviving for another century, although he stressed that this figure is a hard one to calculate. (Rees, 2004) More recently, a number of scholarly research organizations have sprung up to investigate the topic further. At the forefront of these is Oxford University, and the Future of Humanity Institute. Nick Bostram is one of the more public scholars from that institute, and I highly recommend his books on the topic. He is much more hesitant to assign a probability, but in 2008 he helped conduct an informal survey at a existential risk conference. The median estimate for the chances that humans would survive the century was about 20%. (Sandberg & Bostrom, 2008) All these numbers have large error bars on them, but I like to summarize them rather than getting into debates the exact figures: We will almost certainly last another 10 years. We will probably last another 100 years. We probably won't last another 1,000 years though.
The implications of this seem pretty clear: my purpose in life should be to lower these risks. It's actually a pretty elegant solution to my original uncertainty. I don't need to be able to put my finger on exactly why human lives are valuable; all I need to be sure of is that intelligent life is valuable. I started a comparative cost/benefit analysis of various options, including underground/underwater cities, and the colonization of Mars. These were all rough Fermi-approximations, because good numbers are hard to come by. My results came up that Mars would be the most protective, but wasn't quite as cost effective as underground or underwater cities, at least in terms of $/percentage point reduction in existential risk. Deep sea mining is currently an expanding field, but they are just retrieving certain objects and bringing them to the surface for extraction of precious metals. They invested billions just to develop the technology this far, but precious metals aren't useful as large-scale building materials for underwater colonies. This means that such colonies are unlikely to be self-sufficient, so they are only likely to be a sort of fallout shelter. Underground cities could mine what was nearby, but would have to eject large amounts or material to the surface to make room. In terms of $/percentage point reduction in existential risk, our best options at the moment would probably be to staff more of the fallout shelters from the cold war, which now operate with only a skeleton crew. Even better would be to solve our sexism issues in the military, so that women were free from harassment. This is because then there would then be a viable population, distributed among military bases, bunkers, and submarines, which would stand a very good chance of surviving an apocalypse scenario.
However, in doing all this thinking, I considered exactly what it was I was trying to optimize, and exactly what it is that makes life valuable. If individual lives are all that matters, and not the continuity of the species, then we should all stop reproducing and just maximize our enjoyment of the remainder of our lives. If it makes sense to maximize the duration of intelligent life though, then it also makes sense to maximize the scope. This means the ideal is humans seeding a self-sufficient colony on Mars, and then building space stations in the asteroid belt out of the materials there, and some day spreading to other stars. Trillions of lives spread across the galaxy, instead of all our eggs in this one blue and green basket.
The problem with just surviving a existential threat is that we may never rebuild to become space fairing again, and all that potential will never be achieved. The Exyptians built the pyramids, then forgot how, then forgot how to even read hieroglyphics, then forgot even that they had once build such impossible things. Even if an existential threat only killed a small percent of the human race, it would still be bigger than anything we've experienced in centuries. Even WWII is barely a blip on the graph of increasing life expectancy, and that tore the world in half. It's hard to even imagine more destructive forces. What are the odds that a society under such stress would keep up it's space program when there were more immediate concerns? NASA only costs half a percentage point of the US budget, but studies repeatedly show that most people don't see the benefits, and think it is over-funded. People were under the same opinion during the space race, when NASA's budget was 5%, but the opinion didn't improve when the budget was cut by 90%. If society is stressed, NASA will likely shrink by another 90%, and is unlikely to return. A brief window of opportunity is now open, which may never be open again. My purpose in life is to make sure that we don't miss it.
Work Cited:
Motesharrei, S., Rivas, J., & Kalnay, E. (2014). Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. Ecological Economics.
Rees, M. (2004). Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity's Survival. Arrow Books Ltd.
Sandberg, A., & Bostrom, N. (2008). Global Catastrophic Risks Survey. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University.
No articles, but For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood by Christopher Emdin is a great read.
LOL.
I partially cribbed this argument from John K. Wilson's "The Myth of Political Correctness"
http://www.popecenter.org/about/author.html?id=696
http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Political-Correctness-Conservative/dp/0822317133
He's widely considered one of the political science academics around. He holds BAs in History, Philosophy, and Political
Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches at Illinois State. :)
Sometimes we don't allow these kinds of things from older adults because they don't benefit the overall board, but for younger people, I like to relax the rules, because if they're willing to learn, I want to give them that opportunity.
