sociology

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 474 pages, b&w illustrations. Fascinating study of the Gebusi people of PNG, who have one of the highest homicide rates in the world, because the execute suspected sorcerers. Despite this, the Gebusi are known for being good company. PNG is one of the most fascinating places on our planet, and this is one piece of the mosaic. First 25 pages with highlighting, pencil marking. Rest of the book is clean.

Hardcover. New York, Other Press, 1st US, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 584 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Publishers note within. A tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Picador, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 421 pages. Minor dust jacket edge wear. Price blacked out. Minor stains on fore edge. Otherwise, a very clean and tight copy. Growing Up Fast tells the life stories of Shayla, Jessica, Amy, Colleen, Liz, and Sheri--six teen mothers whom Joanna Lipper first met in 1999 when they were enrolled at the Teen Parent Program in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Less than a decade older than these teen parents, she was able to blend into the fabric of their lives and make a short documentary film about them. Over the course of the next four years she continued to earn their trust as they shared with her the daily reality of their lives and their experiences growing up in the economically depressed post-industrial landscape of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Hardcover. Mountain View CA, Review and Herald Publishing , 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 256 pages. A well-intentioned and very campy book of advice and encouragement for a married couple from the well-known Adventist, Harold Shryock. Circa 1949 and reflects the attitudes of the period. Color and b&w photos illustrate this domestic fantasy. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 3rd pr., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages. Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? In this novel work of comparative legal history, James Whitman argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.

Softcover. NY, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1st, 2001, Softcover, 428 pages. Jaclyn Geller exposes the social forces that shape how people feel about weddings, calling into question some of the deepest-held beliefs about this tradition. Divided into three sections, the book begins with how-to-get-your-man manuals and ends with the newlywed year. First there's ?Courtship and the Marriage Quest." Geller looks at the absurd nature of proposals, the inane practice of engagement and gift-giving, and the bizarre rules governing the wedding dress. In part two, ?The Big Day," she deals with the specifics of the wedding itself. There are place cards and table settings, rigid photo ops, vows, toasts, garter belts, and daddy dances. What do these highly scripted procedures say about this most treasured ritual? Finally, the author explores some of marriage's deeper implications in ?Living in the Plural": the strangely isolating honeymoon and the establishment of marital identity that begins with a simple thank-you note. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Frederick A. Stokes, 1st, 1915, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 380 pages. Hardcover with gilt lettering and decoration on front cover. Frontispiece and tissue guard detached. Gutter crack in multiple pages. Corners bumped and light soil. Illustrated with 16 color and 16 monochrome plates by Louis Weirter. Embossed red cloth with elaborate embossed design and bright dragon design and lettering. Fold-out virgin map in rear appears to have never been unfolded. Top edge gilt. Color frontispiece of Odin and Brunhild.

Hardcover. London, England, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 3rd Edition reprint, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 741 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrated frontispiece. Previous owner's name on front flyleaf. Pages clean, unmarked. Binding good. Spine straight. Dark blue cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. Dust jacket has some agewear, price-clipped. An impressive eye-witness account of life in India at the turn of the century. It combines descriptions of the Hindu religion and Hindu sociology with masterful portraits of the intimate lives of the people among whom the author lived.

Hardcover. London, England, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1st Editions, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction. Two Volumes: Vol. 1: 352 pages. Vol. 2: 706 pages plus publisher ads. Previous owner's name on front flyleafs. Green cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine, fading to boards, especially to spines. Binding tight. Spines straight. Pages/edges have light tanning, otherwise clean. Appearing in isolation as they do, autobiographies demand for their description and appreciation, a comprehensive view of the development of the human mind. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 504 pages including index. Bright, square copy, no marking. important work. Concerns the Nativist Movements, the Klan, the Protocols, the Nazis, et al circa 1943. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Softcover. Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 278 pages. Softcover. Clean inside, tight binding, wrapper shows a touch of age/shelf wear. In very good condition.