First thing you need to understand is that for every single poor person willing to work, the free market is absolutely imperative because that's where jobs come from. The vast, vast majority of jobs come from the fee market and the more you take from the free market, the fewer jobs will be out there. We're not living in an age in which welfare is barely surviving and a few votes is going to have it be overturned: we live in a nanny state where taxes are hampering the economy. If you're worried about the poor, then the best way to raise the most people out of poverty is to make the economy as robust as possible. Then, whoever's left can be covered.
Concerning the second amendment. I agree that the US military is is so powerful that it can kill millions of Americans, but if we're at that point in which it's happening, then America is over as a constitutional republic, anyway. That line is crossed and there's nothing to discuss. The US military is unique in that they swear to uphold the Constitution, not a party or support a specific office. If the US Army is killing Americans en masse, all the rest of the Bill of Rights is also dead. That being said, other departments' services, like the ATF, the US Marshals, and even the secret service are still out there, and we can still outnumber them with guns if we act as a Revolutionary War style militia. The government is the servant of the people, not the other way around, and they should be scared of us.
Concerning the increase of gun violence is pretty consistently done by people who are already breaking laws which would otherwise keep guns out of their hands. The recent Texas church shooting was done by a convicted felon whose purchase of his fun should have been caught by background checks when they were done. Any minor who kills is doing so in violation. Anyone using a stolen gun is doing so against the law. Heaping up more laws doesn't help those who are willing to obey the laws: it disarms them and makes them prey for those not willing to obey the law.
Books explaining the problems with gun control:
I've never read Games People Play, and psychology is not my area of expertise. But, to answer your question, that is not it.
You could read a number of different pop-psych books and each will give you a different perspective. The human psyche is extremely complex, and social interaction is even more complex. It can/should never be boiled down to one idea that supposedly explains the majority of human interaction. Be sure not to take books like this too seriously: Most people do not consider themselves to be "playing a game" whenever they are interacting with others.
My education is not in psychology, but if you are looking for further reading I can recommend some of my favorite books from my undergrad sociology education: (IMO any understanding of human interaction must have both a sociological and psychological component)
Invitation to Sociology by Peter L Berger
Sociological Insight by Randall Collins
The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann
These were required reading in a 4000-level class, but this particular professor also assigns them to his 1000-level intro-soc class (which is why he doesn't teach intro soc often). They can be dense, but they are very interesting and definitely worth reading if you are at all interested in sociology.
edit: I don't want to hate on a book I have never read too much, so I will say this: Whenever you read a psych/soc book, especially if it is written for a wide audience, remember to take everything you read with a grain of salt. You may find truth, but you may also find a very smart author who is too caught up in his own work to see the limitations of his theories.
Sorry for the late reply. Here is the link to the REA book. I actually used an older version but also got this one from the library and the practice tests were the same. You can save a lot of money by borrowing from the library.
https://www.amazon.com/CLEP%C2%AE-Introductory-Sociology-Online-Preparation/dp/0738610917
Good luck to you! Honestly the test isn’t that bad. If you can get around a 70% on both practice tests then you will should be able to pass.
Yeah sure that must be it
FACT: Every single Israeli city is built on or next to a destroyed and ethnically cleansed Palestinian town or village, all of them are clearly recorded and will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Remains-Palestinian-Depopulated/dp/0887283063
There isn't peace because a bunch of racist pigs from Brooklyn or Ukraine decided they want to recreate a fantasy land on someone else's property, and now they can't get themselves out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
So Drop dead
EVERY SINGLE Palestinian is ENTITLED to return to their land. ALL OF IT.
Internatiolal law says so, the WORLD says so, and you can kindly go fuck yourself if you don't like it. Every single grain of sand MUST BE RETURNED TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS: THE PALESTINIANS. Plus interest and damages.
The 7 Myths of Gun Control, By Richard Poe
I read this a few years ago and was absolutely floored. I highly recommend it.
It is indeed a complex situation, but these would be a good start:
Earlier history:
For more contextual books, I would recommend:
Your actions will speak louder than your words in convincing your students you understand them. Show them through your actions that you care about and respect them as holistic people (not just consumers of your subject matter). Also, it may be possible to go too far in trying to convince the students you understand ... there are aspects of their experiences you may not be able to understand, even if you went to a Title 1 school.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Folks-Teach-Hood-Rest/dp/0807006408
See below a very self-indulgent rant and rebuttal to the article and comment section.