Softcover. NY/London, Routledge, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 233 pages. Ignatiev traces the tattered history of Irish and African-American relations, revealing how the Irish used labor unions, the Catholic Church and the Democratic party to succeed in American. He uncovers the roots of conflict between Irish-Americans and African-Americans and draws a powerful connection between the embracing of white supremacy and Irish "success" in 19th century American society. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, reprint, 1907, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 304 pages. Illustrated with b&w plates (drawings and photographs). Later printing, originally printed in 1890. Bound in 1/4 blue cloth and decorated beige paper covered boards, with bright gilt titles on the spine. Boards have wear, chipping to paper. extremities of the boards. Riis's famous muck raking work exposing the despair and harsh conditions of life among the poor in NYC. Includes chapters on Jew Town, The Color Line, the Italians and other groups. Led to major reforms includes floor plans for tenements to improve the lot of the immigrants. Monumental work in the reform movement. Previous owner's small oval sticker on front cover and on inside front cover, light pencil notes to front fly leaf, otherwise tight and clean interior.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, Revised Ed., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. A revised and expanded edition of the 1985 first edition. Foreward by Tom Wolfe.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 231 pages. Illustrated with full color photographs. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Cincinnati, OH, J.A. Brainerd, 1st, 1853, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 304 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Heavy wear to bottom spine, fabric cover frayed. Corners heavy rubbing and bumped. Gutter cracked in multiple places. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf. Light pencil markings.

Hardcover. Munchen, Georg Muller , 1st, 1925, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt design on front cover, gilt lettering on spine. 124 pages of text in German, followed by 248 b&w plates of portraits and scenes in India. One of a series of books on indigenous cultures by this publisher. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 337 pages. America's criminal justice system is broken. The United States punishes at a higher per capita rate than any other country in the world. In the last twenty years, incarceration rates have risen 500 percent. Sentences are harsh, prisons are overcrowded, life inside is dangerous, and rehabilitation programs are ineffective. Police and prosecutors operate in the dark shadows of the legal process--sometimes resigning themselves to the status quo, sometimes turning a profit from it. The courts define punishment as "time served," but that hardly begins to explain the suffering of prisoners. Looking not only to court records but to works of philosophy, history, and literature for illumination, Robert Ferguson, a distinguished law professor, diagnoses all parts of a now massive, out-of-control punishment regime. He reveals the veiled pleasure behind the impulse to punish (which confuses our thinking about the purpose of punishment), explains why over time all punishment regimes impose greater levels of punishment than originally intended, and traces a disturbing gap between our ability to quantify pain and the precision with which penalties are handed down. Clean copy.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 5th pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 250 pages, b&w illustrations. This entertaining and playful book views Disney World as much more than the site of an ideal family vacation. Blending personal meditations, interviews, photographs, and cultural analysis, Inside the Mouse looks at Disney World's architecture and design, its consumer practices, and its use of Disney characters and themes. This book takes the reader on an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" while asking "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?" Turning away from the programmed entertainment that Disney presents, the authors take a peek behind the scenes of everyday experience at Disney World. In their consideration of the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring over fifty photographs and interviews with workers that strip "cast members" of their cartoon costumes, this captivating work illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation as well as a tour of Disney World that looks beyond the controlled facade of themed attractions. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. With the same piercing intelligence as the bestselling Say it Loud!, Interracial Intimacies hits a nerve at the center of American society: race relations and our most intimate ties to each other. Analyzing the tremendous changes in the history of America's racial dynamics, Randall Kennedy challenges us to examine how prejudices and biases still fuel fears and inform our sexual, marital, and family choices. He takes us from the injustices of the slave era up to present-day battles over race matching adoption policies, which seek to pair children with adults of the same race. He tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics, the historic role of legal institutions in policing racial boundaries, and the real and imagined pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The New Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 355 pages. In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far -reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of "get tough on crime" attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from "three strikes" and "a war on drugs," to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrongdoers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 228 pages. "The period from Andrew Jackson's presidency to the Civil War has traditionally been considered the age of democracy triumphant in the United States. This book sharply contradicts that assumption, contending that while democracy advanced substantially in the political sense, social and economic distinctions became, if anything, more marked. Powerful forces, especially in the economic field, were working toward the stratification of society." Name on the front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1974, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 220 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Light edgewear, tearing and sun-fade to dust jacket. Binding slightly shaken. Faint foxing to edges.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The definitive study of the images made by a pioneer journalist and photographer who passionately advocated for America's urban poor. 336 pages, 25 color, 375 duotone + 210 b/w illustrations.