Since I can't argue there, I have to put my thoughts into words here:
Talk about sexual frustration. This article and every comment that follows is built on the idea that sex=bad. I've never seen people become so enraged at the thought of others seeking or attempting to seek sexual pleasure. We can rest easy knowing the people commenting on this article are the only ones who lose. Ed, Jim, Dennis, Mike, and Hank will never know the pleasure of a prostate orgasm (or they have extreme guilt from the amount of pleasure they gained from said orgasm).
It's hard for them to accept that not everyone wants to stay miserable, lonely, shame-filled and guilt ridden. Based on the comments, most of these people operate on such a basic level of logic that trying to explain the benefit of sex positive education to them is entirely futile. These are people who can't think, so instead, they rage. We may as well have some fun with it.
These comments are gold. Not even /r/circlejerk could touch the level of consensus being established. Also, "so-called" sex experts. Well, yes. The owner of good vibrations has a phd, and all the staff is trained.
Angie says, "UP THE ASS IS NOT HOW GOD MEANT SEX TO GO! This is a major reason for AIDS spreading!!!!! IDIOTS."
Angie, thanks for your thoughtful commentary. You make very good points, and the ALL CAPS really hammers them home (it's no wonder you're a top commenter). Up the ass isn't how it's supposed to go? Why have humans felt the urge to have anal sex for centuries? How do you feel about this, and this, and this, and this? And guess what? Even then most people, like you, had a hard time accepting it (pro-tip: it didn't stop it). AIDS is/was spread through vanilla heterosexual sex as well. More to blame for the spreading of the disease was lack of education around sexuality and safe sex, which you are now advocating for.
Ed says, "Since homosexuals consider the anal canal to be a sex organ..."
Well, Ed, the anal canal is a sex organ, in the same way that the clitoris is a sex organ. It does not have a role in reproduction (except for means of ejaculation), but provides sexual pleasure with thousands and thousands of nerve endings.
Jim says, "Well, after watching our President work, it's quite obvious Harvard can't teach the Constitution so, perhaps, they're delving into an area closer to what they are qualified for"
Well, Jim, (congrats on the top comment with 187 likes) I'd recommend you work on your sentence structure and word choice. Of course, it all comes back to Obama, why wouldn't it? Anal sex workshop: blame obama. Your comment killed it because it a. shits on Obama, b. insinuates that harvard as an institution knows about anal sex and is therefore gay? weak? a faggot? Nothing like an old man who still throws insults like a middle schooler.
Dennis says, "A Harvard degree is now rated below a community college degree . People with "Harvard" degrees should be shunned by major business and corporations. That will stop the nonsense!"
Totally, Dennis. No one who graduates from Harvard holds conservative "american values". Wait...what about John Adams (Helped write the fucking declaration of fucking independence), and John Quincy Adams, and Teddy Roosevelt, and George Bush, and Bill O'Reilly, and David Souter (Supreme court justice of the United states appointed by George Bush), and Mitt Romney, and Mike Crapo (republican senator), and Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the fucking federal fucking reserve), and Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs), and John Roberts (Chief justice of the United states appointed by George Bush).
Mike says, "The state of higher education in America has hit a new low!
They have dumbed our youth down so low that they now have to teach them how to be perverts!
The Christians that founded Harvard must be rolling over in their graves over this one!"
Yes, Mike, it has hit a new low. I wonder how American universities came to be this way...Oh yeah, it's because assholes that share your point of view are incapable of accomplishing anything of worth because your way of thinking is completely contradictory to being an educated, thoughtful person. So, people who were able to accomplish things and become generally educated and skilled in thought now control the academic system, and tend to think things like "we should teach young adults about sex, because sex is a thing that happens".
Hank says, "I soooooo loathe what The Left has done to the culture by hijacking higher (apologize for the oxymoron) education."
Well, Hank, I don't think you know what an oxymoron is. And the left didn't hijack higher education. Hey Hank, read a fucking book
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
This one looks at the many (and often hidden) political advantages enjoyed by the wealthy class: The Unheavenly Chorus.
Holy Shit! I read it and wanted to see about buying the book. Cheapest on Amazon is 99.39!!
https://www.amazon.com/CLEP-Introductory-Sociology-Online-Preparation/dp/0738610917/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
You can't expect everyone to have a solid understanding of physics. You just can't. Get over it. You also can't send people to prison for minor negligence and expect to have a functioning society, it doesn't work that way.
Source for second statement :http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/049509482X/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195142020/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393922235/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Business-William-Nickels/dp/0078023165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482933422&sr=8-1&keywords=Understanding+Business
https://www.amazon.com/World-Art-8th-Henry-Sayre/dp/0134081803/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482933450&sr=8-1&keywords=World+of+Art+8th+Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Introduction-Sociology-Fifth/dp/0393264300/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482933471&sr=8-1&keywords=Real+World%3A+Intro+to+Sociology+5th+Edition
They get plenty of B12 from the insect/insect debris on their food. Fruitarianism can only properly be conducted in the tropics where the food is much better and the tropic, sun-filled lifestyle can be participated in. Also Northern fruit is too clean. Northern fruitarians are a sickly bunch. Fruitarians believe that you must eat grains if you live in the North to protect your body from pollution. See Surviving into the 21st century" by Victor Kulvinstas for hardcore literature on the subject.
Final Truth:
http://www.amazon.com/Final-Truth-Donald-Pee-Gaskins/product-reviews/0786000120/ref=sr_1_2_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
pie in the sky? maybe, but a beautiful and uplifting lecture nonetheless. i highly recommend listening to the whole thing. i hope there are some legs to the idea.
just the mp3 here: http://feeds.cato.org/~r/CatoDailyPodcast/~5/vFsWRgMyfmY/Lets-Render-Some-Federal-Codes-Unenforceable.mp3
and the book where he talks about it in detail:
http://amzn.com/0385346514
Old: Chicago Poems-Carl Sandburg. An absolute must-have.
New: Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect-Robert J. Sampson
*edit-formatting
Crime has been down so far this year, but that's due to the weather, not policing. In Chicago shootings are correlated to temperature. It's unfortunate, but immediately after thinking about how nice the weather is, "how many people will get shot tonight?" is in the back of your head.
There are a few programs/organizations that temper the violence. [Cure Violence] (http://cureviolence.org/)(formerly known as CeaseFire) and Blocks Together both try to intervene to prevent escalation. But this problem is too big for any not for profit or politician's pet project.
The violence in Chicago is one of the many layers (or symptoms) to systematic social inequalities. Chicago politicians have been very good at throttling money going into developing these neighborhoods (the CPS school closings for instance), and draining any money that does go into these neighborhoods. Chicago is a microcosm of the relationship between the IMF and "developing" countries.
edit:
Check out these books if interested in learning more -
Great American City by Robert J. Sampson and Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
Precisely.
I recommend this book pretty strongly (The reviews are bogus, it's at least 4 stars):
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Political-Correctness-Conservative-Education/dp/0822317133
> Clearly not, [the Democratic Party] exist[s] so the "right" (read corporate sponsored) dem wins.
This is abundantly false.
> They paid her, she did favors for and supports them in return.
You have no evidence to claim that she updated her stances specifically because of those donations and not that she was given those donations by people who already agreed with her.
If you want a basic introductory textbook on sociology, I would pick up Kerry Ferris & Jill Stein's The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology. I have used this textbook in my Introduction to Sociology course and I think it is very easy to read but it is very surface level.
If you want to read more about sociological theory, I use Lemert's Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings 6th Edition and Seidman's Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today 6th Edition. You could also check out Ritzer's Sociological Theory and/or Collins' Four Sociological Traditions.
Here's a good book on the subject of 'the end of humanity'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Final-Century-Civilisation-Twenty-first/dp/0099436868/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416921014&sr=8-1&keywords=martin+rees+our+final
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393922235/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0393922235
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Psychology-James-W-Kalat/dp/1305271556/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=UXWGAOWSFL2K&keywords=introduction+to+psychology&qid=1551147331&s=gateway&sprefix=introduction+to+psych&sr=8-2
Also a copy of DSM-V might be of interest.
This book provides some compelling data regarding why it may not be as 'risk free' as you think. Fact of the matter is that the human animal is more than just physical organs, and consequently there are significant psychological ramifications to every choice we make. Abstinence before marriage and monogamy during marriage is effective and stable precisely because it safeguards us from the psychological toll promiscuity takes on us.